Igor Girkin, a former commander in Russia's military who frequently criticizes how Putin is conducting the Ukraine war, said "a coup attempt is underway."
"If this isn't a fake [which it can be], the military coup has started," Girkin wrote on Telegram. "But if it isn't a fake, then the situation with the face-off between MoD and Wagner is out of control and needs immediate involvement by the president. If we still have him at all..."
Mr Johnson's discussion of submarine design and safety engineering.
TBF, he is an expert on spectacular implosions caused by taking unnecessary risks.
Indeed, the Devil may care attitude of the submariners (with the exception of the young lad who was wise enough to fear for his own mortality) mirrors Johnson's cavalier attitude towards COVID parties and a cheeky casual shag.
Personally I don't differentiate between the Darwinian folly of four out of the five Titanic explorers and the teenager topping out his Mum's Fiesta at 120mph on the Hog's Back.
"Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee on Friday demanded that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the private military company Wagner, stop unlawful actions and said the Russian Federal Security Service [FSB] started a mutiny investigation in connection with his recent statements."
So...who to believe? Did Russian regular armed forces strike Wagner's forces or didn't they?
I think Prigozhin has been watching The Death of Stalin and gone full General Zhukov.
You laugh, but. He probably has. They’ve all watched it.
Should have watched Game of Thrones. "When you play the Game of Thrones, either you win, or you die."
I don't think Prigozhin is going to win.
I think this is more like Tukhashevsky´s fall. Very brutal times ahead in Russia.
… Tukhachevsky's confession, which survives in the archives, is dappled with a brown spray that was later found to be blood-spattered by a body in motion...
It’s far less controlled than that, I think ? Stalin’s Terror was a pitiless exercise of pure power; this seems less deliberate chaos.
Russian military on the streets in Rostov it serms:
"Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee on Friday demanded that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the private military company Wagner, stop unlawful actions and said the Russian Federal Security Service [FSB] started a mutiny investigation in connection with his recent statements."
Hmmm.
When they launch an investigation, that would be National AntiTerrorism Committee Investigation, making them a bunch of Natcis.
I recall from an earlier wartranslated post that Girkin, who I think takes on the role of 'person critical of how the war is being prosecuted and wants it to be more extreme', rubbished Prigozhin as 'ethnically and mentally non-russian'.
"Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee on Friday demanded that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the private military company Wagner, stop unlawful actions and said the Russian Federal Security Service [FSB] started a mutiny investigation in connection with his recent statements."
If it’s a mutiny then it can’t be long before there is a Bounty on his head.
Igor Girkin, a former commander in Russia's military who frequently criticizes how Putin is conducting the Ukraine war, said "a coup attempt is underway."
"If this isn't a fake [which it can be], the military coup has started," Girkin wrote on Telegram. "But if it isn't a fake, then the situation with the face-off between MoD and Wagner is out of control and needs immediate involvement by the president. If we still have him at all..."
Hardly. The Guardian gets a nosebleed north of Bolton. It sometimes doesn't even both covering say, qualifying matches involving Scotland's football team.
Britain doesn’t do capital investment. The culture is against it. Britain has lagged peer economies basically forever on this metric.
I don’t really know why that is. But I wonder if it stems back to Victorian times when frankly it was a more profitable use of capital to invest in Uruguayan mines and Californian railway, and so a weird “tradition” developed in which the home country was just left to fend for itself.
That worked only so long as Britain maintained industrial technology advantage but ever since 1860 it’s been a slow decline, and definitively so since (pick your date) 1918, 1925, or 1979.
It's utterly perplexing to me. Take the recent arguing about mortgages and how to help people. That's only treating the symptom. It's not the cause of the problem. The cause is a massive under supply of housing going back many decades. People in the UK spend too much money for too little crap housing, so that a return to moderate and normal interest rates is crucifying them.
Where is the political party saying "we will build 5 million homes over the next decade to fix the supply problem"? There isn't one, the debate is about tweaks not anyone grasping the nettle to fix the problem.
The UK population will pass 70 million within a couple of years — assuming population statistics are correct which given the Settled Status scheme uptake may not be the case — and we are nailed on for 80 million by 2050, unless something incredible happens to migration*.
We need to build an enormous amount of everything. A building programme like nothing in living memory, probably even surpassing the post-war years.
* Climate change is likely to make the UK even more attractive for migrants, so don't believe under 100,000 a year is plausible, we'll be lucky if we can keep it down to two or three times that.
Of course the UK needs a massive house building programme but you need to overcome two problems in my non expert opinion. Firstly there needs to be at least a suspension or ban on non UK resident house purchasers, even if only new build.
Secondly you need to get past the nimbys. The only way I can think of doing that is to tie development to council funding so each council gets govt financing to encourage building housing and if their targets aren’t met they get penalised financially from their next year’s overall budget so when people living in that council are faced with reduced services making their little nimby paradises less pleasant then they might have to start being less selfish.
Council gets financial help to build, gets given a good argument to crush nimbyism and hopefully unbungs the system.
Worth pointing out yet again that 90% of all housing development planning is passed first time by local councils and a further 5% is passed on appeal.
So the idea that the vast underbuild is due to nimbyism is a myth. Yes nimbyism does of course exist but its power and influence is massively overstated. As long as the gap between planning permissions and builds keeps increasing by around 80 - 100K a year, planning is not the issue.
Except your figures are wrong, and/or irrelevant.
Firstly the percentage passed is largely irrelevant at best, since people only put in applications if they think they'll be passed. So all the potential that could have been built with a different system but no application was put in, is lost and not in your statistics.
Secondly the 90% passed is a misnomer as it seems its the percentage of total applications and not residential construction. For residential developments its only 80%, despite my point above.
Thirdly that 80% is inflated by the larger developers who can work the system better. For minor developments, which as we have discussed umpteen times ought to be able to compete better in a better system its a meagre 75% approved. Despite the fact people are put off from applying in the first place, a quarter of those that do apply are knocked back.
Finally those 75% approvals include a pathetically low 5,300 approvals for just 1 home developments, and 2,200 approved homes [total] for 2 home developments. 7,500 single or two home approvals in a country of 67 million that needs 300k new homes a year is pathetically low and its because of the planning system despite your claims to the contrary.
Not wrong. I get the figures direct from the LGA.
You are clutching at straws because once again your blind hatred of a planning system, of which you continue to show complete ignorance, means you can accept no other reason for the failure to build enough houses.
And by the way one of the representatives from the SME development firms was on Sky the other morning explaining that the main reason for the lack of building was not planning issues (what a surprise) but the difficulty in raising finance. But of course he is just one of the industry experts so what the hell does he know.
You haven't understood the figures if you think residential approvals are 90%, because they're not.
It is 87% in England for the most recent quarter but it is somewhere around the 90% mark in general.
