I agree with you entirely but Russia's Useful Green Idiots have been opposing the bit in bold.
@Richard_Tyndall is 100% right we need hydrocarbons to get us through the transition to clean energy and we should be developing our own instead of importing it from Putin and Sheiks.
The loony elements of the Green movement oppose any and all exploration and extraction of domestic hydrocarbons. That does play into the hands of the likes of Putin who simply ignore those loons and do as they please.
Dixiedean:
One may say the same about those who have fought tooth and nail to prevent anything to restrict the demand side. We hear surprisingly little about that from the other side. It's going to take both to get anywhere near.
Somebody made a good point, it isn't just green policy that's preventing fracking in the UK, its nimby-ism. Just as everybody supports other people paying higher taxes, so everybody supports cheaper gas drawn from fields near others.
To make it work, the government needs incentives for people to agree for their areas to be fracked.
In case you've missed it, my attitude to NIMBYs is long-established. I have as little respect for NIMBYs here as I do anywhere and they would if it were up to me get the exact same response as I'd give them elsewhere. Fuck NIMBYs.
However incentivising areas that get fracked is a very good idea, and is what the Americans have done very successfully.
That’s easy - let local authorities rather than central government levy taxes on production. If everyone in your district gets a cheque instead of a council tax bill, people might suddenly be in favour of it.
Trouble with this, is that knowing the average Local Authority, they'll waste the entire windfall on some ill thought-out scheme to invest in Dutch tulips, and end up demanding a council tax increase instead.
A better system would be that say 80% of the windfall was distributed as a council tax reduction (but in no way controlled by the council), and 20% went directly to the council budget. That would provide the right incentives all round, but prevent local councils from doing too much stupid stuff with the windfall. (This would be a better arrangement than all the S106 planning stuff too).
The irony with fracking is that there is virtually nothing for the nimby's to get excided about anyway - if it didn't need lots of planning consent etc, they would never even notice it happening - it's just that somehow the crusties have convinced the world fracking will result in the four horsemen of the apocalypse appearing on the street.
Visit the Fylde. It's very posh people with 4 and 5 bedroom houses and multiple cars. I don't think they are brainwashed by crusties for their heavily Tory voting habits. Yet almost every house has anti-fracking posters.
I don’t get the Fylde. Isn’t it next to Blackpool? Where is the money coming from?
Always been a mystery to me too! There used to be a lot of longish-distance commuters to Manchester from the Fylde (another place with a definite article) but less so nowadays. There's a lot of retirement there.
Masses. St Annes is a retirement village pretty much.
I had never been to St. Annes before I had children. My day trips to the seaside as a child were to North Wales. I think my parents were maybe a bit sniffy about the Fylde coast (as if Rhyl is any less lowbrow!). But St. Annes is rather wonderful. Wedged between Lytham and Blackpool, it is midway between the two of them in spirit too. Fun – it has a pier, and donkeys, and inflatables on the beach, and a boating lake – but not too much fun – you wouldn’t go there for a day’s drinking. An absolutely massive beach, when the tide’s out. And even when it’s mostly in. Doktor Hotfingers (whose credentials I doubt, frankly) playing a medley of songs you hate on the promenade. If you’ve got children under 7 there are few better places you can spend a day. Getting a lump in my throat of happy nostalgia now thinking about it – not least because I don’t know if we will ever go again as a family, now the kids are older with tastes more high octane. St. Annes represents golden years I knew were golden but didn’t really grasp how quickly they would pass. Not that having slightly older children isn’t wonderful too, of course; not to mention considerably easier. But of, the magic of those early years. (Admittedly, realistically, magic often realised in retrospect when they were in bed and you had got through another day intact, but still.)
Edit – a further memory of coming out of a café on the front, having just arrived in St. Annes, with my three-year-old, and seeing the beach. A note of gleeful incredulity in her voice as she took in the scene before her: “Sea – donkeys – pier – slides – it a summer holiday!”. That is St. Annes, to me.
I know it well, for family reasons. Been there many, many times. Lovely. The stunning bit of beach and the olde pier are the best kept secret of the NW coast imho.
And a pint or cocktail at the Grand Hotel if you have a few quid left from the slots!
FWIW, I am hearing from friends with contacts in Russia that there are some very serious conversations going on across the regime and we may see some serious attempt to "resolve" the problem quite soon. If and it is a very big IF, Putin holds off attacks on civilian targets and the road to Kyiv stays open as primised to Macron, then the talks can continue. Russian side privately admitting that the situation is difficult, and things are still very dangerous,
My guess is that if the Ukrainians can hang on for another week, then the exit ramp will be looking very attractive to the Kremlin, "Neutral and no return of Crimea" seems to be the bottom line, but there are still a lot of issues to work through on the Russian side.
BTW if I were Oleksander Lukashenka tonight I would be feeling very nervous indeed.
That looks like a landing zone if there is to be one. Implementation of Minsk II with the removal of the constitutional obligations on Ukraine; Crimea to be punted into the long grass with a putative separate agreement. As Russia is supposedly committed to Minsk it could be presented as a face-saving win for Moscow.
What about the West? Even if Ukraine and Russia do a deal, the West might decide it wants to go ahead and F8ck Russia's economy anyhow.
Can Ukraine deliver its Western friends,given Putin threatened some serious Western allies?
Yeah, this is the next potential problem, in either direction. There are very much three interested groups: Russia, Ukraine, The West. Obviously the latter are not officially involved, but they have a huge say in all of this.
The genie is out of the bottle. There's no way this ends with Russia getting most of what it wanted anyway and everything going back to normal.
But the West's say needs to be necessarily subsumed to that of Ukraine. We cannot be using them as a bargaining chip to get what we want and we need to be true to our word and our proclaimed beliefs and allow them to make the free and fair decision which they believe is in their own best interests.
If, for example, Ukraine decided the best result they could hope for was to remain free but neutral with their defences intact and backed up by the West but with Crimea and the Donbas lost (I am not saying they will, but if they did) then it should not be for the West to make any protest about that just because we might believe it is letting Putin off the hook. Even though in my opinion it would be.
The Ukraine gets to say. The EU and NATO have precisely no say in the Russian surrender talks.
David Crockett : [Crockett is about to be executed by the Mexicans] You tell the general I'm willing to discuss the terms of surrender. You tell him; if he'll order his men to put down their weapons and line up, I'll take them to Sam Houston and I'll try my best to save most of them. That said; Sam's a mite twitchy, so no promises.
If I've got Nick Palmer at my back with his 12-bore..
12 bore? I get my chaps to bring this
You've posted that before I think.
Was it ever fired? The guy pulling the trigger would have probably been killed from the recoil.
FWIW, I am hearing from friends with contacts in Russia that there are some very serious conversations going on across the regime and we may see some serious attempt to "resolve" the problem quite soon. If and it is a very big IF, Putin holds off attacks on civilian targets and the road to Kyiv stays open as primised to Macron, then the talks can continue. Russian side privately admitting that the situation is difficult, and things are still very dangerous,
My guess is that if the Ukrainians can hang on for another week, then the exit ramp will be looking very attractive to the Kremlin, "Neutral and no return of Crimea" seems to be the bottom line, but there are still a lot of issues to work through on the Russian side.
BTW if I were Oleksander Lukashenka tonight I would be feeling very nervous indeed.
That looks like a landing zone if there is to be one. Implementation of Minsk II with the removal of the constitutional obligations on Ukraine; Crimea to be punted into the long grass with a putative separate agreement. As Russia is supposedly committed to Minsk it could be presented as a face-saving win for Moscow.
What about the West? Even if Ukraine and Russia do a deal, the West might decide it wants to go ahead and F8ck Russia's economy anyhow.
Can Ukraine deliver its Western friends,given Putin threatened some serious Western allies?
Yeah, this is the next potential problem, in either direction. There are very much three interested groups: Russia, Ukraine, The West. Obviously the latter are not officially involved, but they have a huge say in all of this.
The genie is out of the bottle. There's no way this ends with Russia getting most of what it wanted anyway and everything going back to normal.
But the West's say needs to be necessarily subsumed to that of Ukraine. We cannot be using them as a bargaining chip to get what we want and we need to be true to our word and our proclaimed beliefs and allow them to make the free and fair decision which they believe is in their own best interests.
If, for example, Ukraine decided the best result they could hope for was to remain free but neutral with their defences intact and backed up by the West but with Crimea and the Donbas lost (I am not saying they will, but if they did) then it should not be for the West to make any protest about that just because we might believe it is letting Putin off the hook. Even though in my opinion it would be.
The Ukraine gets to say. The EU and NATO have precisely no say in the Russian surrender talks.
David Crockett : [Crockett is about to be executed by the Mexicans] You tell the general I'm willing to discuss the terms of surrender. You tell him; if he'll order his men to put down their weapons and line up, I'll take them to Sam Houston and I'll try my best to save most of them. That said; Sam's a mite twitchy, so no promises.
If I've got Nick Palmer at my back with his 12-bore..
12 bore? I get my chaps to bring this
You've posted that before I think.
Was it ever fired? The guy pulling the trigger would have probably been killed from the recoil.
I agree with you entirely but Russia's Useful Green Idiots have been opposing the bit in bold.
@Richard_Tyndall is 100% right we need hydrocarbons to get us through the transition to clean energy and we should be developing our own instead of importing it from Putin and Sheiks.
The loony elements of the Green movement oppose any and all exploration and extraction of domestic hydrocarbons. That does play into the hands of the likes of Putin who simply ignore those loons and do as they please.
Dixiedean:
One may say the same about those who have fought tooth and nail to prevent anything to restrict the demand side. We hear surprisingly little about that from the other side. It's going to take both to get anywhere near.
Somebody made a good point, it isn't just green policy that's preventing fracking in the UK, its nimby-ism. Just as everybody supports other people paying higher taxes, so everybody supports cheaper gas drawn from fields near others.
To make it work, the government needs incentives for people to agree for their areas to be fracked.
In case you've missed it, my attitude to NIMBYs is long-established. I have as little respect for NIMBYs here as I do anywhere and they would if it were up to me get the exact same response as I'd give them elsewhere. Fuck NIMBYs.
However incentivising areas that get fracked is a very good idea, and is what the Americans have done very successfully.
That’s easy - let local authorities rather than central government levy taxes on production. If everyone in your district gets a cheque instead of a council tax bill, people might suddenly be in favour of it.
Trouble with this, is that knowing the average Local Authority, they'll waste the entire windfall on some ill thought-out scheme to invest in Dutch tulips, and end up demanding a council tax increase instead.
A better system would be that say 80% of the windfall was distributed as a council tax reduction (but in no way controlled by the council), and 20% went directly to the council budget. That would provide the right incentives all round, but prevent local councils from doing too much stupid stuff with the windfall. (This would be a better arrangement than all the S106 planning stuff too).
The irony with fracking is that there is virtually nothing for the nimby's to get excided about anyway - if it didn't need lots of planning consent etc, they would never even notice it happening - it's just that somehow the crusties have convinced the world fracking will result in the four horsemen of the apocalypse appearing on the street.
Wow,
This is wrong on two counts.
Firstly, there's no windfall right now as fracking is not currently economic in the UK.
Secondly, I have spent an awful lot of time around this industry, and holy fuck you would notice. Getting the rig into position. Drilling 24 hours a day. And then the sound of the diesel compressors getting the water pressure up. Yeah, you'd notice.
Hmm. I have drilled maybe two dozen onshore oil wells in the UK in my career. And the local restrictions generally mean there is very little disturbance to the community. As a norm no activity that caused any level of noise is permitted between 8pm and 7am. That includes hard drilling, tripping, running casing etc. Much of the time if those operations were necessary we would just stop and circulate for the whole night (which is why we all wanted to work nightshift). Even the generators are in special sound proofed containers. On one in Kent the noise from the ventilators on the cold storage unit next door was louder than the generators. Literally. We had to get the owners to switch them off for a while so the local inspectors could measure the noise from the generators.
This is not to support fracking as a process since personally I think it is unsuited to the densely populated UK. But noise pollution is not one of the issues.
In the US, you drill 24 hours a day. If you only drill 12 hours a day, you've increased the cost of your well significantly, because that expensive kit is just sitting there.
And for the actual hydraulic fracturing part, can you just turn off the compressors without problem? Or will the pressure levels subside somewhat as the water seeps out?
Anti Semitism is only immoral to Jews ie in religious terms as it is in opposition to the Torah and also to the Christian morality of love thy neighbour as set out in the New Testament.
There is nothing automatically immoral about anti Semitism beyond that religious morality if a majority of the public become anti Semitic. Indeed in parts of the Arab world today anti Semitism is rife unfortunately, as it is in parts of the far left
There is nothing immoral about antisemitism?
Have you lost your mind?
I understand that HYUFD is defining morality purely in terms of religion, but being anti-semitic (or more generally racist) is immoral on wider grounds (based on common humanity) than whatever bearded chap in the sky we might believe in. In particular, a religion that decided to determine who it was for or against by the opinion of "the majority of the public" would not be worth the scrolls it's written on.
I would say, instead of "common humanity" - The coherent philosophical system of morality and social structures and obligations that has been constructed over more than 2500 years, by the best and brightest among us.
Racism isn't just evil, wrong and stupid because of an undefined "common humanity", but has been defined as such by reasoned argument and powerful examples.
This is going to cause serious issues at home for Putin I would imagine if it carries on for long.
Good. They need to bring him down.
Is the issue the Apple / Google or Visa / Mastercard.
If it's the latter then the metro is the least of their worries.
Extraordinary to think that those private corporations can bring Russia to a halt, whether under govt direction or off their own bat. Meanwhile twitter has a monopoly on information. In 20-30 years time all those corps plus the drones and tanks will be operated by AIs of doubtful motivation and allegiance. Welcome to dystopia.
FWIW, I am hearing from friends with contacts in Russia that there are some very serious conversations going on across the regime and we may see some serious attempt to "resolve" the problem quite soon. If and it is a very big IF, Putin holds off attacks on civilian targets and the road to Kyiv stays open as primised to Macron, then the talks can continue. Russian side privately admitting that the situation is difficult, and things are still very dangerous,
My guess is that if the Ukrainians can hang on for another week, then the exit ramp will be looking very attractive to the Kremlin, "Neutral and no return of Crimea" seems to be the bottom line, but there are still a lot of issues to work through on the Russian side.
BTW if I were Oleksander Lukashenka tonight I would be feeling very nervous indeed.
That looks like a landing zone if there is to be one. Implementation of Minsk II with the removal of the constitutional obligations on Ukraine; Crimea to be punted into the long grass with a putative separate agreement. As Russia is supposedly committed to Minsk it could be presented as a face-saving win for Moscow.
What about the West? Even if Ukraine and Russia do a deal, the West might decide it wants to go ahead and F8ck Russia's economy anyhow.
Can Ukraine deliver its Western friends,given Putin threatened some serious Western allies?
Yeah, this is the next potential problem, in either direction. There are very much three interested groups: Russia, Ukraine, The West. Obviously the latter are not officially involved, but they have a huge say in all of this.
The genie is out of the bottle. There's no way this ends with Russia getting most of what it wanted anyway and everything going back to normal.
But the West's say needs to be necessarily subsumed to that of Ukraine. We cannot be using them as a bargaining chip to get what we want and we need to be true to our word and our proclaimed beliefs and allow them to make the free and fair decision which they believe is in their own best interests.
If, for example, Ukraine decided the best result they could hope for was to remain free but neutral with their defences intact and backed up by the West but with Crimea and the Donbas lost (I am not saying they will, but if they did) then it should not be for the West to make any protest about that just because we might believe it is letting Putin off the hook. Even though in my opinion it would be.
The Ukraine gets to say. The EU and NATO have precisely no say in the Russian surrender talks.
David Crockett : [Crockett is about to be executed by the Mexicans] You tell the general I'm willing to discuss the terms of surrender. You tell him; if he'll order his men to put down their weapons and line up, I'll take them to Sam Houston and I'll try my best to save most of them. That said; Sam's a mite twitchy, so no promises.
If I've got Nick Palmer at my back with his 12-bore..
12 bore? I get my chaps to bring this
You've posted that before I think.
Was it ever fired? The guy pulling the trigger would have probably been killed from the recoil.
It's a punt gun isn't it? Would have been fixed to a boat (and sent it a fair distance backwards on firing)
FWIW, I am hearing from friends with contacts in Russia that there are some very serious conversations going on across the regime and we may see some serious attempt to "resolve" the problem quite soon. If and it is a very big IF, Putin holds off attacks on civilian targets and the road to Kyiv stays open as primised to Macron, then the talks can continue. Russian side privately admitting that the situation is difficult, and things are still very dangerous,
My guess is that if the Ukrainians can hang on for another week, then the exit ramp will be looking very attractive to the Kremlin, "Neutral and no return of Crimea" seems to be the bottom line, but there are still a lot of issues to work through on the Russian side.
BTW if I were Oleksander Lukashenka tonight I would be feeling very nervous indeed.
That looks like a landing zone if there is to be one. Implementation of Minsk II with the removal of the constitutional obligations on Ukraine; Crimea to be punted into the long grass with a putative separate agreement. As Russia is supposedly committed to Minsk it could be presented as a face-saving win for Moscow.
What about the West? Even if Ukraine and Russia do a deal, the West might decide it wants to go ahead and F8ck Russia's economy anyhow.
Can Ukraine deliver its Western friends,given Putin threatened some serious Western allies?
Yeah, this is the next potential problem, in either direction. There are very much three interested groups: Russia, Ukraine, The West. Obviously the latter are not officially involved, but they have a huge say in all of this.
The genie is out of the bottle. There's no way this ends with Russia getting most of what it wanted anyway and everything going back to normal.
But the West's say needs to be necessarily subsumed to that of Ukraine. We cannot be using them as a bargaining chip to get what we want and we need to be true to our word and our proclaimed beliefs and allow them to make the free and fair decision which they believe is in their own best interests.
If, for example, Ukraine decided the best result they could hope for was to remain free but neutral with their defences intact and backed up by the West but with Crimea and the Donbas lost (I am not saying they will, but if they did) then it should not be for the West to make any protest about that just because we might believe it is letting Putin off the hook. Even though in my opinion it would be.
The Ukraine gets to say. The EU and NATO have precisely no say in the Russian surrender talks.
David Crockett : [Crockett is about to be executed by the Mexicans] You tell the general I'm willing to discuss the terms of surrender. You tell him; if he'll order his men to put down their weapons and line up, I'll take them to Sam Houston and I'll try my best to save most of them. That said; Sam's a mite twitchy, so no promises.
If I've got Nick Palmer at my back with his 12-bore..
12 bore? I get my chaps to bring this
You've posted that before I think.
Was it ever fired? The guy pulling the trigger would have probably been killed from the recoil.
It depended on the ammo he Putin.
It's a punt gun. You bolt it to a small boat - a punt. Point the *boat* at a flock of birds. Pull the trigger. The whole boat recoils. Then you pole over to the flock of dead birds.
There is a phrase "give them an inch they take will take a mile" I am pretty sure that the people arguing here to give into to putins demands will be saying the same when he invades estonia, and the same when he invades finland etc....The time to stop him is now simple as that.
There is a phrase "give them an inch they take will take a mile" I am pretty sure that the people arguing here to give into to putins demands will be saying the same when he invades estonia, and the same when he invades finland etc....The time to stop him is now simple as that.
Finland is not in NATO either, so again it would be sanctions only.
Estonia however is in NATO so then it would be war
Well, if he'd done it in October it would have caused enormous problems in Europe.
But done at the beginning of March, when the Germans are only using 4GW of natural gas in power gen, it's not anywhere near as big a threat.
How long would it take for us or the Germans to get other measures in place for next winter to ensure security of supply? LNG is going to be in short supply for delivery, and you can't just build coal plants or enough renewables that quickly. In the case of Germany, they'll have to build terminals - how long would that take?
Whatever, I cannot see many countries taking much gas from Germany in the medium term unless te terms are *very* good. You don't want them to just switch off the tap.
Doable on my understanding, but eyewateringly expensive. Means filling every storage facility with top dollar LNG over the summer months to get through next winter. Good thing though is every subsequent winter will be easier.
I think they need to get their chequebooks out for storage for next winter. Six months moratorium on Russian gas, then they can take a view on whether to switch supplies back on in the Autumn.
As @rcs1000 says, lucky for us the invasion wasn't earlier. Thank Xi and his Olympics.
OK. Germany has a lot of gas storage - about four months of average usage. (Or about ten weeks in Winter.)
If Germany was the only purchaser of spot LNG cargoes in the world, then it could fill up its storage facilities to the brim by the end of the summer, and then could (expensively) ride out next winter.
But it's a bit more complex than that.
You see while some countries have lots of long-term LNG supply contracts (South Korea, Japan), others don't (errr... us).
And this worked out brilliantly for the UK for a long time. You see, long-term LNG prices were around $11-12mmbtu, and spot prices were $8-9. British generators made out like banditos.
Unfortunately, two things then happened. Firstly, the biggest source of spot LNG (US shale gas) disappeared. During the pandemic, the gas price fell, and drilling stopped. This meant the US was no longer exporting as many cargoes. Secondly, Russia began to wave their big dick around and started cutting gas supplies to Europe (with the express goal of depleting storage facilities). This meant that there was more bidding on LNG cargoes to the extent that ships bound for Asia under contract were turning round heading to Europe.
In the short to medium term, what needs to happen is that everyone (world-wide) needs to do more coal generation. You can already see this happening in the US where the price of Powder River Basin coal has doubled. More coal generating in the US and Australia means more gas available for export. More coal generating in the UK and Europe means less need for gas. And coal production can be ramped up more easily than natural gas, often by simply adding extra shifts at open pit mines.
European countries also need to commit to long term LNG supply contracts. And yes, that includes us in the UK. A dozen LNG projects are stalled because of a lack of willingness of European buyers to commit to decade long contracts. If Europe stepped up, we could see a lot of these come through.
Do these, and you wean Europe off Russian gas.
We also rather desperately need to look for an alternative to the now defunct Rough gas storage field. Contrary to the Guardian spin it wasn't shut because the Government didn't want to spend the £750 million a year it would cost to maintain it. It was shut because even after spending that money it was almost certain it would not be useable due to the degradation of the reservoir. We have spent a long time looking for alternatives but that has now mostly been knocked on the head because everyone has been saying gas has no future. That needs to change.
I'd be very surprised if there were no suitable locations in the UK (and surrounding waters). We should be aiming for one winter's worth of natural gas in storage in the longer term.
The point is surely, that climate policies and lockdown were sold to us as reductions to the risks in our lives.
In the event, all they did was shift the balance of the risk.
Nobody told us that giving up gas drilling might give a madman who controls a lot of gas supply the upper hand.
I think you have to join up about 50 dots, some of which are not only on different pages but completely different books, in order to link Greta Thornberg to the invasion of Ukraine.
This is a rabbit hole which only the Far Right could manage to find itself going down.
You really don't and I suspect you know that.
No you really do and I suspect you know that.
Look I know leftists are desperate for the 'green lobby created Putin' narrative not to get out, hence the IPCC's very convenient report today.
I would suggest to you that you are too late. Its already out there.
It is certainly out there that's for sure.
Doesn't mean anyone sensible believes it. And anyway, surely the correct response is to prioritise even more investment in renewables so we can move away from Russion gas.
Indeed. I don't quite follow how prioritising an alternative supply of energy (renewables), and campaigning to reduce the demand for, and use of, fossil fuels, somehow makes us more reliant on foreign gas. Surely the folk to blame are the ones who have said, progressively. Climate change doesn't exist/ isn't important/there's nowt we can do anyways. So keep flying, driving and denying subsidies for windmills. And planning permission. And don't you dare put taxes on any of it.
It doesn't.
What does is the madness about not drilling for our own gas in places like Lancashire or Cambo so we are compelled to rely upon imports instead.
That's an entirely different argument. If we want to not rely on foreign energy it needs to be multi-pronged. That means both increased domestic supply, and lower domestic demand. It needs more nuclear, renewables, and drilling. Less flying, driving and thermostats turned down. Folk need to be wearing jumpers in the living room. All of this and more. And we'd still need to import far into the future. None of which makes it Greta's fault in the slightest. Which I realise isn't what you were arguing. But was where I started.
I agree with you entirely but Russia's Useful Green Idiots have been opposing the bit in bold.
@Richard_Tyndall is 100% right we need hydrocarbons to get us through the transition to clean energy and we should be developing our own instead of importing it from Putin and Sheiks.
The loony elements of the Green movement oppose any and all exploration and extraction of domestic hydrocarbons. That does play into the hands of the likes of Putin who simply ignore those loons and do as they please.
We have more than enough hydrocarbons *if* we had gotten serious about the transition and gotten on with it! It’s the loony elements of the conservative movement who keep slowing things down.
This is simply factually incorrect.
We don't even have enough hydrocarbons for today without having to pay the Sheikhs and Putin etc let alone for the entire transition.
We need to invest in extracting our own hydrocarbons to uncouple ourselves from unsavoury overseas characters as an interim solution and invest in long-term zero carbon solutions.
The problem with you and your style is you let the fictional, idealised perfect be the enemy of the good but realistic option.
It is simply factually correct.
Firstly, read what I said. I said "*if* we had gotten serious". So, if we had done things differently 10 or 20 years ago, we wouldn't be where we are.
Perhaps regret can only get us so far, you might suggest. OK, so where are we now? We know that if we burn everything in known hydrocarbon reserves around the world, the climate is completely f***ed. We need to transition quickly. There is very little point investing in new sources of hydrocarbons. It just takes too long, and there's more than we can afford to use! We can invest more quickly in green technologies and energy efficiency.
The problem with you and your style is that you are clinging to the past, unwilling and unable(?) to face what the transition entails.
Wow there is a huge amount of ignorance in that posting. The limits on developing renewables in the UK (with the exception of ignoring tidal which is a travesty) are nothing to do with regulation or lack of investment and all to do with simple logistics and how fast we can build turbines and wind farms. We are doing this as fast as we physically can and we will still not be able to cope for decades without hydrocarbons.
In the meantime we need to continue exploiting our own hydrocarbons both for the energy transition and, more importantly, for the 40% that we don't burn and which we need for all our basic day to day lives.
How do you run a car, a train or a bus without lubricants? How do you build an electric car without plastics? How do you deal with the headache you are causing yourself trying to work this all out without asprin?
There's a tiny memorial to the Holodomor at the base of Calton Hill in Edinburgh. Must have been past it scores of times before I first stopped to read it.
Given the attention other genocides get, it seems rather neglected. Perhaps no longer.
Reportedly, rocket strikes are targeting Brovary, a Kyiv suburb. This happened soon after the conclusion of Russian-Ukrainian talks on a ceasefire and cessation of hostilities.. ...Kyiv is also hit by Russian missiles immediately after conclusion of Russian-Ukrainian talks on a ceasefire and cessation of hostilities https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1498351233324703744
Anti Semitism is only immoral to Jews ie in religious terms as it is in opposition to the Torah and also to the Christian morality of love thy neighbour as set out in the New Testament.
There is nothing automatically immoral about anti Semitism beyond that religious morality if a majority of the public become anti Semitic. Indeed in parts of the Arab world today anti Semitism is rife unfortunately, as it is in parts of the far left
There is nothing immoral about antisemitism?
Have you lost your mind?
I understand that HYUFD is defining morality purely in terms of religion, but being anti-semitic (or more generally racist) is immoral on wider grounds (based on common humanity) than whatever bearded chap in the sky we might believe in. In particular, a religion that decided to determine who it was for or against by the opinion of "the majority of the public" would not be worth the scrolls it's written on.
Common humanity is determined by what the majority of people still think is right at any one time however. At times in the past many if not most of the global population has sadly been anti Semitic.