What this doesn't account for is the cases that are withdrawn and then aborted rather than a refusal ever being issued - quite a lot of cases.
As a general point I and many other people have tried to engage with you about planning but you reveal yourself to have a fixed set of beliefs that you keep repeating and which you are not open to being dissuaded from. But it matters little because land use and planning will not be deregulated in the way you want in the near future, because it would be so politically unpopular.
For Residential planning approvals? Are you sure?
From the page you linked to:
Please explain how In the year ending December 2022, 48,700 decisions were made on applications for residential developments, of which 35,600 (73%) were granted = 87% approved?
It is in the same stats - under part 3.6. I think the figure is that of those applications that are decided - 90% are approved. So only 10% refused. There are other applications that aren't decided. For all the planning applications that are 'made' the number of applications that are approved is lower, because there are a lot that are withdrawn for any number of reasons, could be procedural problems, defective information etc, or because the applicant realised it wasn't going to get approved.
That stat is not residential though, we're talking residential. Hence the residential figures elsewhere on the page being completely different.
Fair enough, I missed the point that you are talking about residential approvals only, ie construction of new housing. Even then, I don't think the 72% figure is that bad given that there are large swathes of the country where there is a presumption against any new development.
72% of those actually submitted is appalling, considering that many that could have been built with a more liberal system simply never bothered to put in the application.
There's a selection bias at play here, only those who think they would be approved apply and even then more than a quarter are rejected.
Thanks for the fair enough remark.
But why do people apply? I'd guess that on a lot of occasions it is about trying to realise the development value in land, rather than an intention to build. This is probably why housing delivery lags behind permissions granted.
I am not aware of any other country our population density having the system you desire. It would lead to the countryside being built on in a massively inefficient and unsustainable way.
Japan has the system I desire and is as densely populated as us.
They have a sensible, clear and unambiguous zonal planning system that NIMBYs do not get a say in, with building regs, so if someone wants to build a house they can buy land in a residential zone and simply and easily build within that zone to the building regs. Neighbours in Japan do not get to object or get any input at all in what other people do with their own land.
As a result the city of Tokyo alone has had more homes built in a year than the entirety of England combined. Tokyo's population is growing fast due to people moving to the city, but house prices aren't.
Albeit house prices in Tokyo in 1995 were completely insane. So using that as your starting point, rather than 1985 or 2005 has a big impact on how that chart looks.
Hardly. The Guardian gets a nosebleed north of Bolton. It sometimes doesn't even both covering say, qualifying matches involving Scotland's football team.
"Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee on Friday demanded that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the private military company Wagner, stop unlawful actions and said the Russian Federal Security Service [FSB] started a mutiny investigation in connection with his recent statements."
If it’s a mutiny then it can’t be long before there is a Bounty on his head.
I think Prigozhin has been watching The Death of Stalin and gone full General Zhukov.
You laugh, but. He probably has. They’ve all watched it.
Should have watched Game of Thrones. "When you play the Game of Thrones, either you win, or you die."
I don't think Prigozhin is going to win.
I’m not sure about that. I think enough people in Russia, especially at the top, know this is a giant clusterfuck with no way out apart from defeat militarily (or more likely stalemate) or chaos and civil war. If enough people say he’s right and the Russian MOd and security services lied for made up reasons they can still save a little face.
Prigozhin being the big voice and stopping things puts him in a position of being , to the US for example, “ someone we can do business with”.
He gets Kudos, wealth and power but he’s a Russian nationalist but whatever you think of that I reckon he’s also a pragmatist who likes his soldiers in theory and also sees the main chance.
For the west they don’t need Russia to descend into chaos because you don’t want those nukes dispersed.
Will be interesting to see if any noises from the Chechens because if they suddenly toe the Prigozhin line it’s all over for the current Russian military establishment who will carry a very painful life ending can.
If something like this was going to have a chance of working then Prigozhin and Wagner would have needed to at least have Putin within their power before breaking cover. The coup towards the end of the Soviet Union had control of Gorbachev and that still wasn't enough for them to win.
The more I think about this, the more I think this is an application by Prigozhin for asylum in the West. He realises that he lost his power struggle with the Russian ministry of defence, and so now he needs protection.
Hardly. The Guardian gets a nosebleed north of Bolton. It sometimes doesn't even both covering say, qualifying matches involving Scotland's football team.
Ironic, given it was originally from Manchester,
That's why I chose somewhere slightly north of Manchester
"Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee on Friday demanded that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the private military company Wagner, stop unlawful actions and said the Russian Federal Security Service [FSB] started a mutiny investigation in connection with his recent statements."
If it’s a mutiny then it can’t be long before there is a Bounty on his head.
"Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee on Friday demanded that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the private military company Wagner, stop unlawful actions and said the Russian Federal Security Service [FSB] started a mutiny investigation in connection with his recent statements."
If it’s a mutiny then it can’t be long before there is a Bounty on his head.
Britain doesn’t do capital investment. The culture is against it. Britain has lagged peer economies basically forever on this metric.
I don’t really know why that is. But I wonder if it stems back to Victorian times when frankly it was a more profitable use of capital to invest in Uruguayan mines and Californian railway, and so a weird “tradition” developed in which the home country was just left to fend for itself.
That worked only so long as Britain maintained industrial technology advantage but ever since 1860 it’s been a slow decline, and definitively so since (pick your date) 1918, 1925, or 1979.
It's utterly perplexing to me. Take the recent arguing about mortgages and how to help people. That's only treating the symptom. It's not the cause of the problem. The cause is a massive under supply of housing going back many decades. People in the UK spend too much money for too little crap housing, so that a return to moderate and normal interest rates is crucifying them.
Where is the political party saying "we will build 5 million homes over the next decade to fix the supply problem"? There isn't one, the debate is about tweaks not anyone grasping the nettle to fix the problem.
The UK population will pass 70 million within a couple of years — assuming population statistics are correct which given the Settled Status scheme uptake may not be the case — and we are nailed on for 80 million by 2050, unless something incredible happens to migration*.
We need to build an enormous amount of everything. A building programme like nothing in living memory, probably even surpassing the post-war years.
* Climate change is likely to make the UK even more attractive for migrants, so don't believe under 100,000 a year is plausible, we'll be lucky if we can keep it down to two or three times that.
Of course the UK needs a massive house building programme but you need to overcome two problems in my non expert opinion. Firstly there needs to be at least a suspension or ban on non UK resident house purchasers, even if only new build.
Secondly you need to get past the nimbys. The only way I can think of doing that is to tie development to council funding so each council gets govt financing to encourage building housing and if their targets aren’t met they get penalised financially from their next year’s overall budget so when people living in that council are faced with reduced services making their little nimby paradises less pleasant then they might have to start being less selfish.