I never disputed religious morality is based on religious texts and what Prophets said, not public opinion
There is a phrase "give them an inch they take will take a mile" I am pretty sure that the people arguing here to give into to putins demands will be saying the same when he invades estonia, and the same when he invades finland etc....The time to stop him is now simple as that.
Finland is not in NATO either, so again it would be sanctions only.
Estonia however is in NATO so then it would be war
Who gives a damn if they are in nato or not. Russia needs to be stopped now. You lack any morality you are no better than those that argued for the appeasement of Hitler. You are everything repulsive about your wing of torydom where the only thing that counts is you. Please go get some humanity because you are sadly lacking.
FWIW, I am hearing from friends with contacts in Russia that there are some very serious conversations going on across the regime and we may see some serious attempt to "resolve" the problem quite soon. If and it is a very big IF, Putin holds off attacks on civilian targets and the road to Kyiv stays open as primised to Macron, then the talks can continue. Russian side privately admitting that the situation is difficult, and things are still very dangerous,
My guess is that if the Ukrainians can hang on for another week, then the exit ramp will be looking very attractive to the Kremlin, "Neutral and no return of Crimea" seems to be the bottom line, but there are still a lot of issues to work through on the Russian side.
BTW if I were Oleksander Lukashenka tonight I would be feeling very nervous indeed.
That looks like a landing zone if there is to be one. Implementation of Minsk II with the removal of the constitutional obligations on Ukraine; Crimea to be punted into the long grass with a putative separate agreement. As Russia is supposedly committed to Minsk it could be presented as a face-saving win for Moscow.
What about the West? Even if Ukraine and Russia do a deal, the West might decide it wants to go ahead and F8ck Russia's economy anyhow.
Can Ukraine deliver its Western friends,given Putin threatened some serious Western allies?
Yeah, this is the next potential problem, in either direction. There are very much three interested groups: Russia, Ukraine, The West. Obviously the latter are not officially involved, but they have a huge say in all of this.
The genie is out of the bottle. There's no way this ends with Russia getting most of what it wanted anyway and everything going back to normal.
But the West's say needs to be necessarily subsumed to that of Ukraine. We cannot be using them as a bargaining chip to get what we want and we need to be true to our word and our proclaimed beliefs and allow them to make the free and fair decision which they believe is in their own best interests.
If, for example, Ukraine decided the best result they could hope for was to remain free but neutral with their defences intact and backed up by the West but with Crimea and the Donbas lost (I am not saying they will, but if they did) then it should not be for the West to make any protest about that just because we might believe it is letting Putin off the hook. Even though in my opinion it would be.
The Ukraine gets to say. The EU and NATO have precisely no say in the Russian surrender talks.
David Crockett : [Crockett is about to be executed by the Mexicans] You tell the general I'm willing to discuss the terms of surrender. You tell him; if he'll order his men to put down their weapons and line up, I'll take them to Sam Houston and I'll try my best to save most of them. That said; Sam's a mite twitchy, so no promises.
If I've got Nick Palmer at my back with his 12-bore..
12 bore? I get my chaps to bring this
You've posted that before I think.
Was it ever fired? The guy pulling the trigger would have probably been killed from the recoil.
It depended on the ammo he Putin.
It's a punt gun. You bolt it to a small boat - a punt. Point the *boat* at a flock of birds. Pull the trigger. The whole boat recoils. Then you pole over to the flock of dead birds.
EDIT:
Seem unsporting - feels like the animals should sometimes have a chance.
Ukr ambassador questioning whether Russian Fed is actually in the UN?
I think you’ll find he’s right.
It was the Soviet Union that joined, not the RSFSR.
No, he's wrong. The Russian Federation was recognised as the successor state to the USSR (with, I should note, the blessing of Ukraine).
Maybe it should not have been, as it issued a UDI from the USSR some time before it actually broke up and Yeltsin was famously dealing with the leaders of the republics and totally ignored Gorbachev after about September, but it was.
This is going to cause serious issues at home for Putin I would imagine if it carries on for long.
Good. They need to bring him down.
Is the issue the Apple / Google or Visa / Mastercard.
If it's the latter then the metro is the least of their worries.
Extraordinary to think that those private corporations can bring Russia to a halt, whether under govt direction or off their own bat. Meanwhile twitter has a monopoly on information. In 20-30 years time all those corps plus the drones and tanks will be operated by AIs of doubtful motivation and allegiance. Welcome to dystopia.
One better poll for Tories in sequence of Tories going backward little bit each time polls, and it’s noticeable those who didn’t want to talk polls over weekend now want to talk it. 🙂 so okay, because for us Libdems analyse shows there is one certain message across ALL the recent “crisis” polling, and that is Libdems definitely bouncing up in them all. And if we are to analyse most likely reason for this, it surely has to point to the often slow and error strewn performance of Boris and his government over this period?
Putin has pretty much ensured Macron's reelection.
Funny old world.
Potentially, he’s made the U.K. and EU forget our pretty differences, bolstered European defence such that the US will feel less put upon, reinvented German foreign policy and reintroduced them to the western alliance, weakened the Government in Belarus, and lost all prestige sporting events. Probably not his wish list at the start of the year…
Anti Semitism is only immoral to Jews ie in religious terms as it is in opposition to the Torah and also to the Christian morality of love thy neighbour as set out in the New Testament.
There is nothing automatically immoral about anti Semitism beyond that religious morality if a majority of the public become anti Semitic. Indeed in parts of the Arab world today anti Semitism is rife unfortunately, as it is in parts of the far left
There is nothing immoral about antisemitism?
Have you lost your mind?
I understand that HYUFD is defining morality purely in terms of religion, but being anti-semitic (or more generally racist) is immoral on wider grounds (based on common humanity) than whatever bearded chap in the sky we might believe in. In particular, a religion that decided to determine who it was for or against by the opinion of "the majority of the public" would not be worth the scrolls it's written on.
Common humanity is determined by what the majority of people still think is right at any one time however. At times in the past many if not most of the global population has sadly been anti Semitic.
I never disputed religious morality is based on religious texts and what Prophets said, not public opinion
That last paragraph isn't true, it's based on the current / preferred interpretation of the text. Otherwise there would be far fewer denomination of churches nor 2 branches of Islam
FWIW, I am hearing from friends with contacts in Russia that there are some very serious conversations going on across the regime and we may see some serious attempt to "resolve" the problem quite soon. If and it is a very big IF, Putin holds off attacks on civilian targets and the road to Kyiv stays open as primised to Macron, then the talks can continue. Russian side privately admitting that the situation is difficult, and things are still very dangerous,
My guess is that if the Ukrainians can hang on for another week, then the exit ramp will be looking very attractive to the Kremlin, "Neutral and no return of Crimea" seems to be the bottom line, but there are still a lot of issues to work through on the Russian side.
BTW if I were Oleksander Lukashenka tonight I would be feeling very nervous indeed.
That looks like a landing zone if there is to be one. Implementation of Minsk II with the removal of the constitutional obligations on Ukraine; Crimea to be punted into the long grass with a putative separate agreement. As Russia is supposedly committed to Minsk it could be presented as a face-saving win for Moscow.
What about the West? Even if Ukraine and Russia do a deal, the West might decide it wants to go ahead and F8ck Russia's economy anyhow.
Can Ukraine deliver its Western friends,given Putin threatened some serious Western allies?
Yeah, this is the next potential problem, in either direction. There are very much three interested groups: Russia, Ukraine, The West. Obviously the latter are not officially involved, but they have a huge say in all of this.
The genie is out of the bottle. There's no way this ends with Russia getting most of what it wanted anyway and everything going back to normal.
But the West's say needs to be necessarily subsumed to that of Ukraine. We cannot be using them as a bargaining chip to get what we want and we need to be true to our word and our proclaimed beliefs and allow them to make the free and fair decision which they believe is in their own best interests.
If, for example, Ukraine decided the best result they could hope for was to remain free but neutral with their defences intact and backed up by the West but with Crimea and the Donbas lost (I am not saying they will, but if they did) then it should not be for the West to make any protest about that just because we might believe it is letting Putin off the hook. Even though in my opinion it would be.
The Ukraine gets to say. The EU and NATO have precisely no say in the Russian surrender talks.
That's not realistic, nor is anything that is sold as a Russian surrender going to work. If NATO don't want Ukraine to join, it won't.
The Ukraine gets to say.
The Ukr Pres has been saying "Ukrainian borders".
As I see it, giving Russia Crimea or the occupied parts of the East is rewarding Putin for his aggressions. I'd be thinking that it would be appropriate reparations, and a return to the established international borders with a DMZ both sides.
EU and NATO are matters for Ukraine. Whether it goes for "Finland", "Sweden" or "Norway" are up to Ukraine. There are halfway houses possible for both NATO and EU - eg the various relationships with NATO, or "Turkey", "EFTA", "UK" wrt EU.
However, the first and final words must be with Ukraine.
If he had abided by the Budapest Memorandum, he had his naval base in Crimea and an extended lease until I think 2031 at present.
FWIW, I am hearing from friends with contacts in Russia that there are some very serious conversations going on across the regime and we may see some serious attempt to "resolve" the problem quite soon. If and it is a very big IF, Putin holds off attacks on civilian targets and the road to Kyiv stays open as primised to Macron, then the talks can continue. Russian side privately admitting that the situation is difficult, and things are still very dangerous,
My guess is that if the Ukrainians can hang on for another week, then the exit ramp will be looking very attractive to the Kremlin, "Neutral and no return of Crimea" seems to be the bottom line, but there are still a lot of issues to work through on the Russian side.
BTW if I were Oleksander Lukashenka tonight I would be feeling very nervous indeed.
That looks like a landing zone if there is to be one. Implementation of Minsk II with the removal of the constitutional obligations on Ukraine; Crimea to be punted into the long grass with a putative separate agreement. As Russia is supposedly committed to Minsk it could be presented as a face-saving win for Moscow.
What about the West? Even if Ukraine and Russia do a deal, the West might decide it wants to go ahead and F8ck Russia's economy anyhow.
Can Ukraine deliver its Western friends,given Putin threatened some serious Western allies?
Yeah, this is the next potential problem, in either direction. There are very much three interested groups: Russia, Ukraine, The West. Obviously the latter are not officially involved, but they have a huge say in all of this.
The genie is out of the bottle. There's no way this ends with Russia getting most of what it wanted anyway and everything going back to normal.
But the West's say needs to be necessarily subsumed to that of Ukraine. We cannot be using them as a bargaining chip to get what we want and we need to be true to our word and our proclaimed beliefs and allow them to make the free and fair decision which they believe is in their own best interests.
If, for example, Ukraine decided the best result they could hope for was to remain free but neutral with their defences intact and backed up by the West but with Crimea and the Donbas lost (I am not saying they will, but if they did) then it should not be for the West to make any protest about that just because we might believe it is letting Putin off the hook. Even though in my opinion it would be.
The Ukraine gets to say. The EU and NATO have precisely no say in the Russian surrender talks.
David Crockett : [Crockett is about to be executed by the Mexicans] You tell the general I'm willing to discuss the terms of surrender. You tell him; if he'll order his men to put down their weapons and line up, I'll take them to Sam Houston and I'll try my best to save most of them. That said; Sam's a mite twitchy, so no promises.
If I've got Nick Palmer at my back with his 12-bore..
12 bore? I get my chaps to bring this
You've posted that before I think.
Was it ever fired? The guy pulling the trigger would have probably been killed from the recoil.
It depended on the ammo he Putin.
It's a punt gun. You bolt it to a small boat - a punt. Point the *boat* at a flock of birds. Pull the trigger. The whole boat recoils. Then you pole over to the flock of dead birds.
EDIT:
Seem unsporting - feels like the animals should sometimes have a chance.
The practice was banned because of the destruction of wildlife on an epic scale. An early, sensible example of environmental legislation.
The first picture with the 2 well dress looking gentlemen - they are actual political aides who were about to bring that into a committee meeting on Capitol Hill as part of a show and tell with regard to the proposed law to ban punt gun hunting.
Well, if he'd done it in October it would have caused enormous problems in Europe.
But done at the beginning of March, when the Germans are only using 4GW of natural gas in power gen, it's not anywhere near as big a threat.
How long would it take for us or the Germans to get other measures in place for next winter to ensure security of supply? LNG is going to be in short supply for delivery, and you can't just build coal plants or enough renewables that quickly. In the case of Germany, they'll have to build terminals - how long would that take?
Whatever, I cannot see many countries taking much gas from Germany in the medium term unless te terms are *very* good. You don't want them to just switch off the tap.
Doable on my understanding, but eyewateringly expensive. Means filling every storage facility with top dollar LNG over the summer months to get through next winter. Good thing though is every subsequent winter will be easier.
I think they need to get their chequebooks out for storage for next winter. Six months moratorium on Russian gas, then they can take a view on whether to switch supplies back on in the Autumn.
As @rcs1000 says, lucky for us the invasion wasn't earlier. Thank Xi and his Olympics.
OK. Germany has a lot of gas storage - about four months of average usage. (Or about ten weeks in Winter.)
If Germany was the only purchaser of spot LNG cargoes in the world, then it could fill up its storage facilities to the brim by the end of the summer, and then could (expensively) ride out next winter.
But it's a bit more complex than that.
You see while some countries have lots of long-term LNG supply contracts (South Korea, Japan), others don't (errr... us).
And this worked out brilliantly for the UK for a long time. You see, long-term LNG prices were around $11-12mmbtu, and spot prices were $8-9. British generators made out like banditos.
Unfortunately, two things then happened. Firstly, the biggest source of spot LNG (US shale gas) disappeared. During the pandemic, the gas price fell, and drilling stopped. This meant the US was no longer exporting as many cargoes. Secondly, Russia began to wave their big dick around and started cutting gas supplies to Europe (with the express goal of depleting storage facilities). This meant that there was more bidding on LNG cargoes to the extent that ships bound for Asia under contract were turning round heading to Europe.
In the short to medium term, what needs to happen is that everyone (world-wide) needs to do more coal generation. You can already see this happening in the US where the price of Powder River Basin coal has doubled. More coal generating in the US and Australia means more gas available for export. More coal generating in the UK and Europe means less need for gas. And coal production can be ramped up more easily than natural gas, often by simply adding extra shifts at open pit mines.
European countries also need to commit to long term LNG supply contracts. And yes, that includes us in the UK. A dozen LNG projects are stalled because of a lack of willingness of European buyers to commit to decade long contracts. If Europe stepped up, we could see a lot of these come through.
Do these, and you wean Europe off Russian gas.
We also rather desperately need to look for an alternative to the now defunct Rough gas storage field. Contrary to the Guardian spin it wasn't shut because the Government didn't want to spend the £750 million a year it would cost to maintain it. It was shut because even after spending that money it was almost certain it would not be useable due to the degradation of the reservoir. We have spent a long time looking for alternatives but that has now mostly been knocked on the head because everyone has been saying gas has no future. That needs to change.
I'd be very surprised if there were no suitable locations in the UK (and surrounding waters). We should be aiming for one winter's worth of natural gas in storage in the longer term.
It is down to finding the right reservoirs that can take the continual pressure variations without eventually losing their permeability. They are a finite thing and most of them simply aren't lithologically or structurally suitable. A lot of companies have spent a lot of time looking at this. It is hard enough to find Carbon Capture candidates and that is supposedly easier because you are not ballooning and decompressing on a continuous basis. You just keep pumping it up then seal it.
FWIW, I am hearing from friends with contacts in Russia that there are some very serious conversations going on across the regime and we may see some serious attempt to "resolve" the problem quite soon. If and it is a very big IF, Putin holds off attacks on civilian targets and the road to Kyiv stays open as primised to Macron, then the talks can continue. Russian side privately admitting that the situation is difficult, and things are still very dangerous,
My guess is that if the Ukrainians can hang on for another week, then the exit ramp will be looking very attractive to the Kremlin, "Neutral and no return of Crimea" seems to be the bottom line, but there are still a lot of issues to work through on the Russian side.
BTW if I were Oleksander Lukashenka tonight I would be feeling very nervous indeed.
That looks like a landing zone if there is to be one. Implementation of Minsk II with the removal of the constitutional obligations on Ukraine; Crimea to be punted into the long grass with a putative separate agreement. As Russia is supposedly committed to Minsk it could be presented as a face-saving win for Moscow.
What about the West? Even if Ukraine and Russia do a deal, the West might decide it wants to go ahead and F8ck Russia's economy anyhow.
Can Ukraine deliver its Western friends,given Putin threatened some serious Western allies?
Yeah, this is the next potential problem, in either direction. There are very much three interested groups: Russia, Ukraine, The West. Obviously the latter are not officially involved, but they have a huge say in all of this.
The genie is out of the bottle. There's no way this ends with Russia getting most of what it wanted anyway and everything going back to normal.
But the West's say needs to be necessarily subsumed to that of Ukraine. We cannot be using them as a bargaining chip to get what we want and we need to be true to our word and our proclaimed beliefs and allow them to make the free and fair decision which they believe is in their own best interests.
If, for example, Ukraine decided the best result they could hope for was to remain free but neutral with their defences intact and backed up by the West but with Crimea and the Donbas lost (I am not saying they will, but if they did) then it should not be for the West to make any protest about that just because we might believe it is letting Putin off the hook. Even though in my opinion it would be.
The Ukraine gets to say. The EU and NATO have precisely no say in the Russian surrender talks.
That's not realistic, nor is anything that is sold as a Russian surrender going to work. If NATO don't want Ukraine to join, it won't.
The Ukraine gets to say.
100% agree. Only Ukraine gets to define the ambitions of Ukraine. Plus I think after all this is gets into the EU and NATO unanimously.
On your other question, I do wonder if there is something in a mass write in campaign to the embassy that overwhelms the post…?
Doesn't look Putin is ready to back down: he said a deal "is possible only if Russia’s legitimate security interests are unconditionally taken into account.
Those interests include:
– recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea – demilitarization and denazification of the Ukrainian state – ensuring its neutral status
Ukraine said it was open to neutrality, but hard to see how they agree to the rest after all that's happened."
We should grab at this, even if it sticks in the throat. It’s close to what I’ve been proposing since this kicked off.
Ukraine to stay neutral and demilitarise; Crimea to be recognised as Russian.
I don’t know what denazification means, except the deposition of the Ukrainian government. But we can’t agree to that.
Why should Ukraine lay down its weapons?
I mean, I can see the other things - no NATO (fine) and Crimea should never have been part of Ukraine.
But ultimately, Russia doesn't get to choose its neighbour government, or whether they are allowed an army - especially when it is Russia who goes around invading other countries.
It is choosing, though. It’s choosing right now. I know it sticks in the liberal craw (and I’m much more liberal than you), but if we want to avoid more butchery…
In the first instance this is a judgment call for Ukraine, but it is NATO’s weaponry and US/EU economic heft that are Ukraine are calling upon here.
He who would sacrifice liberty for security will get neither.
There is a phrase "give them an inch they take will take a mile" I am pretty sure that the people arguing here to give into to putins demands will be saying the same when he invades estonia, and the same when he invades finland etc....The time to stop him is now simple as that.
Finland is not in NATO either, so again it would be sanctions only.
Estonia however is in NATO so then it would be war
Judging how the Ukranians are getting on, they don't seem to need NATO for defence. An awful lot of Russians are finding that out the hard way.
The numbers of images of abandoned or destroyed Russian armour and vehicles must be getting a bit embarrassing for the Russian Army.
Indeed, getting too visibly thrashed by Ukraine, may be destabilising in its own way. Russia as a failed state is not a great outcome. It needs regime change and law and order.
There is a phrase "give them an inch they take will take a mile" I am pretty sure that the people arguing here to give into to putins demands will be saying the same when he invades estonia, and the same when he invades finland etc....The time to stop him is now simple as that.
Finland is not in NATO either, so again it would be sanctions only.
Estonia however is in NATO so then it would be war
This is going to cause serious issues at home for Putin I would imagine if it carries on for long.
Good. They need to bring him down.
Is the issue the Apple / Google or Visa / Mastercard.
If it's the latter then the metro is the least of their worries.
Extraordinary to think that those private corporations can bring Russia to a halt, whether under govt direction or off their own bat. Meanwhile twitter has a monopoly on information. In 20-30 years time all those corps plus the drones and tanks will be operated by AIs of doubtful motivation and allegiance. Welcome to dystopia.
There is a phrase "give them an inch they take will take a mile" I am pretty sure that the people arguing here to give into to putins demands will be saying the same when he invades estonia, and the same when he invades finland etc....The time to stop him is now simple as that.
Finland is not in NATO either, so again it would be sanctions only.
Estonia however is in NATO so then it would be war
It's war already if you hadn't noticed
Not in terms of UK direct involvement in war with Russia
I agree with you entirely but Russia's Useful Green Idiots have been opposing the bit in bold.
@Richard_Tyndall is 100% right we need hydrocarbons to get us through the transition to clean energy and we should be developing our own instead of importing it from Putin and Sheiks.
The loony elements of the Green movement oppose any and all exploration and extraction of domestic hydrocarbons. That does play into the hands of the likes of Putin who simply ignore those loons and do as they please.
Dixiedean:
One may say the same about those who have fought tooth and nail to prevent anything to restrict the demand side. We hear surprisingly little about that from the other side. It's going to take both to get anywhere near.
Somebody made a good point, it isn't just green policy that's preventing fracking in the UK, its nimby-ism. Just as everybody supports other people paying higher taxes, so everybody supports cheaper gas drawn from fields near others.
To make it work, the government needs incentives for people to agree for their areas to be fracked.
In case you've missed it, my attitude to NIMBYs is long-established. I have as little respect for NIMBYs here as I do anywhere and they would if it were up to me get the exact same response as I'd give them elsewhere. Fuck NIMBYs.
However incentivising areas that get fracked is a very good idea, and is what the Americans have done very successfully.
That’s easy - let local authorities rather than central government levy taxes on production. If everyone in your district gets a cheque instead of a council tax bill, people might suddenly be in favour of it.
Trouble with this, is that knowing the average Local Authority, they'll waste the entire windfall on some ill thought-out scheme to invest in Dutch tulips, and end up demanding a council tax increase instead.
A better system would be that say 80% of the windfall was distributed as a council tax reduction (but in no way controlled by the council), and 20% went directly to the council budget. That would provide the right incentives all round, but prevent local councils from doing too much stupid stuff with the windfall. (This would be a better arrangement than all the S106 planning stuff too).
The irony with fracking is that there is virtually nothing for the nimby's to get excided about anyway - if it didn't need lots of planning consent etc, they would never even notice it happening - it's just that somehow the crusties have convinced the world fracking will result in the four horsemen of the apocalypse appearing on the street.
Wow,
This is wrong on two counts.
Firstly, there's no windfall right now as fracking is not currently economic in the UK.
Secondly, I have spent an awful lot of time around this industry, and holy fuck you would notice. Getting the rig into position. Drilling 24 hours a day. And then the sound of the diesel compressors getting the water pressure up. Yeah, you'd notice.
Hmm. I have drilled maybe two dozen onshore oil wells in the UK in my career. And the local restrictions generally mean there is very little disturbance to the community. As a norm no activity that caused any level of noise is permitted between 8pm and 7am. That includes hard drilling, tripping, running casing etc. Much of the time if those operations were necessary we would just stop and circulate for the whole night (which is why we all wanted to work nightshift). Even the generators are in special sound proofed containers. On one in Kent the noise from the ventilators on the cold storage unit next door was louder than the generators. Literally. We had to get the owners to switch them off for a while so the local inspectors could measure the noise from the generators.
This is not to support fracking as a process since personally I think it is unsuited to the densely populated UK. But noise pollution is not one of the issues.
In the US, you drill 24 hours a day. If you only drill 12 hours a day, you've increased the cost of your well significantly, because that expensive kit is just sitting there.
And for the actual hydraulic fracturing part, can you just turn off the compressors without problem? Or will the pressure levels subside somewhat as the water seeps out?
As I understand it - and I don't get involved in fracking - you shut the well in and maintain the pressure. We do it for lots of other things and the principle is just the same.
This is good because it looks as if we really can only report one world scale crisis at a time. Covid, climate change extinction, whether Boris wore a party hat will all have to wait in the queue.
Reportedly, rocket strikes are targeting Brovary, a Kyiv suburb. This happened soon after the conclusion of Russian-Ukrainian talks on a ceasefire and cessation of hostilities.. ...Kyiv is also hit by Russian missiles immediately after conclusion of Russian-Ukrainian talks on a ceasefire and cessation of hostilities https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1498351233324703744
Yup : he's going to carry on malevolently turning the screws, until the next round of negotiations. I think the peak of his authority is probably past, though, going on several indications today.
The point is surely, that climate policies and lockdown were sold to us as reductions to the risks in our lives.
In the event, all they did was shift the balance of the risk.
Nobody told us that giving up gas drilling might give a madman who controls a lot of gas supply the upper hand.
I think you have to join up about 50 dots, some of which are not only on different pages but completely different books, in order to link Greta Thornberg to the invasion of Ukraine.
This is a rabbit hole which only the Far Right could manage to find itself going down.
You really don't and I suspect you know that.
No you really do and I suspect you know that.
Look I know leftists are desperate for the 'green lobby created Putin' narrative not to get out, hence the IPCC's very convenient report today.
I would suggest to you that you are too late. Its already out there.
It is certainly out there that's for sure.
Doesn't mean anyone sensible believes it. And anyway, surely the correct response is to prioritise even more investment in renewables so we can move away from Russion gas.
Indeed. I don't quite follow how prioritising an alternative supply of energy (renewables), and campaigning to reduce the demand for, and use of, fossil fuels, somehow makes us more reliant on foreign gas. Surely the folk to blame are the ones who have said, progressively. Climate change doesn't exist/ isn't important/there's nowt we can do anyways. So keep flying, driving and denying subsidies for windmills. And planning permission. And don't you dare put taxes on any of it.
It doesn't.
What does is the madness about not drilling for our own gas in places like Lancashire or Cambo so we are compelled to rely upon imports instead.
That's an entirely different argument. If we want to not rely on foreign energy it needs to be multi-pronged. That means both increased domestic supply, and lower domestic demand. It needs more nuclear, renewables, and drilling. Less flying, driving and thermostats turned down. Folk need to be wearing jumpers in the living room. All of this and more. And we'd still need to import far into the future. None of which makes it Greta's fault in the slightest. Which I realise isn't what you were arguing. But was where I started.
I agree with you entirely but Russia's Useful Green Idiots have been opposing the bit in bold.
@Richard_Tyndall is 100% right we need hydrocarbons to get us through the transition to clean energy and we should be developing our own instead of importing it from Putin and Sheiks.
The loony elements of the Green movement oppose any and all exploration and extraction of domestic hydrocarbons. That does play into the hands of the likes of Putin who simply ignore those loons and do as they please.
We have more than enough hydrocarbons *if* we had gotten serious about the transition and gotten on with it! It’s the loony elements of the conservative movement who keep slowing things down.
This is simply factually incorrect.
We don't even have enough hydrocarbons for today without having to pay the Sheikhs and Putin etc let alone for the entire transition.
We need to invest in extracting our own hydrocarbons to uncouple ourselves from unsavoury overseas characters as an interim solution and invest in long-term zero carbon solutions.
The problem with you and your style is you let the fictional, idealised perfect be the enemy of the good but realistic option.
It is simply factually correct.
Firstly, read what I said. I said "*if* we had gotten serious". So, if we had done things differently 10 or 20 years ago, we wouldn't be where we are.
Perhaps regret can only get us so far, you might suggest. OK, so where are we now? We know that if we burn everything in known hydrocarbon reserves around the world, the climate is completely f***ed. We need to transition quickly. There is very little point investing in new sources of hydrocarbons. It just takes too long, and there's more than we can afford to use! We can invest more quickly in green technologies and energy efficiency.
The problem with you and your style is that you are clinging to the past, unwilling and unable(?) to face what the transition entails.