Council gets financial help to build, gets given a good argument to crush nimbyism and hopefully unbungs the system.
Worth pointing out yet again that 90% of all housing development planning is passed first time by local councils and a further 5% is passed on appeal.
So the idea that the vast underbuild is due to nimbyism is a myth. Yes nimbyism does of course exist but its power and influence is massively overstated. As long as the gap between planning permissions and builds keeps increasing by around 80 - 100K a year, planning is not the issue.
Except your figures are wrong, and/or irrelevant.
Firstly the percentage passed is largely irrelevant at best, since people only put in applications if they think they'll be passed. So all the potential that could have been built with a different system but no application was put in, is lost and not in your statistics.
Secondly the 90% passed is a misnomer as it seems its the percentage of total applications and not residential construction. For residential developments its only 80%, despite my point above.
Thirdly that 80% is inflated by the larger developers who can work the system better. For minor developments, which as we have discussed umpteen times ought to be able to compete better in a better system its a meagre 75% approved. Despite the fact people are put off from applying in the first place, a quarter of those that do apply are knocked back.
Finally those 75% approvals include a pathetically low 5,300 approvals for just 1 home developments, and 2,200 approved homes [total] for 2 home developments. 7,500 single or two home approvals in a country of 67 million that needs 300k new homes a year is pathetically low and its because of the planning system despite your claims to the contrary.
Not wrong. I get the figures direct from the LGA.
You are clutching at straws because once again your blind hatred of a planning system, of which you continue to show complete ignorance, means you can accept no other reason for the failure to build enough houses.
And by the way one of the representatives from the SME development firms was on Sky the other morning explaining that the main reason for the lack of building was not planning issues (what a surprise) but the difficulty in raising finance. But of course he is just one of the industry experts so what the hell does he know.
You haven't understood the figures if you think residential approvals are 90%, because they're not.
It is 87% in England for the most recent quarter but it is somewhere around the 90% mark in general.
What this doesn't account for is the cases that are withdrawn and then aborted rather than a refusal ever being issued - quite a lot of cases.
As a general point I and many other people have tried to engage with you about planning but you reveal yourself to have a fixed set of beliefs that you keep repeating and which you are not open to being dissuaded from. But it matters little because land use and planning will not be deregulated in the way you want in the near future, because it would be so politically unpopular.
For Residential planning approvals? Are you sure?
From the page you linked to:
Please explain how In the year ending December 2022, 48,700 decisions were made on applications for residential developments, of which 35,600 (73%) were granted = 87% approved?
It is in the same stats - under part 3.6. I think the figure is that of those applications that are decided - 90% are approved. So only 10% refused. There are other applications that aren't decided. For all the planning applications that are 'made' the number of applications that are approved is lower, because there are a lot that are withdrawn for any number of reasons, could be procedural problems, defective information etc, or because the applicant realised it wasn't going to get approved.
That stat is not residential though, we're talking residential. Hence the residential figures elsewhere on the page being completely different.
Fair enough, I missed the point that you are talking about residential approvals only, ie construction of new housing. Even then, I don't think the 72% figure is that bad given that there are large swathes of the country where there is a presumption against any new development.
72% of those actually submitted is appalling, considering that many that could have been built with a more liberal system simply never bothered to put in the application.
There's a selection bias at play here, only those who think they would be approved apply and even then more than a quarter are rejected.
Thanks for the fair enough remark.
But why do people apply? I'd guess that on a lot of occasions it is about trying to realise the development value in land, rather than an intention to build. This is probably why housing delivery lags behind permissions granted.
I am not aware of any other country our population density having the system you desire. It would lead to the countryside being built on in a massively inefficient and unsustainable way.
Japan has the system I desire and is as densely populated as us.
They have a sensible, clear and unambiguous zonal planning system that NIMBYs do not get a say in, with building regs, so if someone wants to build a house they can buy land in a residential zone and simply and easily build within that zone to the building regs. Neighbours in Japan do not get to object or get any input at all in what other people do with their own land.
As a result the city of Tokyo alone has had more homes built in a year than the entirety of England combined. Tokyo's population is growing fast due to people moving to the city, but house prices aren't.
Albeit house prices in Tokyo in 1995 were completely insane. So using that as your starting point, rather than 1985 or 2005 has a big impact on how that chart looks.
Fair point, but the problems in Japan in the 90s led to the liberalisation in planning that exists today which is working well and has led to decades of stability not seen elsewhere. I'd be curious to see it re-baselined to 85 or any other date, and I expect it still looks more reasonable than what we've seen in the UK.
The point is in Japan there is sensible zoning, and national regulation standards, but after that its now left to the owner what they do with the land, so long as they operate within the regulations. Local authorities get no say other than the zoning, and neighbours get no say at all.
So to answer the usual absurd criticism, no a nuclear power plant can't be built next door, since that won't meet the regulations, but a house or apartment or whatever else the market decides can if its in a residential zone, so long as it is built within standards. No planning permission required, just own the land, be in the right zone, and get building.
I think Prigozhin has been watching The Death of Stalin and gone full General Zhukov.
I’m off to represent the entire Red army at the buffet
I have got to watch that again. It was brilliant, Zhukov was my favourite character.
He was everybody's favourite I think.
Women want to be with him, men want to be him.
For a terrible moment, I thought you were talking about The Mail's new star columnist.
Presumably he is following the trollbot playbook- first few contributions seeming odd but not that odd, before launching on full mad paranoia. How long before the first "Rishi the Snake- what a (word unsuitable for a family newspaper, though Mr Dacre apparently uses it all the time)"
"Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee on Friday demanded that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the private military company Wagner, stop unlawful actions and said the Russian Federal Security Service [FSB] started a mutiny investigation in connection with his recent statements."
If it’s a mutiny then it can’t be long before there is a Bounty on his head.
I think Prigozhin has been watching The Death of Stalin and gone full General Zhukov.
You laugh, but. He probably has. They’ve all watched it.
Should have watched Game of Thrones. "When you play the Game of Thrones, either you win, or you die."
I don't think Prigozhin is going to win.
I’m not sure about that. I think enough people in Russia, especially at the top, know this is a giant clusterfuck with no way out apart from defeat militarily (or more likely stalemate) or chaos and civil war. If enough people say he’s right and the Russian MOd and security services lied for made up reasons they can still save a little face.
Prigozhin being the big voice and stopping things puts him in a position of being , to the US for example, “ someone we can do business with”.
He gets Kudos, wealth and power but he’s a Russian nationalist but whatever you think of that I reckon he’s also a pragmatist who likes his soldiers in theory and also sees the main chance.
For the west they don’t need Russia to descend into chaos because you don’t want those nukes dispersed.