No, you are totally incorrect.
Nobody is talking about burning all "known hydrocarbon reserves around the world" many of which largely come from nations like Saudi Arabia, Russia etc which I am suggesting we should be importing less from. If we burn our own gas, and don't import it, then no extra gas gets burnt and no extra emissions are in the air. Instead all that happens is that we aren't sending money to those nations we shouldn't be sending money too.
You can't say we have enough hydrocarbons not to need to import from Russia, Saudi Arabia etc then base that on notions of "known hydrocarbons around the world" which of course includes Russia etc 🤦♂️
Secondly we did get serious ten years ago, which is how we have gone from coal being our number one source of electricity in 2012 to it barely existing as a source of electricity in 2022. The technology however is still nascent and in development so we can't transition overnight no matter how serious we are.
Its you that doesn't seem able or willing to understand what transition means. What we're doing is transitioning today. This is it, but we need gas for the transition and we should be burning our own, not Putin's.
Shell has announced it is quitting its joint ventures with Gazprom including 27.5% stake in the Sakhalin-2 LNG facility
- Shell says its dropping its 50% stake in the Salym Petroleum Development and the Gydan energy venture
- the company also intends to end its involvement in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project
chief executive Ben van Beurden:
"we are shocked by the loss of life in Ukraine, which we deplore, resulting from a senseless act of military aggression which threatens European security"
There is a phrase "give them an inch they take will take a mile" I am pretty sure that the people arguing here to give into to putins demands will be saying the same when he invades estonia, and the same when he invades finland etc....The time to stop him is now simple as that.
Finland is not in NATO either, so again it would be sanctions only.
Estonia however is in NATO so then it would be war
Last time 'Russia" as then the Soviet Union, invaded Finland it go a rather bloody nose, though it ended up with Vyborg, until then the second city of Finland. However the Finns attacked again during WWII, took Vyborg but did NOT press the siege of Leningrad. If they had, Leningrad might not have held out.
Vyburg was returned to Finland after the war since Finland was treated as an 'enemy combatant'.
FWIW, I am hearing from friends with contacts in Russia that there are some very serious conversations going on across the regime and we may see some serious attempt to "resolve" the problem quite soon. If and it is a very big IF, Putin holds off attacks on civilian targets and the road to Kyiv stays open as primised to Macron, then the talks can continue. Russian side privately admitting that the situation is difficult, and things are still very dangerous,
My guess is that if the Ukrainians can hang on for another week, then the exit ramp will be looking very attractive to the Kremlin, "Neutral and no return of Crimea" seems to be the bottom line, but there are still a lot of issues to work through on the Russian side.
BTW if I were Oleksander Lukashenka tonight I would be feeling very nervous indeed.
That looks like a landing zone if there is to be one. Implementation of Minsk II with the removal of the constitutional obligations on Ukraine; Crimea to be punted into the long grass with a putative separate agreement. As Russia is supposedly committed to Minsk it could be presented as a face-saving win for Moscow.
What about the West? Even if Ukraine and Russia do a deal, the West might decide it wants to go ahead and F8ck Russia's economy anyhow.
Can Ukraine deliver its Western friends,given Putin threatened some serious Western allies?
Yeah, this is the next potential problem, in either direction. There are very much three interested groups: Russia, Ukraine, The West. Obviously the latter are not officially involved, but they have a huge say in all of this.
The genie is out of the bottle. There's no way this ends with Russia getting most of what it wanted anyway and everything going back to normal.
But the West's say needs to be necessarily subsumed to that of Ukraine. We cannot be using them as a bargaining chip to get what we want and we need to be true to our word and our proclaimed beliefs and allow them to make the free and fair decision which they believe is in their own best interests.
If, for example, Ukraine decided the best result they could hope for was to remain free but neutral with their defences intact and backed up by the West but with Crimea and the Donbas lost (I am not saying they will, but if they did) then it should not be for the West to make any protest about that just because we might believe it is letting Putin off the hook. Even though in my opinion it would be.
The Ukraine gets to say. The EU and NATO have precisely no say in the Russian surrender talks.
That's not realistic, nor is anything that is sold as a Russian surrender going to work. If NATO don't want Ukraine to join, it won't.
The Ukraine gets to say.
Only Ukraine gets to define the ambitions of Ukraine. Plus I think after all this is gets into the EU and NATO unanimously.
The former yes, but not so sure on the matter of the EU, and on NATO I cannot see it at all. The current actions show the worth of even merely aligning to NATO, but the lack of treaty commitment is probably desirable for the cold hearted government leaders.
Well, if he'd done it in October it would have caused enormous problems in Europe.
But done at the beginning of March, when the Germans are only using 4GW of natural gas in power gen, it's not anywhere near as big a threat.
How long would it take for us or the Germans to get other measures in place for next winter to ensure security of supply? LNG is going to be in short supply for delivery, and you can't just build coal plants or enough renewables that quickly. In the case of Germany, they'll have to build terminals - how long would that take?
Whatever, I cannot see many countries taking much gas from Germany in the medium term unless te terms are *very* good. You don't want them to just switch off the tap.
Doable on my understanding, but eyewateringly expensive. Means filling every storage facility with top dollar LNG over the summer months to get through next winter. Good thing though is every subsequent winter will be easier.
I think they need to get their chequebooks out for storage for next winter. Six months moratorium on Russian gas, then they can take a view on whether to switch supplies back on in the Autumn.
As @rcs1000 says, lucky for us the invasion wasn't earlier. Thank Xi and his Olympics.
OK. Germany has a lot of gas storage - about four months of average usage. (Or about ten weeks in Winter.)
If Germany was the only purchaser of spot LNG cargoes in the world, then it could fill up its storage facilities to the brim by the end of the summer, and then could (expensively) ride out next winter.
But it's a bit more complex than that.
You see while some countries have lots of long-term LNG supply contracts (South Korea, Japan), others don't (errr... us).
And this worked out brilliantly for the UK for a long time. You see, long-term LNG prices were around $11-12mmbtu, and spot prices were $8-9. British generators made out like banditos.
Unfortunately, two things then happened. Firstly, the biggest source of spot LNG (US shale gas) disappeared. During the pandemic, the gas price fell, and drilling stopped. This meant the US was no longer exporting as many cargoes. Secondly, Russia began to wave their big dick around and started cutting gas supplies to Europe (with the express goal of depleting storage facilities). This meant that there was more bidding on LNG cargoes to the extent that ships bound for Asia under contract were turning round heading to Europe.
In the short to medium term, what needs to happen is that everyone (world-wide) needs to do more coal generation. You can already see this happening in the US where the price of Powder River Basin coal has doubled. More coal generating in the US and Australia means more gas available for export. More coal generating in the UK and Europe means less need for gas. And coal production can be ramped up more easily than natural gas, often by simply adding extra shifts at open pit mines.
European countries also need to commit to long term LNG supply contracts. And yes, that includes us in the UK. A dozen LNG projects are stalled because of a lack of willingness of European buyers to commit to decade long contracts. If Europe stepped up, we could see a lot of these come through.
Do these, and you wean Europe off Russian gas.
We also rather desperately need to look for an alternative to the now defunct Rough gas storage field. Contrary to the Guardian spin it wasn't shut because the Government didn't want to spend the £750 million a year it would cost to maintain it. It was shut because even after spending that money it was almost certain it would not be useable due to the degradation of the reservoir. We have spent a long time looking for alternatives but that has now mostly been knocked on the head because everyone has been saying gas has no future. That needs to change.
I'd be very surprised if there were no suitable locations in the UK (and surrounding waters). We should be aiming for one winter's worth of natural gas in storage in the longer term.
It is down to finding the right reservoirs that can take the continual pressure variations without eventually losing their permeability. They are a finite thing and most of them simply aren't lithologically or structurally suitable. A lot of companies have spent a lot of time looking at this. It is hard enough to find Carbon Capture candidates and that is supposedly easier because you are not ballooning and decompressing on a continuous basis. You just keep pumping it up then seal it.
Ignorant post of the day:
Could you stick a giant bag in it?
Edit: Or pump in some easily separable gas whilst you remove the good stuff
"Whatever political disagreements any of us have with Liz Truss - and I have many deep differences with her - we should not fall for this transparent Russian attempt to divert. The only person responsible for Putin’s despicable nuclear threat is Putin."
No, that is dim of Nicola.
You meet a lunatic with an axe who wants to murder his wife. He asks about her whereabouts. You truthfully tell him. The person responsible for the ensuing despicable axe murder is the husband, but you don't come out looking great either.
This let's all get behind the Trussster nonsense is inexplicable. Never seen anyone so far out of their depth.
Truss cannot be useless and consequential at the same time. It doesn't excuse how enthusiastic some outlets are to parrot the Kremlin line.
Sturgeon got the tone right there. It's a good intervention, politically, as the SNP need to find a way to be relevant in a UK Gov dominant issue.
The other thing would be to propose a deal with Germany over offshore wind.
"Truss cannot be useless and consequential at the same time."
Well of course she can. She is a useless person in a consequential position.
You reckon Putin is breathlessly waiting on every Truss tweet, moving Russian subs into position based on the number of flags in the background?
It's just that in a tense and worrying crisis she seems to be in this different place - the one called LizTrussfornextConLeaderland - and it's not what you want. It's fair to express that opinion, I think, even with a war on.
After your 'mistake' earlier, I'd have thought you'd have quietened down about Truss.
These uppity women going for the top job, eh? Can't have that...
Oh do stop it. It was my one and only follow-up and merely an explanation of why I don't rate her. Attributing it to sexism is *such* a cheap shot.
It isn't, really. If the situation was reversed, it's exactly what you would be calling.
I don't know why on earth you think I would. In fact that's another cheap shot. We need to bust out of this so I will not escalate and also call it a touch kneejerk and peevish.
There is a phrase "give them an inch they take will take a mile" I am pretty sure that the people arguing here to give into to putins demands will be saying the same when he invades estonia, and the same when he invades finland etc....The time to stop him is now simple as that.
Finland is not in NATO either, so again it would be sanctions only.
Estonia however is in NATO so then it would be war
Who gives a damn if they are in nato or not. Russia needs to be stopped now. You lack any morality you are no better than those that argued for the appeasement of Hitler. You are everything repulsive about your wing of torydom where the only thing that counts is you. Please go get some humanity because you are sadly lacking.
Only 31% of British voters support airstrikes against the Russians in Ukraine and only 26% support sending British troops to fight the Russians in Ukraine. Unlike you they recognise going beyond sanctions against the Russians means WW3 and maybe even nuclear war, yet Ukraine is not in NATO.
Even Hitler did not have nuclear weapons and we only went to war when he invaded Poland, not when he absorbed the Sudetenland and Austria and invaded Czechoslovakia
There is a phrase "give them an inch they take will take a mile" I am pretty sure that the people arguing here to give into to putins demands will be saying the same when he invades estonia, and the same when he invades finland etc....The time to stop him is now simple as that.
Finland is not in NATO either, so again it would be sanctions only.
Estonia however is in NATO so then it would be war
Who gives a damn if they are in nato or not. Russia needs to be stopped now. You lack any morality you are no better than those that argued for the appeasement of Hitler. You are everything repulsive about your wing of torydom where the only thing that counts is you. Please go get some humanity because you are sadly lacking.
Only 31% of British voters support airstrikes against the Russians in Ukraine and only 26% support sending British troops to fight the Russians in Ukraine. Unlike you they recognise going beyond sanctions against the Russians means WW3 and maybe even nuclear war, yet Ukraine is not in NATO.
Even Hitler did not have nuclear weapons and we only went to war when he invaded Poland, not when he absorbed the Sudetenland and Austria and invaded Czechoslovakia
As mentioned, only 26% of British people at the moment want to go beyond giving material help to sending troops, and slightly more with British aircraft, according to the poll posted up earlier on. That sounds like a pretty broad consensus against to me, rather than anything specifically Tory or Labour.
There is a phrase "give them an inch they take will take a mile" I am pretty sure that the people arguing here to give into to putins demands will be saying the same when he invades estonia, and the same when he invades finland etc....The time to stop him is now simple as that.
Finland is not in NATO either, so again it would be sanctions only.
Estonia however is in NATO so then it would be war
It's war already if you hadn't noticed
Not in terms of UK direct involvement in war with Russia
FWIW, I am hearing from friends with contacts in Russia that there are some very serious conversations going on across the regime and we may see some serious attempt to "resolve" the problem quite soon. If and it is a very big IF, Putin holds off attacks on civilian targets and the road to Kyiv stays open as primised to Macron, then the talks can continue. Russian side privately admitting that the situation is difficult, and things are still very dangerous,
My guess is that if the Ukrainians can hang on for another week, then the exit ramp will be looking very attractive to the Kremlin, "Neutral and no return of Crimea" seems to be the bottom line, but there are still a lot of issues to work through on the Russian side.
BTW if I were Oleksander Lukashenka tonight I would be feeling very nervous indeed.
That looks like a landing zone if there is to be one. Implementation of Minsk II with the removal of the constitutional obligations on Ukraine; Crimea to be punted into the long grass with a putative separate agreement. As Russia is supposedly committed to Minsk it could be presented as a face-saving win for Moscow.
What about the West? Even if Ukraine and Russia do a deal, the West might decide it wants to go ahead and F8ck Russia's economy anyhow.
Can Ukraine deliver its Western friends,given Putin threatened some serious Western allies?
Yeah, this is the next potential problem, in either direction. There are very much three interested groups: Russia, Ukraine, The West. Obviously the latter are not officially involved, but they have a huge say in all of this.
The genie is out of the bottle. There's no way this ends with Russia getting most of what it wanted anyway and everything going back to normal.
But the West's say needs to be necessarily subsumed to that of Ukraine. We cannot be using them as a bargaining chip to get what we want and we need to be true to our word and our proclaimed beliefs and allow them to make the free and fair decision which they believe is in their own best interests.
If, for example, Ukraine decided the best result they could hope for was to remain free but neutral with their defences intact and backed up by the West but with Crimea and the Donbas lost (I am not saying they will, but if they did) then it should not be for the West to make any protest about that just because we might believe it is letting Putin off the hook. Even though in my opinion it would be.
The Ukraine gets to say. The EU and NATO have precisely no say in the Russian surrender talks.
That's not realistic, nor is anything that is sold as a Russian surrender going to work. If NATO don't want Ukraine to join, it won't.
The Ukraine gets to say.
Only Ukraine gets to define the ambitions of Ukraine. Plus I think after all this is gets into the EU and NATO unanimously.
The former yes, but not so sure on the matter of the EU, and on NATO I cannot see it at all. The current actions show the worth of even merely aligning to NATO, but the lack of treaty commitment is probably desirable for the cold hearted government leaders.
Even three days ago I’d have agreed, but I think the “western solidarity” train has now left the station and we’ve crossed that rubicon in it.
- Cases down. R below 1 in all regions and across all age groups - Admissions - Down R is below 1 and still very steady there. There is considerable regional variation though
vs
- MV beds. Having a look at the bump at the end of the chat - suspect a data issue - In Hospital - likewise - Deaths. Down. A lot.
Shell has announced it is quitting its joint ventures with Gazprom including 27.5% stake in the Sakhalin-2 LNG facility
- Shell says its dropping its 50% stake in the Salym Petroleum Development and the Gydan energy venture
- the company also intends to end its involvement in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project
chief executive Ben van Beurden:
"we are shocked by the loss of life in Ukraine, which we deplore, resulting from a senseless act of military aggression which threatens European security"
There is a phrase "give them an inch they take will take a mile" I am pretty sure that the people arguing here to give into to putins demands will be saying the same when he invades estonia, and the same when he invades finland etc....The time to stop him is now simple as that.
Finland is not in NATO either, so again it would be sanctions only.
Estonia however is in NATO so then it would be war
Who gives a damn if they are in nato or not. Russia needs to be stopped now. You lack any morality you are no better than those that argued for the appeasement of Hitler. You are everything repulsive about your wing of torydom where the only thing that counts is you. Please go get some humanity because you are sadly lacking.
Only 31% of British voters support airstrikes against the Russians in Ukraine and only 26% support sending British troops to fight the Russians in Ukraine. Unlike you they recognise going beyond sanctions against the Russians means WW3 and maybe even nuclear war, yet Ukraine is not in NATO.
Even Hitler did not have nuclear weapons and we only went to war when he invaded Poland, not when he absorbed the Sudetenland and Austria and invaded Czechoslovakia
It really doesnt matter what people support it matters what is right and if we had stepped in at sudetenland instead of listening to moral vacuums like yourself we may not have had a five year long world war when hitler realised the world would unite against him. Once more grow some humanity you are an amoral idiot that cares for nothing more than what benefits you and your beloved inheritance. You know the cost of everything but have absolutely no values.
FWIW, I am hearing from friends with contacts in Russia that there are some very serious conversations going on across the regime and we may see some serious attempt to "resolve" the problem quite soon. If and it is a very big IF, Putin holds off attacks on civilian targets and the road to Kyiv stays open as primised to Macron, then the talks can continue. Russian side privately admitting that the situation is difficult, and things are still very dangerous,
My guess is that if the Ukrainians can hang on for another week, then the exit ramp will be looking very attractive to the Kremlin, "Neutral and no return of Crimea" seems to be the bottom line, but there are still a lot of issues to work through on the Russian side.
BTW if I were Oleksander Lukashenka tonight I would be feeling very nervous indeed.
That looks like a landing zone if there is to be one. Implementation of Minsk II with the removal of the constitutional obligations on Ukraine; Crimea to be punted into the long grass with a putative separate agreement. As Russia is supposedly committed to Minsk it could be presented as a face-saving win for Moscow.
What about the West? Even if Ukraine and Russia do a deal, the West might decide it wants to go ahead and F8ck Russia's economy anyhow.
Can Ukraine deliver its Western friends,given Putin threatened some serious Western allies?
Yeah, this is the next potential problem, in either direction. There are very much three interested groups: Russia, Ukraine, The West. Obviously the latter are not officially involved, but they have a huge say in all of this.
The genie is out of the bottle. There's no way this ends with Russia getting most of what it wanted anyway and everything going back to normal.
But the West's say needs to be necessarily subsumed to that of Ukraine. We cannot be using them as a bargaining chip to get what we want and we need to be true to our word and our proclaimed beliefs and allow them to make the free and fair decision which they believe is in their own best interests.
If, for example, Ukraine decided the best result they could hope for was to remain free but neutral with their defences intact and backed up by the West but with Crimea and the Donbas lost (I am not saying they will, but if they did) then it should not be for the West to make any protest about that just because we might believe it is letting Putin off the hook. Even though in my opinion it would be.
The Ukraine gets to say. The EU and NATO have precisely no say in the Russian surrender talks.
David Crockett : [Crockett is about to be executed by the Mexicans] You tell the general I'm willing to discuss the terms of surrender. You tell him; if he'll order his men to put down their weapons and line up, I'll take them to Sam Houston and I'll try my best to save most of them. That said; Sam's a mite twitchy, so no promises.
If I've got Nick Palmer at my back with his 12-bore..
12 bore? I get my chaps to bring this
You've posted that before I think.
Was it ever fired? The guy pulling the trigger would have probably been killed from the recoil.
It depended on the ammo he Putin.
It's a punt gun. You bolt it to a small boat - a punt. Point the *boat* at a flock of birds. Pull the trigger. The whole boat recoils. Then you pole over to the flock of dead birds.
EDIT:
Seem unsporting - feels like the animals should sometimes have a chance.
The practice was banned because of the destruction of wildlife on an epic scale. An early, sensible example of environmental legislation.
The first picture with the 2 well dress looking gentlemen - they are actual political aides who were about to bring that into a committee meeting on Capitol Hill as part of a show and tell with regard to the proposed law to ban punt gun hunting.
The last I heard, there were 50 punt guns reported as active in the UK. That was 1995.
Maria Zakharova from the Russian Foreign Ministry says that German weapons shipments to Ukraine raise questions about whether they really denazified.
We, the Americans, and in particular the European nations that were occupied need to get on this immediately, support Germany, and tell Russia to STFU. It’s many years past time modern Germany stopped getting abuse for this, and they are far too likely to turn the other cheek about it themselves.
Well, if he'd done it in October it would have caused enormous problems in Europe.
But done at the beginning of March, when the Germans are only using 4GW of natural gas in power gen, it's not anywhere near as big a threat.
How long would it take for us or the Germans to get other measures in place for next winter to ensure security of supply? LNG is going to be in short supply for delivery, and you can't just build coal plants or enough renewables that quickly. In the case of Germany, they'll have to build terminals - how long would that take?
Whatever, I cannot see many countries taking much gas from Germany in the medium term unless te terms are *very* good. You don't want them to just switch off the tap.
Doable on my understanding, but eyewateringly expensive. Means filling every storage facility with top dollar LNG over the summer months to get through next winter. Good thing though is every subsequent winter will be easier.
I think they need to get their chequebooks out for storage for next winter. Six months moratorium on Russian gas, then they can take a view on whether to switch supplies back on in the Autumn.
As @rcs1000 says, lucky for us the invasion wasn't earlier. Thank Xi and his Olympics.
OK. Germany has a lot of gas storage - about four months of average usage. (Or about ten weeks in Winter.)
If Germany was the only purchaser of spot LNG cargoes in the world, then it could fill up its storage facilities to the brim by the end of the summer, and then could (expensively) ride out next winter.
But it's a bit more complex than that.
You see while some countries have lots of long-term LNG supply contracts (South Korea, Japan), others don't (errr... us).
And this worked out brilliantly for the UK for a long time. You see, long-term LNG prices were around $11-12mmbtu, and spot prices were $8-9. British generators made out like banditos.
Unfortunately, two things then happened. Firstly, the biggest source of spot LNG (US shale gas) disappeared. During the pandemic, the gas price fell, and drilling stopped. This meant the US was no longer exporting as many cargoes. Secondly, Russia began to wave their big dick around and started cutting gas supplies to Europe (with the express goal of depleting storage facilities). This meant that there was more bidding on LNG cargoes to the extent that ships bound for Asia under contract were turning round heading to Europe.
In the short to medium term, what needs to happen is that everyone (world-wide) needs to do more coal generation. You can already see this happening in the US where the price of Powder River Basin coal has doubled. More coal generating in the US and Australia means more gas available for export. More coal generating in the UK and Europe means less need for gas. And coal production can be ramped up more easily than natural gas, often by simply adding extra shifts at open pit mines.
European countries also need to commit to long term LNG supply contracts. And yes, that includes us in the UK. A dozen LNG projects are stalled because of a lack of willingness of European buyers to commit to decade long contracts. If Europe stepped up, we could see a lot of these come through.
Do these, and you wean Europe off Russian gas.
We also rather desperately need to look for an alternative to the now defunct Rough gas storage field. Contrary to the Guardian spin it wasn't shut because the Government didn't want to spend the £750 million a year it would cost to maintain it. It was shut because even after spending that money it was almost certain it would not be useable due to the degradation of the reservoir. We have spent a long time looking for alternatives but that has now mostly been knocked on the head because everyone has been saying gas has no future. That needs to change.
I'd be very surprised if there were no suitable locations in the UK (and surrounding waters). We should be aiming for one winter's worth of natural gas in storage in the longer term.
It is down to finding the right reservoirs that can take the continual pressure variations without eventually losing their permeability. They are a finite thing and most of them simply aren't lithologically or structurally suitable. A lot of companies have spent a lot of time looking at this. It is hard enough to find Carbon Capture candidates and that is supposedly easier because you are not ballooning and decompressing on a continuous basis. You just keep pumping it up then seal it.
Ignorant post of the day:
Could you stick a giant bag in it?
Edit: Or pump in some easily separable gas whilst you remove the good stuff
Sadly not. Reservoirs are not big holes in the ground. They are solid rock - sandstones or Chalks - and the oil, gas and water is in the pore spaces between. Different rocks have different porosities (the amount of pore spaces for a given volume of rock ) and permeabilities (the ease at which various fluids can move through the rock). You also then get secondary and tertiary mineralisation within the rocks either naturally or induced by what you are doing and that can further reduce permeability. On top of all this as you force gas in and out pressuring up the rocks it destabilises the reservoir, particularly around the wells and they start to collapse. This will lead to the reservoir becoming unmanageable. These are just the simplest of the issues.
There is a phrase "give them an inch they take will take a mile" I am pretty sure that the people arguing here to give into to putins demands will be saying the same when he invades estonia, and the same when he invades finland etc....The time to stop him is now simple as that.
Finland is not in NATO either, so again it would be sanctions only.
Estonia however is in NATO so then it would be war
Who gives a damn if they are in nato or not. Russia needs to be stopped now. You lack any morality you are no better than those that argued for the appeasement of Hitler. You are everything repulsive about your wing of torydom where the only thing that counts is you. Please go get some humanity because you are sadly lacking.
Only 31% of British voters support airstrikes against the Russians in Ukraine and only 26% support sending British troops to fight the Russians in Ukraine. Unlike you they recognise going beyond sanctions against the Russians means WW3 and maybe even nuclear war, yet Ukraine is not in NATO.
Even Hitler did not have nuclear weapons and we only went to war when he invaded Poland, not when he absorbed the Sudetenland and Austria and invaded Czechoslovakia
It really doesnt matter what people support it matters what is right and if we had stepped in at sudetenland instead of listening to moral vacuums like yourself we may not have had a five year long world war when hitler realised the world would unite against him. Once more grow some humanity you are an amoral idiot that cares for nothing more than what benefits you and your beloved inheritance. You know the cost of everything but have absolutely no values.
Churchill’s main thesis in the first volume of his war history. Had we challenged them earlier, we’d have spared the world the war as Hitler backed down. I think he was right - but then since about 1938, so has everyone. Except HYUFD.
There is a phrase "give them an inch they take will take a mile" I am pretty sure that the people arguing here to give into to putins demands will be saying the same when he invades estonia, and the same when he invades finland etc....The time to stop him is now simple as that.
Finland is not in NATO either, so again it would be sanctions only.
Estonia however is in NATO so then it would be war
Who gives a damn if they are in nato or not. Russia needs to be stopped now. You lack any morality you are no better than those that argued for the appeasement of Hitler. You are everything repulsive about your wing of torydom where the only thing that counts is you. Please go get some humanity because you are sadly lacking.
Only 31% of British voters support airstrikes against the Russians in Ukraine and only 26% support sending British troops to fight the Russians in Ukraine. Unlike you they recognise going beyond sanctions against the Russians means WW3 and maybe even nuclear war, yet Ukraine is not in NATO.
Even Hitler did not have nuclear weapons and we only went to war when he invaded Poland, not when he absorbed the Sudetenland and Austria and invaded Czechoslovakia
It really doesnt matter what people support it matters what is right and if we had stepped in at sudetenland instead of listening to moral vacuums like yourself we may not have had a five year long world war when hitler realised the world would unite against him. Once more grow some humanity you are an amoral idiot that cares for nothing more than what benefits you and your beloved inheritance. You know the cost of everything but have absolutely no values.
We needed the time to rearm. We also are not ready to fight Russia and Germany etc also need time to rearm.
I repeat, even Hitler did not have nuclear weapons. If he had most of the world may well have been destroyed already in WW2 or D Day may never have happened and we may just have ended up in a mutual standoff (still better than nuclear armageddon).
Going to war with a military superpower with nuclear weapons like Russia must only be done to defend NATO nations and NATO nations alone
Ukr ambassador questioning whether Russian Fed is actually in the UN?
I think you’ll find he’s right.
It was the Soviet Union that joined, not the RSFSR.
No, he's wrong. The Russian Federation was recognised as the successor state to the USSR (with, I should note, the blessing of Ukraine).
Maybe it should not have been, as it issued a UDI from the USSR some time before it actually broke up and Yeltsin was famously dealing with the leaders of the republics and totally ignored Gorbachev after about September, but it was.