Will be interesting to see if any noises from the Chechens because if they suddenly toe the Prigozhin line it’s all over for the current Russian military establishment who will carry a very painful life ending can.
If something like this was going to have a chance of working then Prigozhin and Wagner would have needed to at least have Putin within their power before breaking cover. The coup towards the end of the Soviet Union had control of Gorbachev and that still wasn't enough for them to win.
The more I think about this, the more I think this is an application by Prigozhin for asylum in the West. He realises that he lost his power struggle with the Russian ministry of defence, and so now he needs protection.
That coup attempt wasn’t in the middle of a war though, so I’m not sure it’s possible to draw any parallels.
Igor Girkin, a former commander in Russia's military who frequently criticizes how Putin is conducting the Ukraine war, said "a coup attempt is underway."
"If this isn't a fake [which it can be], the military coup has started," Girkin wrote on Telegram. "But if it isn't a fake, then the situation with the face-off between MoD and Wagner is out of control and needs immediate involvement by the president. If we still have him at all..."
3) Prigozhin and Kadyrov both realise their best chance of success is by becoming warlord leaders of breakaway republics.
Prigozhin is by far the bigger breaker of the "When you gotta shoot, shoot - don't talk" rule. He'll have been in Putin and the FSB's rifle sights for weeks now or more. My money is on the FSB, Shoygu, and, for the time being, Putin. That said, Prigozhin could set up the republic of Wagneria (not seriously a republic of course, but holding some territory) because he can't not look after his own troops. (For added interest, how about a non-aggression treaty with Azov?)
A Chechen front? Don't reckon so. No way Kadyrov would have gone to the Donbas if he didn't think he was secure at home. But of course he's capable of making errors and things change.
Dunno how the other grownups here would assess things...
Does Philip Hammond approve of wages being kept down in this manner:
A South African woman has described working as a fruit picker on farms in the south of England as "slave labour".
"We weren't viewed as humans," Sybil Msezane told a House of Lords committee.
She said workers were addressed by numbers, rather than names, as if they were in prison, forced to work 18 hour days and live in overcrowded caravans.
If they complained to bosses they were threatened with deportation, the Lords horticultural committee was told.
I think Prigozhin has been watching The Death of Stalin and gone full General Zhukov.
You laugh, but. He probably has. They’ve all watched it.
Should have watched Game of Thrones. "When you play the Game of Thrones, either you win, or you die."
I don't think Prigozhin is going to win.
I’m not sure about that. I think enough people in Russia, especially at the top, know this is a giant clusterfuck with no way out apart from defeat militarily (or more likely stalemate) or chaos and civil war. If enough people say he’s right and the Russian MOd and security services lied for made up reasons they can still save a little face.
Prigozhin being the big voice and stopping things puts him in a position of being , to the US for example, “ someone we can do business with”.
He gets Kudos, wealth and power but he’s a Russian nationalist but whatever you think of that I reckon he’s also a pragmatist who likes his soldiers in theory and also sees the main chance.
For the west they don’t need Russia to descend into chaos because you don’t want those nukes dispersed.
Will be interesting to see if any noises from the Chechens because if they suddenly toe the Prigozhin line it’s all over for the current Russian military establishment who will carry a very painful life ending can.
If something like this was going to have a chance of working then Prigozhin and Wagner would have needed to at least have Putin within their power before breaking cover. The coup towards the end of the Soviet Union had control of Gorbachev and that still wasn't enough for them to win.
The more I think about this, the more I think this is an application by Prigozhin for asylum in the West. He realises that he lost his power struggle with the Russian ministry of defence, and so now he needs protection.
That coup attempt wasn’t in the middle of a war though, so I’m not sure it’s possible to draw any parallels.
Of course Russia's never undergone any coups in the middle of a war.
"Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee on Friday demanded that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the private military company Wagner, stop unlawful actions and said the Russian Federal Security Service [FSB] started a mutiny investigation in connection with his recent statements."
If it’s a mutiny then it can’t be long before there is a Bounty on his head.
"Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee on Friday demanded that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the private military company Wagner, stop unlawful actions and said the Russian Federal Security Service [FSB] started a mutiny investigation in connection with his recent statements."
If it’s a mutiny then it can’t be long before there is a Bounty on his head.
The main problem with the planning system is the under-resourcing of planning departments. Strangely they extort money out of developers on all sorts of things under s106 but the planning fees are quite reasonable, as an employee of a developer I wish the fees were higher and they would be better resourced.
The poor planning staff are so behind since COVID that many applications are going to appeal for non-determination and this takes resources away from the planners and makes things worse on a vicuous cycle.
s73 modifications (often necessary due to mistakes by third parties) which should take 6 weeks take over a year and by the time you get them the permission is nearly expired and funders are so pedantic that you can't get the funding in time.
I could go on but many planning permissions are never implemented simply because the council is too slow or pedantic and it is better to keep the planning officer happy and avoid going to committee, and then if the conditions make the project unviable at least you can sell the site to someone else who can put in a new application, as one's funds and energy are exhausted.
This is about right. Somehow developers keep going but it is unbearable for them as the process is so uncertain. There are a lot of people getting badly burned.
The point about under resourcing of planning departments is true but even if they had lots more money and staff the problems wouldn't go away. They are ultimately rooted in how complex the government has made the planning system. It isn't functioning beyond a very basic level in terms of turning decisions out and they keep putting new demands on it (fire safety is the latest) without resources to pay for it.
One of the other big areas of planning department works is unauthorised builds which are often reported by neighbours and need proper investigation.
In my part of the world, that's usually about turning structures into dwellings. These can be back garden sheds or buildings and can also be buildings whose original intention (and approved planning status) was as storage but which have been turned into unlicensed private rental properties by unscrupulous landlords. Very often they try to keep these dwellings below the radar in terms of paying council tax so the Council needs to crack down on these unauthorised dwellings.
There's also HMOs where up to 20 people live and where for example the electrical circuitry can't cope with the demand or load and represents a fire hazard.
Anecdote from a policeman relative of mine related to the above.
He was on a raid last yearat a standard 3-bed semi on his patch which was used by Romanian owner to house presumably illegal immigrants with a couple of Portakabins in the garden. Guess how many people you can get into such a dwelling?
Higher ...
Higher ...
No, really, higher ...
60!
Yes 60.
Of course they were breaking various regulations.
On the other hand, the people weren't forced to live there, indeed were presumably living there cheaply to send money back to their families or something, so there is a libertarian case for letting them continue to live there, particularly if they are now all homeless, as they may be.
Does Philip Hammond approve of wages being kept down in this manner:
A South African woman has described working as a fruit picker on farms in the south of England as "slave labour".
"We weren't viewed as humans," Sybil Msezane told a House of Lords committee.
She said workers were addressed by numbers, rather than names, as if they were in prison, forced to work 18 hour days and live in overcrowded caravans.
If they complained to bosses they were threatened with deportation, the Lords horticultural committee was told.
The Russians have way more faith in the British than we do in ourselves.
Markov, Russian propagandist, calls the events of tonight "provocations of British intelligence.
His post is translated below:
"For the time being, I suggest to all reasonable people at work that the the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine or the Security Service of Ukraine or even the damned British intelligence attacked the Wagner PMC camps in order to provoke a conflict between the leadership of the Wagner PMC and the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Defense. And they succeeded. This caused an emotional reaction from the combat commanders of the PMC Wagner, who had recently withdrawn from the fighting. British intelligence provocations will not work!" https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1672326507442700290?cxt=HHwWhIC8iaSGprUuAAAA
"Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee on Friday demanded that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the private military company Wagner, stop unlawful actions and said the Russian Federal Security Service [FSB] started a mutiny investigation in connection with his recent statements."
If it’s a mutiny then it can’t be long before there is a Bounty on his head.
"Ian Coldwater 📦💥 @IanColdwater · 2h Apparently OceanGate's endgame was to build cheap submersibles for oil and gas drilling, but oil and gas companies don't want unproven technology (weird!) so the Titanic expeditions were to prove the tech out. Which I guess they did"
I think Prigozhin has been watching The Death of Stalin and gone full General Zhukov.
You laugh, but. He probably has. They’ve all watched it.
Should have watched Game of Thrones. "When you play the Game of Thrones, either you win, or you die."
I don't think Prigozhin is going to win.
I’m not sure about that. I think enough people in Russia, especially at the top, know this is a giant clusterfuck with no way out apart from defeat militarily (or more likely stalemate) or chaos and civil war. If enough people say he’s right and the Russian MOd and security services lied for made up reasons they can still save a little face.
Prigozhin being the big voice and stopping things puts him in a position of being , to the US for example, “ someone we can do business with”.
He gets Kudos, wealth and power but he’s a Russian nationalist but whatever you think of that I reckon he’s also a pragmatist who likes his soldiers in theory and also sees the main chance.
For the west they don’t need Russia to descend into chaos because you don’t want those nukes dispersed.
Will be interesting to see if any noises from the Chechens because if they suddenly toe the Prigozhin line it’s all over for the current Russian military establishment who will carry a very painful life ending can.
If something like this was going to have a chance of working then Prigozhin and Wagner would have needed to at least have Putin within their power before breaking cover. The coup towards the end of the Soviet Union had control of Gorbachev and that still wasn't enough for them to win.
The more I think about this, the more I think this is an application by Prigozhin for asylum in the West. He realises that he lost his power struggle with the Russian ministry of defence, and so now he needs protection.
That coup attempt wasn’t in the middle of a war though, so I’m not sure it’s possible to draw any parallels.
I think it's a fairly well-established rule that you don't start a coup attempt until you have all the pieces in place to ensure victory, otherwise it goes against you very quickly. The biggest problem a coup attempt has is credibility, so you have to start big to establish credibility.
Prigozhin failed to do that, the Russian state apparatus is establishing its credentials with lots of armoured vehicles on the streets, Prigozhin is sunk.
"Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee on Friday demanded that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the private military company Wagner, stop unlawful actions and said the Russian Federal Security Service [FSB] started a mutiny investigation in connection with his recent statements."
If it’s a mutiny then it can’t be long before there is a Bounty on his head.
Wagner Group fighters have been saying goodbye to their relatives over the past 24 hours and telling them to watch the TV news, which suggests that they may have had advance notice of today's dramatic events with Yevgeny Prigozhin. https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1672338798691115009
The Russians have way more faith in the British than we do in ourselves.
Markov, Russian propagandist, calls the events of tonight "provocations of British intelligence.
His post is translated below:
"For the time being, I suggest to all reasonable people at work that the the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine or the Security Service of Ukraine or even the damned British intelligence attacked the Wagner PMC camps in order to provoke a conflict between the leadership of the Wagner PMC and the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Defense. And they succeeded. This caused an emotional reaction from the combat commanders of the PMC Wagner, who had recently withdrawn from the fighting. British intelligence provocations will not work!" https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1672326507442700290?cxt=HHwWhIC8iaSGprUuAAAA
Ever since Sidney Reilly, British Intelligence has lived in Russian heads, rent free…
Igor Girkin, a former commander in Russia's military who frequently criticizes how Putin is conducting the Ukraine war, said "a coup attempt is underway."
"If this isn't a fake [which it can be], the military coup has started," Girkin wrote on Telegram. "But if it isn't a fake, then the situation with the face-off between MoD and Wagner is out of control and needs immediate involvement by the president. If we still have him at all..."
I’m not sure if this is one of those Twitter overreactions, but something does indeed to be happening re. Russia
Hmm. Dangerous times
Take it all with a pinch of salt. Putin's been in the last 2 weeks of terminal cancer for about a year now, but strangely keeps on not dying. Wait for a news agency to report on it.
"Ian Coldwater 📦💥 @IanColdwater · 2h Apparently OceanGate's endgame was to build cheap submersibles for oil and gas drilling, but oil and gas companies don't want unproven technology (weird!) so the Titanic expeditions were to prove the tech out. Which I guess they did"
Talk about nominative determination from the tweeter.
The Russians have way more faith in the British than we do in ourselves.
Markov, Russian propagandist, calls the events of tonight "provocations of British intelligence.
His post is translated below:
"For the time being, I suggest to all reasonable people at work that the the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine or the Security Service of Ukraine or even the damned British intelligence attacked the Wagner PMC camps in order to provoke a conflict between the leadership of the Wagner PMC and the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Defense. And they succeeded. This caused an emotional reaction from the combat commanders of the PMC Wagner, who had recently withdrawn from the fighting. British intelligence provocations will not work!" https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1672326507442700290?cxt=HHwWhIC8iaSGprUuAAAA
Their opinion of our diabolical brilliance really is quite remarkable. If only we could turn our fiendish plotting grey matter to getting inflation below 10%.
The Russians have way more faith in the British than we do in ourselves.
Markov, Russian propagandist, calls the events of tonight "provocations of British intelligence.
His post is translated below:
"For the time being, I suggest to all reasonable people at work that the the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine or the Security Service of Ukraine or even the damned British intelligence attacked the Wagner PMC camps in order to provoke a conflict between the leadership of the Wagner PMC and the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Defense. And they succeeded. This caused an emotional reaction from the combat commanders of the PMC Wagner, who had recently withdrawn from the fighting. British intelligence provocations will not work!" https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1672326507442700290?cxt=HHwWhIC8iaSGprUuAAAA
I think Prigozhin has been watching The Death of Stalin and gone full General Zhukov.