There is a phrase "give them an inch they take will take a mile" I am pretty sure that the people arguing here to give into to putins demands will be saying the same when he invades estonia, and the same when he invades finland etc....The time to stop him is now simple as that.
Finland is not in NATO either, so again it would be sanctions only.
Estonia however is in NATO so then it would be war
Who gives a damn if they are in nato or not. Russia needs to be stopped now. You lack any morality you are no better than those that argued for the appeasement of Hitler. You are everything repulsive about your wing of torydom where the only thing that counts is you. Please go get some humanity because you are sadly lacking.
Only 31% of British voters support airstrikes against the Russians in Ukraine and only 26% support sending British troops to fight the Russians in Ukraine. Unlike you they recognise going beyond sanctions against the Russians means WW3 and maybe even nuclear war, yet Ukraine is not in NATO.
Even Hitler did not have nuclear weapons and we only went to war when he invaded Poland, not when he absorbed the Sudetenland and Austria and invaded Czechoslovakia
As mentioned, only 26% of British people at the moment want to go beyond giving material help to sending troops, and slightly more with British aircraft, according to the poll posted up earlier on. That sounds like a pretty broad consensus against to me, rather than anything specifically Tory or Labour.
Indeed, Tory voters by 44% to 35% and Labour voters by 43% to 26% oppose British airstrikes on Russian targets in Ukraine.
Well, if he'd done it in October it would have caused enormous problems in Europe.
But done at the beginning of March, when the Germans are only using 4GW of natural gas in power gen, it's not anywhere near as big a threat.
How long would it take for us or the Germans to get other measures in place for next winter to ensure security of supply? LNG is going to be in short supply for delivery, and you can't just build coal plants or enough renewables that quickly. In the case of Germany, they'll have to build terminals - how long would that take?
Whatever, I cannot see many countries taking much gas from Germany in the medium term unless te terms are *very* good. You don't want them to just switch off the tap.
Doable on my understanding, but eyewateringly expensive. Means filling every storage facility with top dollar LNG over the summer months to get through next winter. Good thing though is every subsequent winter will be easier.
I think they need to get their chequebooks out for storage for next winter. Six months moratorium on Russian gas, then they can take a view on whether to switch supplies back on in the Autumn.
As @rcs1000 says, lucky for us the invasion wasn't earlier. Thank Xi and his Olympics.
OK. Germany has a lot of gas storage - about four months of average usage. (Or about ten weeks in Winter.)
If Germany was the only purchaser of spot LNG cargoes in the world, then it could fill up its storage facilities to the brim by the end of the summer, and then could (expensively) ride out next winter.
But it's a bit more complex than that.
You see while some countries have lots of long-term LNG supply contracts (South Korea, Japan), others don't (errr... us).
And this worked out brilliantly for the UK for a long time. You see, long-term LNG prices were around $11-12mmbtu, and spot prices were $8-9. British generators made out like banditos.
Unfortunately, two things then happened. Firstly, the biggest source of spot LNG (US shale gas) disappeared. During the pandemic, the gas price fell, and drilling stopped. This meant the US was no longer exporting as many cargoes. Secondly, Russia began to wave their big dick around and started cutting gas supplies to Europe (with the express goal of depleting storage facilities). This meant that there was more bidding on LNG cargoes to the extent that ships bound for Asia under contract were turning round heading to Europe.
In the short to medium term, what needs to happen is that everyone (world-wide) needs to do more coal generation. You can already see this happening in the US where the price of Powder River Basin coal has doubled. More coal generating in the US and Australia means more gas available for export. More coal generating in the UK and Europe means less need for gas. And coal production can be ramped up more easily than natural gas, often by simply adding extra shifts at open pit mines.
European countries also need to commit to long term LNG supply contracts. And yes, that includes us in the UK. A dozen LNG projects are stalled because of a lack of willingness of European buyers to commit to decade long contracts. If Europe stepped up, we could see a lot of these come through.
Do these, and you wean Europe off Russian gas.
We also rather desperately need to look for an alternative to the now defunct Rough gas storage field. Contrary to the Guardian spin it wasn't shut because the Government didn't want to spend the £750 million a year it would cost to maintain it. It was shut because even after spending that money it was almost certain it would not be useable due to the degradation of the reservoir. We have spent a long time looking for alternatives but that has now mostly been knocked on the head because everyone has been saying gas has no future. That needs to change.
I'd be very surprised if there were no suitable locations in the UK (and surrounding waters). We should be aiming for one winter's worth of natural gas in storage in the longer term.
It is down to finding the right reservoirs that can take the continual pressure variations without eventually losing their permeability. They are a finite thing and most of them simply aren't lithologically or structurally suitable. A lot of companies have spent a lot of time looking at this. It is hard enough to find Carbon Capture candidates and that is supposedly easier because you are not ballooning and decompressing on a continuous basis. You just keep pumping it up then seal it.
Ignorant post of the day:
Could you stick a giant bag in it?
Edit: Or pump in some easily separable gas whilst you remove the good stuff
Sadly not. Reservoirs are not big holes in the ground. They are solid rock - sandstones or Chalks - and the oil, gas and water is in the pore spaces between. Different rocks have different porosities (the amount of pore spaces for a given volume of rock ) and permeabilities (the ease at which various fluids can move through the rock). You also then get secondary and tertiary mineralisation within the rocks either naturally or induced by what you are doing and that can further reduce permeability. On top of all this as you force gas in and out pressuring up the rocks it destabilises the reservoir, particularly around the wells and they start to collapse. This will lead to the reservoir becoming unmanageable. These are just the simplest of the issues.
As one of my lecturers said: "Solid rock is not necessarily solid. Hence groundwater."
There are (generally) not massive chasms in the ground in which the water/gas/oil exist. They are in the pores between the particles of rock.
Looking forward to seeing old faces and new at the PB gathering in 2 days time. 😀
Are there any covid protocols about attending the gathering?
Not a bedwetting question, I'd be pleased to come away with a dose of omicron to reinforce the booster, but I thought i'd ask
Everyone attending will be dressed as a clown and wearing a a polka dot mask. Make sure you do the same. You wouldn’t want to look silly and be the only one not.
Shell has announced it is quitting its joint ventures with Gazprom including 27.5% stake in the Sakhalin-2 LNG facility
- Shell says its dropping its 50% stake in the Salym Petroleum Development and the Gydan energy venture
- the company also intends to end its involvement in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project
chief executive Ben van Beurden:
"we are shocked by the loss of life in Ukraine, which we deplore, resulting from a senseless act of military aggression which threatens European security"
Even if Putin survives, the Russian economy is going to be in a far worse state than it was in the 1990s.
Which is saying quite something given how bad a mess it was in pretty much from the failure of perestroika right through to the default in 1998. It's going to be an absolute economic wasteland.
I do hope that Putin doesn't decide everything is lost and decides to take the rest of with him in that scenario. But he clearly doesn't have Gorbachev's sense.
There is a phrase "give them an inch they take will take a mile" I am pretty sure that the people arguing here to give into to putins demands will be saying the same when he invades estonia, and the same when he invades finland etc....The time to stop him is now simple as that.
Finland is not in NATO either, so again it would be sanctions only.
Estonia however is in NATO so then it would be war
Who gives a damn if they are in nato or not. Russia needs to be stopped now. You lack any morality you are no better than those that argued for the appeasement of Hitler. You are everything repulsive about your wing of torydom where the only thing that counts is you. Please go get some humanity because you are sadly lacking.
Only 31% of British voters support airstrikes against the Russians in Ukraine and only 26% support sending British troops to fight the Russians in Ukraine. Unlike you they recognise going beyond sanctions against the Russians means WW3 and maybe even nuclear war, yet Ukraine is not in NATO.
Even Hitler did not have nuclear weapons and we only went to war when he invaded Poland, not when he absorbed the Sudetenland and Austria and invaded Czechoslovakia
It really doesnt matter what people support it matters what is right and if we had stepped in at sudetenland instead of listening to moral vacuums like yourself we may not have had a five year long world war when hitler realised the world would unite against him. Once more grow some humanity you are an amoral idiot that cares for nothing more than what benefits you and your beloved inheritance. You know the cost of everything but have absolutely no values.
We needed the time to rearm. We also are not ready to fight Russia and Germany etc also need time to rearm.
I repeat, even Hitler did not have nuclear weapons. If he had the world may well have been destroyed already in WW2 or D Day may never have happened and we may just have ended up in a mutual standoff (still better than nuclear armageddon).
Going to war with a military superpower with nuclear weapons like Russia must only be done to defend NATO nations and NATO nations alone
WTF are you suggesting that it's a good idea to give Russia time to rearm?
Looking forward to seeing old faces and new at the PB gathering in 2 days time. 😀
Are there any covid protocols about attending the gathering?
Not a bedwetting question, I'd be pleased to come away with a dose of omicron to reinforce the booster, but I thought i'd ask
Everyone attending will be dressed as a clown and wearing a a polka dot mask. Make sure you do the same. You wouldn’t want to look silly and be the only one not.
There is a phrase "give them an inch they take will take a mile" I am pretty sure that the people arguing here to give into to putins demands will be saying the same when he invades estonia, and the same when he invades finland etc....The time to stop him is now simple as that.
Finland is not in NATO either, so again it would be sanctions only.
Estonia however is in NATO so then it would be war
Who gives a damn if they are in nato or not. Russia needs to be stopped now. You lack any morality you are no better than those that argued for the appeasement of Hitler. You are everything repulsive about your wing of torydom where the only thing that counts is you. Please go get some humanity because you are sadly lacking.
Only 31% of British voters support airstrikes against the Russians in Ukraine and only 26% support sending British troops to fight the Russians in Ukraine. Unlike you they recognise going beyond sanctions against the Russians means WW3 and maybe even nuclear war, yet Ukraine is not in NATO.
Even Hitler did not have nuclear weapons and we only went to war when he invaded Poland, not when he absorbed the Sudetenland and Austria and invaded Czechoslovakia
As mentioned, only 26% of British people at the moment want to go beyond giving material help to sending troops, and slightly more with British aircraft, according to the poll posted up earlier on. That sounds like a pretty broad consensus against to me, rather than anything specifically Tory or Labour.
Indeed, Tory voters by 44% to 35% and Labour voters by 43% to 26% oppose British airstrikes on Russian targets in Ukraine.
Looking forward to seeing old faces and new at the PB gathering in 2 days time. 😀
Are there any covid protocols about attending the gathering?
Not a bedwetting question, I'd be pleased to come away with a dose of omicron to reinforce the booster, but I thought i'd ask
Everyone attending will be dressed as a clown and wearing a a polka dot mask. Make sure you do the same. You wouldn’t want to look silly and be the only one not.
Thank God you tipped me off in time
You would have had a red face instead of a red nose.
FWIW, I am hearing from friends with contacts in Russia that there are some very serious conversations going on across the regime and we may see some serious attempt to "resolve" the problem quite soon. If and it is a very big IF, Putin holds off attacks on civilian targets and the road to Kyiv stays open as primised to Macron, then the talks can continue. Russian side privately admitting that the situation is difficult, and things are still very dangerous,
My guess is that if the Ukrainians can hang on for another week, then the exit ramp will be looking very attractive to the Kremlin, "Neutral and no return of Crimea" seems to be the bottom line, but there are still a lot of issues to work through on the Russian side.
BTW if I were Oleksander Lukashenka tonight I would be feeling very nervous indeed.
That looks like a landing zone if there is to be one. Implementation of Minsk II with the removal of the constitutional obligations on Ukraine; Crimea to be punted into the long grass with a putative separate agreement. As Russia is supposedly committed to Minsk it could be presented as a face-saving win for Moscow.
What about the West? Even if Ukraine and Russia do a deal, the West might decide it wants to go ahead and F8ck Russia's economy anyhow.
Can Ukraine deliver its Western friends,given Putin threatened some serious Western allies?
Yeah, this is the next potential problem, in either direction. There are very much three interested groups: Russia, Ukraine, The West. Obviously the latter are not officially involved, but they have a huge say in all of this.
The genie is out of the bottle. There's no way this ends with Russia getting most of what it wanted anyway and everything going back to normal.
But the West's say needs to be necessarily subsumed to that of Ukraine. We cannot be using them as a bargaining chip to get what we want and we need to be true to our word and our proclaimed beliefs and allow them to make the free and fair decision which they believe is in their own best interests.
If, for example, Ukraine decided the best result they could hope for was to remain free but neutral with their defences intact and backed up by the West but with Crimea and the Donbas lost (I am not saying they will, but if they did) then it should not be for the West to make any protest about that just because we might believe it is letting Putin off the hook. Even though in my opinion it would be.
The Ukraine gets to say. The EU and NATO have precisely no say in the Russian surrender talks.
David Crockett : [Crockett is about to be executed by the Mexicans] You tell the general I'm willing to discuss the terms of surrender. You tell him; if he'll order his men to put down their weapons and line up, I'll take them to Sam Houston and I'll try my best to save most of them. That said; Sam's a mite twitchy, so no promises.
If I've got Nick Palmer at my back with his 12-bore..
12 bore? I get my chaps to bring this
You've posted that before I think.
Was it ever fired? The guy pulling the trigger would have probably been killed from the recoil.
It depended on the ammo he Putin.
It's a punt gun. You bolt it to a small boat - a punt. Point the *boat* at a flock of birds. Pull the trigger. The whole boat recoils. Then you pole over to the flock of dead birds.
EDIT:
Seem unsporting - feels like the animals should sometimes have a chance.
The practice was banned because of the destruction of wildlife on an epic scale. An early, sensible example of environmental legislation.
The first picture with the 2 well dress looking gentlemen - they are actual political aides who were about to bring that into a committee meeting on Capitol Hill as part of a show and tell with regard to the proposed law to ban punt gun hunting.
The last I heard, there were 50 punt guns reported as active in the UK. That was 1995.
There is a phrase "give them an inch they take will take a mile" I am pretty sure that the people arguing here to give into to putins demands will be saying the same when he invades estonia, and the same when he invades finland etc....The time to stop him is now simple as that.