You laugh, but. He probably has. They’ve all watched it.
Should have watched Game of Thrones. "When you play the Game of Thrones, either you win, or you die."
I don't think Prigozhin is going to win.
I’m not sure about that. I think enough people in Russia, especially at the top, know this is a giant clusterfuck with no way out apart from defeat militarily (or more likely stalemate) or chaos and civil war. If enough people say he’s right and the Russian MOd and security services lied for made up reasons they can still save a little face.
Prigozhin being the big voice and stopping things puts him in a position of being , to the US for example, “ someone we can do business with”.
He gets Kudos, wealth and power but he’s a Russian nationalist but whatever you think of that I reckon he’s also a pragmatist who likes his soldiers in theory and also sees the main chance.
For the west they don’t need Russia to descend into chaos because you don’t want those nukes dispersed.
Will be interesting to see if any noises from the Chechens because if they suddenly toe the Prigozhin line it’s all over for the current Russian military establishment who will carry a very painful life ending can.
If something like this was going to have a chance of working then Prigozhin and Wagner would have needed to at least have Putin within their power before breaking cover. The coup towards the end of the Soviet Union had control of Gorbachev and that still wasn't enough for them to win.
The more I think about this, the more I think this is an application by Prigozhin for asylum in the West. He realises that he lost his power struggle with the Russian ministry of defence, and so now he needs protection.
That coup attempt wasn’t in the middle of a war though, so I’m not sure it’s possible to draw any parallels.
I think it's a fairly well-established rule that you don't start a coup attempt until you have all the pieces in place to ensure victory, otherwise it goes against you very quickly. The biggest problem a coup attempt has is credibility, so you have to start big to establish credibility.
Prigozhin failed to do that, the Russian state apparatus is establishing its credentials with lots of armoured vehicles on the streets, Prigozhin is sunk.
For all his prominence due to Wagner expansion in the past 18 months my understanding was he was nothing more than an attack dog of Putin's, he has no real influence in internal Russian power circles.
The Russians have way more faith in the British than we do in ourselves.
Markov, Russian propagandist, calls the events of tonight "provocations of British intelligence.
His post is translated below:
"For the time being, I suggest to all reasonable people at work that the the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine or the Security Service of Ukraine or even the damned British intelligence attacked the Wagner PMC camps in order to provoke a conflict between the leadership of the Wagner PMC and the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Defense. And they succeeded. This caused an emotional reaction from the combat commanders of the PMC Wagner, who had recently withdrawn from the fighting. British intelligence provocations will not work!" https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1672326507442700290?cxt=HHwWhIC8iaSGprUuAAAA
Their opinion of our diabolical brilliance really is quite remarkable. If only we could turn our fiendish plotting grey matter to getting inflation below 10%.
It’s all part of Rishi’s clever plan Lucky. Don’t be despondent- we are selling our amazing services for billions after this free advert which will allow for ginormous tax cuts before the election.
The Russians have way more faith in the British than we do in ourselves.
Markov, Russian propagandist, calls the events of tonight "provocations of British intelligence.
His post is translated below:
"For the time being, I suggest to all reasonable people at work that the the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine or the Security Service of Ukraine or even the damned British intelligence attacked the Wagner PMC camps in order to provoke a conflict between the leadership of the Wagner PMC and the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Defense. And they succeeded. This caused an emotional reaction from the combat commanders of the PMC Wagner, who had recently withdrawn from the fighting. British intelligence provocations will not work!" https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1672326507442700290?cxt=HHwWhIC8iaSGprUuAAAA
Their opinion of our diabolical brilliance really is quite remarkable. If only we could turn our fiendish plotting grey matter to getting inflation below 10%.
It’s all part of Rishi’s clever plan Lucky. Don’t be despondent- we are selling our amazing services for billions after this free advert which will allow for ginormous tax cuts before the election.
"Ian Coldwater 📦💥 @IanColdwater · 2h Apparently OceanGate's endgame was to build cheap submersibles for oil and gas drilling, but oil and gas companies don't want unproven technology (weird!) so the Titanic expeditions were to prove the tech out. Which I guess they did"
One of the other key issues seems to be the shape. Deep sea vessels are referred to as bathyspheres for a reason, they should be spherical. Who's never heard of a bathycylinder?
I think Prigozhin has been watching The Death of Stalin and gone full General Zhukov.
You laugh, but. He probably has. They’ve all watched it.
Should have watched Game of Thrones. "When you play the Game of Thrones, either you win, or you die."
I don't think Prigozhin is going to win.
I’m not sure about that. I think enough people in Russia, especially at the top, know this is a giant clusterfuck with no way out apart from defeat militarily (or more likely stalemate) or chaos and civil war. If enough people say he’s right and the Russian MOd and security services lied for made up reasons they can still save a little face.
Prigozhin being the big voice and stopping things puts him in a position of being , to the US for example, “ someone we can do business with”.
He gets Kudos, wealth and power but he’s a Russian nationalist but whatever you think of that I reckon he’s also a pragmatist who likes his soldiers in theory and also sees the main chance.
For the west they don’t need Russia to descend into chaos because you don’t want those nukes dispersed.
Will be interesting to see if any noises from the Chechens because if they suddenly toe the Prigozhin line it’s all over for the current Russian military establishment who will carry a very painful life ending can.
If something like this was going to have a chance of working then Prigozhin and Wagner would have needed to at least have Putin within their power before breaking cover. The coup towards the end of the Soviet Union had control of Gorbachev and that still wasn't enough for them to win.
The more I think about this, the more I think this is an application by Prigozhin for asylum in the West. He realises that he lost his power struggle with the Russian ministry of defence, and so now he needs protection.
That coup attempt wasn’t in the middle of a war though, so I’m not sure it’s possible to draw any parallels.
I think it's a fairly well-established rule that you don't start a coup attempt until you have all the pieces in place to ensure victory, otherwise it goes against you very quickly. The biggest problem a coup attempt has is credibility, so you have to start big to establish credibility.
Prigozhin failed to do that, the Russian state apparatus is establishing its credentials with lots of armoured vehicles on the streets, Prigozhin is sunk.
For all his prominence due to Wagner expansion in the past 18 months my understanding was he was nothing more than an attack dog of Putin's, he has no real influence in internal Russian power circles.
Of course if Putin were capable of 6D chess, he'd have provoked all this by telling Prigozhin it was a way to purge the army leadership, and will now use the Wagner revolt as a pretext for abandoning the Ukraine invasion.
Seems about as likely as my SAS suggestion.
More likely just verminous rats in a very large sack.
The cocaine and corruption seem like they have more to do with it.
He’s right, every time he saw a platter of coke he couldn’t resist saying “me too” and every time he saw a handout he shouted “me too”. So he’s absolutely correct and a victim.
The Russians have way more faith in the British than we do in ourselves.
Markov, Russian propagandist, calls the events of tonight "provocations of British intelligence.
His post is translated below:
"For the time being, I suggest to all reasonable people at work that the the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine or the Security Service of Ukraine or even the damned British intelligence attacked the Wagner PMC camps in order to provoke a conflict between the leadership of the Wagner PMC and the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Defense. And they succeeded. This caused an emotional reaction from the combat commanders of the PMC Wagner, who had recently withdrawn from the fighting. British intelligence provocations will not work!" https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1672326507442700290?cxt=HHwWhIC8iaSGprUuAAAA
Ever since Sidney Reilly, British Intelligence has lived in Russian heads, rent free…
"Ian Coldwater 📦💥 @IanColdwater · 2h Apparently OceanGate's endgame was to build cheap submersibles for oil and gas drilling, but oil and gas companies don't want unproven technology (weird!) so the Titanic expeditions were to prove the tech out. Which I guess they did"
One of the other key issues seems to be the shape. Deep sea vessels are referred to as bathyspheres for a reason, they should be spherical. Who's never heard of a bathycylinder?
The Russians have way more faith in the British than we do in ourselves.
Markov, Russian propagandist, calls the events of tonight "provocations of British intelligence.
His post is translated below:
"For the time being, I suggest to all reasonable people at work that the the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine or the Security Service of Ukraine or even the damned British intelligence attacked the Wagner PMC camps in order to provoke a conflict between the leadership of the Wagner PMC and the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Defense. And they succeeded. This caused an emotional reaction from the combat commanders of the PMC Wagner, who had recently withdrawn from the fighting. British intelligence provocations will not work!" https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1672326507442700290?cxt=HHwWhIC8iaSGprUuAAAA
Their opinion of our diabolical brilliance really is quite remarkable. If only we could turn our fiendish plotting grey matter to getting inflation below 10%.
It’s all part of Rishi’s clever plan Lucky. Don’t be despondent- we are selling our amazing services for billions after this free advert which will allow for ginormous tax cuts before the election.
No need for anything clever, the government is planning to fund ginormous tax cuts the usual way. Tomorrow's Times front page;
The obvious downsides (the strikes will continue and there simply won't be enough bodies to keep services going because why would you sign up to work in the public sector at these rates) are as obvious as ever, but the government seems keen to continue ignoring them.
But considering overruling the pay review bodies... Brave, Prime Minister. Very brave.
"Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee on Friday demanded that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the private military company Wagner, stop unlawful actions and said the Russian Federal Security Service [FSB] started a mutiny investigation in connection with his recent statements."
If it’s a mutiny then it can’t be long before there is a Bounty on his head.
That certainly is a Boost to the war effort.
Although wars tend to be Marathons rather than sprints.
Not made it to the 'BBC Live Event' stage yet - that's when we know something is happening, though 'stuff is said on twitter' does make up many of their stories thesedays.
I think Prigozhin has been watching The Death of Stalin and gone full General Zhukov.
You laugh, but. He probably has. They’ve all watched it.
Should have watched Game of Thrones. "When you play the Game of Thrones, either you win, or you die."
I don't think Prigozhin is going to win.
I’m not sure about that. I think enough people in Russia, especially at the top, know this is a giant clusterfuck with no way out apart from defeat militarily (or more likely stalemate) or chaos and civil war. If enough people say he’s right and the Russian MOd and security services lied for made up reasons they can still save a little face.
Prigozhin being the big voice and stopping things puts him in a position of being , to the US for example, “ someone we can do business with”.
He gets Kudos, wealth and power but he’s a Russian nationalist but whatever you think of that I reckon he’s also a pragmatist who likes his soldiers in theory and also sees the main chance.
For the west they don’t need Russia to descend into chaos because you don’t want those nukes dispersed.
Will be interesting to see if any noises from the Chechens because if they suddenly toe the Prigozhin line it’s all over for the current Russian military establishment who will carry a very painful life ending can.
If something like this was going to have a chance of working then Prigozhin and Wagner would have needed to at least have Putin within their power before breaking cover. The coup towards the end of the Soviet Union had control of Gorbachev and that still wasn't enough for them to win.
The more I think about this, the more I think this is an application by Prigozhin for asylum in the West. He realises that he lost his power struggle with the Russian ministry of defence, and so now he needs protection.
That coup attempt wasn’t in the middle of a war though, so I’m not sure it’s possible to draw any parallels.
I think it's a fairly well-established rule that you don't start a coup attempt until you have all the pieces in place to ensure victory, otherwise it goes against you very quickly. The biggest problem a coup attempt has is credibility, so you have to start big to establish credibility.
Prigozhin failed to do that, the Russian state apparatus is establishing its credentials with lots of armoured vehicles on the streets, Prigozhin is sunk.
For all his prominence due to Wagner expansion in the past 18 months my understanding was he was nothing more than an attack dog of Putin's, he has no real influence in internal Russian power circles.
Of course if Putin were capable of 6D chess, he'd have provoked all this by telling Prigozhin it was a way to purge the army leadership, and will now use the Wagner revolt as a pretext for abandoning the Ukraine invasion.
Seems about as likely as my SAS suggestion.
More likely just verminous rats in a very large sack.
In Russian they say "a toad f%cking a viper". Amounts to the same thing.
Scorpions in a jar and hopefully this ends with a jar full of dead scorpions. .
A new FSB statement: "Prigozhin’s statements and actions amount to calls for the start of an armed civil conflict on Russian territory and are a ‘stab in the back’ for Russian servicemen fighting pro-fascist Ukrainian forces."
The FSB “urged [Wagner's men?] not to make irrevocable mistakes, to stop all uses of force against the Russian people, not to carry out Prigozhin’s criminal and treasonous orders, and take steps to detain him.” https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1672355851967901697
There are a few photos of Russian military vehicles in various places, though how unusual that is, and whether the photos are actually from tonight, I don't know.
Also there's a lot coming out of official Russian bodies, and being reported by TASS. This isn't just a bunch of twitter rumours now, or at least it's a bunch of twitter rumours that the Russian government is responding to.
Breaking news: a Russian sub has been sunk in an underwater Black Sea naval battle. Reports are that it had intercepted The Titan's sister sub, The Olymp. Officials at a Ukrainian monitoring station say "the crafts collided and the Russian sub just crumpled".
max seddon @maxseddon · 9m A new FSB statement: "Prigozhin’s statements and actions amount to calls for the start of an armed civil conflict on Russian territory and are a ‘stab in the back’ for Russian servicemen fighting pro-fascist Ukrainian forces."