Finland is not in NATO either, so again it would be sanctions only.
Estonia however is in NATO so then it would be war
Who gives a damn if they are in nato or not. Russia needs to be stopped now. You lack any morality you are no better than those that argued for the appeasement of Hitler. You are everything repulsive about your wing of torydom where the only thing that counts is you. Please go get some humanity because you are sadly lacking.
Only 31% of British voters support airstrikes against the Russians in Ukraine and only 26% support sending British troops to fight the Russians in Ukraine. Unlike you they recognise going beyond sanctions against the Russians means WW3 and maybe even nuclear war, yet Ukraine is not in NATO.
Even Hitler did not have nuclear weapons and we only went to war when he invaded Poland, not when he absorbed the Sudetenland and Austria and invaded Czechoslovakia
It really doesnt matter what people support it matters what is right and if we had stepped in at sudetenland instead of listening to moral vacuums like yourself we may not have had a five year long world war when hitler realised the world would unite against him. Once more grow some humanity you are an amoral idiot that cares for nothing more than what benefits you and your beloved inheritance. You know the cost of everything but have absolutely no values.
Churchill’s main thesis in the first volume of his war history. Had we challenged them earlier, we’d have spared the world the war as Hitler backed down. I think he was right - but then since about 1938, so has everyone. Except HYUFD.
Britain and France were in no position to fight before Poland, it was debatable as to whether we were in September 1939 but we had to draw a line. The extra year allowed for a significant increase in arming by both. The only way to have prevented WWII was to be less punitive in 1919
There is a phrase "give them an inch they take will take a mile" I am pretty sure that the people arguing here to give into to putins demands will be saying the same when he invades estonia, and the same when he invades finland etc....The time to stop him is now simple as that.
Finland is not in NATO either, so again it would be sanctions only.
Estonia however is in NATO so then it would be war
Who gives a damn if they are in nato or not. Russia needs to be stopped now. You lack any morality you are no better than those that argued for the appeasement of Hitler. You are everything repulsive about your wing of torydom where the only thing that counts is you. Please go get some humanity because you are sadly lacking.
Only 31% of British voters support airstrikes against the Russians in Ukraine and only 26% support sending British troops to fight the Russians in Ukraine. Unlike you they recognise going beyond sanctions against the Russians means WW3 and maybe even nuclear war, yet Ukraine is not in NATO.
Even Hitler did not have nuclear weapons and we only went to war when he invaded Poland, not when he absorbed the Sudetenland and Austria and invaded Czechoslovakia
It really doesnt matter what people support it matters what is right and if we had stepped in at sudetenland instead of listening to moral vacuums like yourself we may not have had a five year long world war when hitler realised the world would unite against him. Once more grow some humanity you are an amoral idiot that cares for nothing more than what benefits you and your beloved inheritance. You know the cost of everything but have absolutely no values.
Churchill’s main thesis in the first volume of his war history. Had we challenged them earlier, we’d have spared the world the war as Hitler backed down. I think he was right - but then since about 1938, so has everyone. Except HYUFD.
I think he was right too. But in Chamberlain's defence, we didn't know that. We knew we were unprepared, but we thought Germany more prepared than was actually the case. Chamberlain made the wrong decision but if what he thought he knew at the time was actually the case it would have been the right decision. Probably.
FWIW, I am hearing from friends with contacts in Russia that there are some very serious conversations going on across the regime and we may see some serious attempt to "resolve" the problem quite soon. If and it is a very big IF, Putin holds off attacks on civilian targets and the road to Kyiv stays open as primised to Macron, then the talks can continue. Russian side privately admitting that the situation is difficult, and things are still very dangerous,
My guess is that if the Ukrainians can hang on for another week, then the exit ramp will be looking very attractive to the Kremlin, "Neutral and no return of Crimea" seems to be the bottom line, but there are still a lot of issues to work through on the Russian side.
BTW if I were Oleksander Lukashenka tonight I would be feeling very nervous indeed.
That looks like a landing zone if there is to be one. Implementation of Minsk II with the removal of the constitutional obligations on Ukraine; Crimea to be punted into the long grass with a putative separate agreement. As Russia is supposedly committed to Minsk it could be presented as a face-saving win for Moscow.
What about the West? Even if Ukraine and Russia do a deal, the West might decide it wants to go ahead and F8ck Russia's economy anyhow.
Can Ukraine deliver its Western friends,given Putin threatened some serious Western allies?
Yeah, this is the next potential problem, in either direction. There are very much three interested groups: Russia, Ukraine, The West. Obviously the latter are not officially involved, but they have a huge say in all of this.
The genie is out of the bottle. There's no way this ends with Russia getting most of what it wanted anyway and everything going back to normal.
But the West's say needs to be necessarily subsumed to that of Ukraine. We cannot be using them as a bargaining chip to get what we want and we need to be true to our word and our proclaimed beliefs and allow them to make the free and fair decision which they believe is in their own best interests.
If, for example, Ukraine decided the best result they could hope for was to remain free but neutral with their defences intact and backed up by the West but with Crimea and the Donbas lost (I am not saying they will, but if they did) then it should not be for the West to make any protest about that just because we might believe it is letting Putin off the hook. Even though in my opinion it would be.
The Ukraine gets to say. The EU and NATO have precisely no say in the Russian surrender talks.
David Crockett : [Crockett is about to be executed by the Mexicans] You tell the general I'm willing to discuss the terms of surrender. You tell him; if he'll order his men to put down their weapons and line up, I'll take them to Sam Houston and I'll try my best to save most of them. That said; Sam's a mite twitchy, so no promises.
If I've got Nick Palmer at my back with his 12-bore..
12 bore? I get my chaps to bring this
You've posted that before I think.
Was it ever fired? The guy pulling the trigger would have probably been killed from the recoil.
It depended on the ammo he Putin.
It's a punt gun. You bolt it to a small boat - a punt. Point the *boat* at a flock of birds. Pull the trigger. The whole boat recoils. Then you pole over to the flock of dead birds.
EDIT:
Seem unsporting - feels like the animals should sometimes have a chance.
The practice was banned because of the destruction of wildlife on an epic scale. An early, sensible example of environmental legislation.
The first picture with the 2 well dress looking gentlemen - they are actual political aides who were about to bring that into a committee meeting on Capitol Hill as part of a show and tell with regard to the proposed law to ban punt gun hunting.
The last I heard, there were 50 punt guns reported as active in the UK. That was 1995.
Comments
If it's the latter then the metro is the least of their worries.
And a pint or cocktail at the Grand Hotel if you have a few quid left from the slots!
Was it ever fired? The guy pulling the trigger would have probably been killed from the recoil.
And for the actual hydraulic fracturing part, can you just turn off the compressors without problem? Or will the pressure levels subside somewhat as the water seeps out?
It was the Soviet Union that joined, not the RSFSR.
Racism isn't just evil, wrong and stupid because of an undefined "common humanity", but has been defined as such by reasoned argument and powerful examples.
They've suspended all national and club teams!
EDIT:
Cases down 25%
Deaths down 40%
On last weekend (Sat/Sun/Mon)
https://bit.ly/36TFTjn
Estonia however is in NATO so then it would be war
In the meantime we need to continue exploiting our own hydrocarbons both for the energy transition and, more importantly, for the 40% that we don't burn and which we need for all our basic day to day lives.
How do you run a car, a train or a bus without lubricants? How do you build an electric car without plastics? How do you deal with the headache you are causing yourself trying to work this all out without asprin?
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/feb/11/mr-jones-review-agnieszka-holland-james-norton-berlin-film-festival
Reportedly, rocket strikes are targeting Brovary, a Kyiv suburb.
This happened soon after the conclusion of Russian-Ukrainian talks on a ceasefire and cessation of hostilities..
...Kyiv is also hit by Russian missiles immediately after conclusion of Russian-Ukrainian talks on a ceasefire and cessation of hostilities
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1498351233324703744
I never disputed religious morality is based on religious texts and what Prophets said, not public opinion
If so, least surprising polling change ever.
Zelensky has a 91% approval rating.
https://twitter.com/PatrickRuffini/status/1498003019807576079?cxt=HHwWnsC-wenz_MkpAAAA
That is all that matters, if some Labour voters prefer Sunak to Boris that is irrelevant given they would still vote for Starmer over Sunak
Maybe it should not have been, as it issued a UDI from the USSR some time before it actually broke up and Yeltsin was famously dealing with the leaders of the republics and totally ignored Gorbachev after about September, but it was.
From the same user that brought you, "who cares about polling at the moment"?
Another Ukrainian farmer repossessing Russian military equipment. I pity the birds he's going to use that SAM to scare off.
As I see it, giving Russia Crimea or the occupied parts of the East is rewarding Putin for his aggressions. I'd be thinking that it would be appropriate reparations, and a return to the established international borders with a DMZ both sides.
EU and NATO are matters for Ukraine. Whether it goes for "Finland", "Sweden" or "Norway" are up to Ukraine. There are halfway houses possible for both NATO and EU - eg the various relationships with NATO, or "Turkey", "EFTA", "UK" wrt EU.
However, the first and final words must be with Ukraine.
If he had abided by the Budapest Memorandum, he had his naval base in Crimea and an extended lease until I think 2031 at present.
The first picture with the 2 well dress looking gentlemen - they are actual political aides who were about to bring that into a committee meeting on Capitol Hill as part of a show and tell with regard to the proposed law to ban punt gun hunting.
On your other question, I do wonder if there is something in a mass write in campaign to the embassy that overwhelms the post…?
The numbers of images of abandoned or destroyed Russian armour and vehicles must be getting a bit embarrassing for the Russian Army.
Indeed, getting too visibly thrashed by Ukraine, may be destabilising in its own way. Russia as a failed state is not a great outcome. It needs regime change and law and order.
Double standards as always
Nobody is talking about burning all "known hydrocarbon reserves around the world" many of which largely come from nations like Saudi Arabia, Russia etc which I am suggesting we should be importing less from. If we burn our own gas, and don't import it, then no extra gas gets burnt and no extra emissions are in the air. Instead all that happens is that we aren't sending money to those nations we shouldn't be sending money too.
You can't say we have enough hydrocarbons not to need to import from Russia, Saudi Arabia etc then base that on notions of "known hydrocarbons around the world" which of course includes Russia etc 🤦♂️
Secondly we did get serious ten years ago, which is how we have gone from coal being our number one source of electricity in 2012 to it barely existing as a source of electricity in 2022. The technology however is still nascent and in development so we can't transition overnight no matter how serious we are.
Its you that doesn't seem able or willing to understand what transition means. What we're doing is transitioning today. This is it, but we need gas for the transition and we should be burning our own, not Putin's.
Shell has announced it is quitting its joint ventures with Gazprom including 27.5% stake in the Sakhalin-2 LNG facility
- Shell says its dropping its 50% stake in the Salym Petroleum Development and the Gydan energy venture
- the company also intends to end its involvement in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project
chief executive Ben van Beurden:
"we are shocked by the loss of life in Ukraine, which we deplore, resulting from a senseless act of military aggression which threatens European security"
https://twitter.com/PickardJE/status/1498356345673814019
However the Finns attacked again during WWII, took Vyborg but did NOT press the siege of Leningrad. If they had, Leningrad might not have held out.
Vyburg was returned to Finland after the war since Finland was treated as an 'enemy combatant'.
Could you stick a giant bag in it?
Edit:
Or pump in some easily separable gas whilst you remove the good stuff
Even Hitler did not have nuclear weapons and we only went to war when he invaded Poland, not when he absorbed the Sudetenland and Austria and invaded Czechoslovakia
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1498249935095058439?s=20&t=3yGC-AzfhjagR3meh5EPSg
I am going to stick firm with Hung Parliament
- Cases down. R below 1 in all regions and across all age groups
- Admissions - Down R is below 1 and still very steady there. There is considerable regional variation though
vs
- MV beds. Having a look at the bump at the end of the chat - suspect a data issue
- In Hospital - likewise
- Deaths. Down. A lot.
Now Russia is trying and failing to pull off the ultimate Godwin.
Here is a 2016 vid of one being shot, which says it is still used for duck hunting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cO2D4rjQ1o
I thought they still had some in Ireland too.
If the situation wasn't so desperate, the attempts to find a justification for invading the Ukraine would be desperately funny.
Labour five points lead, or Tory five points lead, or anything else - its just noise.
Besides, we have real news happening right now, that matters far more than trivia like that.
I repeat, even Hitler did not have nuclear weapons. If he had most of the world may well have been destroyed already in WW2 or D Day may never have happened and we may just have ended up in a mutual standoff (still better than nuclear armageddon).
Going to war with a military superpower with nuclear weapons like Russia must only be done to defend NATO nations and NATO nations alone
https://carnegieendowment.org/2020/01/22/russia-at-united-nations-law-sovereignty-and-legitimacy-pub-80753
(The author also makes some good points about the shaky base on which the former colonial powers make their arguments.)
Not a bedwetting question, I'd be pleased to come away with a dose of omicron to reinforce the booster, but I thought i'd ask
59% of Tory voters and 50% of Labour voters and 60% of LD voters also oppose sending British troops to Ukraine
https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/fvgp0n8nwr/YouGov - Ukraine conflict and Russian sanctions.pdf
There are (generally) not massive chasms in the ground in which the water/gas/oil exist. They are in the pores between the particles of rock.
Also, see liquefaction during earthquakes.
*BANK OF RUSSIA: NO STOCK TRADING ON MOSCOW EXCHANGE ON MARCH 1
Which is saying quite something given how bad a mess it was in pretty much from the failure of perestroika right through to the default in 1998. It's going to be an absolute economic wasteland.
I do hope that Putin doesn't decide everything is lost and decides to take the rest of with him in that scenario. But he clearly doesn't have Gorbachev's sense.
If you can't pay your soldiers, you can't win a war.
If you can't feed your soldiers, you can't win a war.
One features in the big denoument in the Desmond Bagley novel The Tightrope Men.
They shoot some Russians with it. I think.