No matter how long you’ve been a Russia watcher, never has Churchill’s quote been more true: “Kremlin political intrigues are comparable to a bulldog fight under a rug. An outsider only hears the growling, and when he sees the bones fly out from beneath it is obvious who won.” https://twitter.com/zakavkaza/status/1672353685215621122
Comments
1) It is a coup and they take each other out;
2) They don't blow up Zaporizhia on the way.
Personally I don't differentiate between the Darwinian folly of four out of the five Titanic explorers and the teenager topping out his Mum's Fiesta at 120mph on the Hog's Back.
https://tass.com/russia/1637417
"Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee on Friday demanded that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the private military company Wagner, stop unlawful actions and said the Russian Federal Security Service [FSB] started a mutiny investigation in connection with his recent statements."
So...who to believe? Did Russian regular armed forces strike Wagner's forces or didn't they?
https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1672339766904274947?t=hWk-zIRCMZZ6DTl9lRYuuA&s=19
When they launch an investigation, that would be National AntiTerrorism Committee Investigation, making them a bunch of Natcis.
So the Natcis are criticising a bunch of Nazis.
Appropriate.
The more I think about this, the more I think this is an application by Prigozhin for asylum in the West. He realises that he lost his power struggle with the Russian ministry of defence, and so now he needs protection.
https://twitter.com/IanColdwater/status/1672311686806511629
The point is in Japan there is sensible zoning, and national regulation standards, but after that its now left to the owner what they do with the land, so long as they operate within the regulations. Local authorities get no say other than the zoning, and neighbours get no say at all.
So to answer the usual absurd criticism, no a nuclear power plant can't be built next door, since that won't meet the regulations, but a house or apartment or whatever else the market decides can if its in a residential zone, so long as it is built within standards. No planning permission required, just own the land, be in the right zone, and get building.
Presumably he is following the trollbot playbook- first few contributions seeming odd but not that odd, before launching on full mad paranoia. How long before the first "Rishi the Snake- what a (word unsuitable for a family newspaper, though Mr Dacre apparently uses it all the time)"
Following news that the FSB has charged Prigozhin with inciting an armed rebellion, he’s suddenly gone silent on Telegram...
https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/status/1672334989126430720
A Chechen front? Don't reckon so. No way Kadyrov would have gone to the Donbas if he didn't think he was secure at home. But of course he's capable of making errors and things change.
Dunno how the other grownups here would assess things...
1) the Ukrainian army
2) Ukrainian farmers
3) Ukrainian farmer’s mums
4) Wagner group
5) Russian Army
He has such caring eyes.
A South African woman has described working as a fruit picker on farms in the south of England as "slave labour".
"We weren't viewed as humans," Sybil Msezane told a House of Lords committee.
She said workers were addressed by numbers, rather than names, as if they were in prison, forced to work 18 hour days and live in overcrowded caravans.
If they complained to bosses they were threatened with deportation, the Lords horticultural committee was told.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65987378
Instead of Zhukov, just as Doctor Zhivago.
https://twitter.com/oryxspioenkop/status/1672328280119148548
https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1672349850388529154?t=9HJvVRZ0r530ukHKrvQQpw&s=19
Hmm. Dangerous times
Interesting stuff.
He was on a raid last yearat a standard 3-bed semi on his patch which was used by Romanian owner to house presumably illegal immigrants with a couple of Portakabins in the garden. Guess how many people you can get into such a dwelling?
Higher ...
Higher ...
No, really, higher ...
60!
Yes 60.
Of course they were breaking various regulations.
On the other hand, the people weren't forced to live there, indeed were presumably living there cheaply to send money back to their families or something, so there is a libertarian case for letting them continue to live there, particularly if they are now all homeless, as they may be.
https://twitter.com/OzKaterji/status/1672350647943847940
https://twitter.com/Magivanga/status/1672350684233052163
Markov, Russian propagandist, calls the events of tonight "provocations of British intelligence.
His post is translated below:
"For the time being, I suggest to all reasonable people at work that the the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine or the Security Service of Ukraine or even the damned British intelligence attacked the Wagner PMC camps in order to provoke a conflict between the leadership of the Wagner PMC and the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Defense. And they succeeded. This caused an emotional reaction from the combat commanders of the PMC Wagner, who had recently withdrawn from the fighting. British intelligence provocations will not work!"
https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1672326507442700290?cxt=HHwWhIC8iaSGprUuAAAA
@IanColdwater
·
2h
Apparently OceanGate's endgame was to build cheap submersibles for oil and gas drilling, but oil and gas companies don't want unproven technology (weird!) so the Titanic expeditions were to prove the tech out. Which I guess they did"
Prigozhin failed to do that, the Russian state apparatus is establishing its credentials with lots of armoured vehicles on the streets, Prigozhin is sunk.
https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1672338798691115009
LAB: 44% (+12)
CON: 26% (-17)
LDM: 10% (-1)
GRN: 7% (+4)
REF: 7% (+5)
via
@YouGov
, 2-11 Jun
*Sample size: 9,903*
(Changes with 2019 Election)
https://twitter.com/OprosUK/status/1672218698302603264
"The Big Lie" - what on Earth were they thinking with that title
Seems pretty unlikely.
"David Warburton: Ex-MP says Me Too's influence too strong"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-65985598
Seems about as likely as my SAS suggestion.
More likely just verminous rats in a very large sack.
Glasto coverage. Worth the licence fee.
And now This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of US. Joy.
"drinking gin"
The obvious downsides (the strikes will continue and there simply won't be enough bodies to keep services going because why would you sign up to work in the public sector at these rates) are as obvious as ever, but the government seems keen to continue ignoring them.
But considering overruling the pay review bodies... Brave, Prime Minister. Very brave.
A lot of things are being thrown around here and there about things happening in Russia but I have so far not seen a single photo or video evidence of anything, only text and audio messages.
https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1672336823568277505?cxt=HHwWgoC9meHeqrUuAAAA
Scorpions in a jar and hopefully this ends with a jar full of dead scorpions. .
The FSB “urged [Wagner's men?] not to make irrevocable mistakes, to stop all uses of force against the Russian people, not to carry out Prigozhin’s criminal and treasonous orders, and take steps to detain him.”
https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1672355851967901697
Also there's a lot coming out of official Russian bodies, and being reported by TASS. This isn't just a bunch of twitter rumours now, or at least it's a bunch of twitter rumours that the Russian government is responding to.
Reports are that it had intercepted The Titan's sister sub, The Olymp. Officials at a Ukrainian monitoring station say "the crafts collided and the Russian sub just crumpled".
max seddon
@maxseddon
·
9m
A new FSB statement: "Prigozhin’s statements and actions amount to calls for the start of an armed civil conflict on Russian territory and are a ‘stab in the back’ for Russian servicemen fighting pro-fascist Ukrainian forces."
https://twitter.com/zakavkaza/status/1672353685215621122