I think its time for realpolitik. Ukraine cannot defeat Russia. A wider war where its chunks of Nato + Ukraine vs Russia could defeat Russia, but it seems very likely that Putin would push the button with his back against the wall.
Ukraine doesn't have to defeat Russia, it just has to hold on militarily until the Russian economy collapses. No country can sustain spending 40%+ of GDP on war, particularly not one under severe sanctions and with deep-seated economic issues even in peacetime.
The first signs are there now. Food prices jumping because farms cannot get labour or parts for the machines. An ever increasing percentage of the food that is grown never makes it to market because the railways have the same issues; no people, no spares, no new equipment. This is why Ukraine is expending so many of their drones hitting Russia's fuel infrastructure. Fuel shortages will dramatically these problems.
Right now Russia is Germany in late 1917. Still functioning, still with a powerful army in the field, but with the economic and logistical situation in terminal decline. The Germans knew for some time the Royal Navy's blockade of the North Sea would evidentially strangle them, hence the do-or-die gamble of throwing the entire High Seas fleet at the RN in 1916.
I remember many, many years ago reading an article written by a foreign journalist who was stationed in Berlin during the last months of the war. He went for a walk one day and recounted how all the restaurants he passed were closed, except one. He went in and looked at the menu, which contained only one meat dish; boiled crow.
Russia is at the very most a year and a half away from boiled crow.
But the analogy is entirely wrong
Why? Because Russia has China to help. The biggest trading and manufacturing economy on the planet, right next door, and perhaps the single BIGGEST economy in the world (depending on GDP PPP arguments etc)
China also has vast reserves of manpower and can chivvy tributary states into assisting Putin. NB North Korea suddenly coming up with 100,000 soldiers, what a coincidence
This changes the equation entirely. Xi Jinping has made it clear he won't let Russia lose or Putin fall. That's it. To borrow your allegory it's like Germany in World War 1 having the USA on its side, rather than opposing, only this time America is right next door to Berlin and Britain cannot blockade any of their trade
I agree with most of this. As I mentioned a few days ago, Hitler was not a nuclear dictator supported by another nuclear-armed dictator.
We need to think very carefully indeed, in this situation, before reaching for what can sometimes be tempting but ahistorical analogies.
But, if one is a nuclear-armed power, one absolutely cannot give way to threats from another nuclear-armed power. Otherwise, deterrence collapses.
Also Reeves IS a ridiculously incompent wanker who lied on her CV and is barely qualified to be a backbench MP let alone Chancellor of the Exchequer. That's simply the case. Is Jenrick meant to pretend this isn't true?
It's also a matter of public record now because her LinkedIn page doesn't match the CV she gave to the Labour selection panel. She lied on her CV to get selected, there's now no disputing it so Jenrick is well within his rights to say that and force Labour into a response.
Yes, Jenrick is well within his rights. However, as for forcing Labour into a response, I'm not sure that Labour will give a flying fuck what a dodgy Tory MP tweets.
Lying did for Boris.
She holds one of the great offices of state.
As did Boris.
It's fraud. She lied on her CV and said she was an economist at a major UK bank, it turns out she was in charge of a customer complaints team. She cultivated this image that she was a serious economist and had real private sector experience which landed her the position of chancellor, it's completely undeserved.
Come off it. I don’t think Starmer appointed her based on her LinkedIn profile or her CV!
She looks a prat for doing this, but it’s hardly a resigning matter. I think it was a bad Budget but she’ll get her SR. When that falls over, and it will, I expect she’ll go in the following reshuffle.
So you don't think that her bigging herself up as an economist for a major private sector UK bank helped her get the shadow chancellor gig when Labour were at their lowest ebb after the 2019 election? It's a view.
No. And nor would you if you were applying logic and rationality rather than partisan hate.
You don’t get appointed Shadow CX because of what you did for a few years before you were an MP. To suggest you do is just silly.
I yield to no one in my criticism of this Government, but based on facts rather than froth.
You do when that job was supposedly being an economist at a major bank and the job in question is being the chief economist of the country. It can't be because of any innate talent because she's fucking useless.
She isn’t chief economist of the country though? You have no idea what the Chancellor does do you?
Given his job, I have a vague sense that @MaxPB is acquainted with the daily role of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
I'm (almost) unemployed these days...
Then you should do it. Go into politics
You have a good brain, you're politically astute, you're affluent, and you're articulate. Allez!
Britain NEEDS smart competent people like you - not these Labour fools - to go into parliament, You have real time career experience and you could surely land a nice safe Tory seat
Also 2028-9 is gonna be carnage for Labour. I genuinely believe they could lose half or 2/3 of their seats. They are clearly clueless and have no idea how to solve any of Britain's big ongoing problems. The Budget was final proof of that. They did zero thinking in opposition. They are like students, constantly calling wanky votes about Palestine
Nah I think we're going to try for a third next year and I always think back to something Alastair Meeks said when we were talking about it, as you climb the greasy pole in politics the suit becomes the man. I don't want to become someone I loathe and politics seems like a good way to do that.
I think its time for realpolitik. Ukraine cannot defeat Russia. A wider war where its chunks of Nato + Ukraine vs Russia could defeat Russia, but it seems very likely that Putin would push the button with his back against the wall.
Ukraine doesn't have to defeat Russia, it just has to hold on militarily until the Russian economy collapses. No country can sustain spending 40%+ of GDP on war, particularly not one under severe sanctions and with deep-seated economic issues even in peacetime.
The first signs are there now. Food prices jumping because farms cannot get labour or parts for the machines. An ever increasing percentage of the food that is grown never makes it to market because the railways have the same issues; no people, no spares, no new equipment. This is why Ukraine is expending so many of their drones hitting Russia's fuel infrastructure. Fuel shortages will dramatically these problems.
Right now Russia is Germany in late 1917. Still functioning, still with a powerful army in the field, but with the economic and logistical situation in terminal decline. The Germans knew for some time the Royal Navy's blockade of the North Sea would evidentially strangle them, hence the do-or-die gamble of throwing the entire High Seas fleet at the RN in 1916.
I remember many, many years ago reading an article written by a foreign journalist who was stationed in Berlin during the last months of the war. He went for a walk one day and recounted how all the restaurants he passed were closed, except one. He went in and looked at the menu, which contained only one meat dish; boiled crow.
Russia is at the very most a year and a half away from boiled crow.
But the analogy is entirely wrong
Why? Because Russia has China to help. The biggest trading and manufacturing economy on the planet, right next door, and perhaps the single BIGGEST economy in the world (depending on GDP PPP arguments etc)
China also has vast reserves of manpower and can chivvy tributary states into assisting Putin. NB North Korea suddenly coming up with 100,000 soldiers, what a coincidence
This changes the equation entirely. Xi Jinping has made it clear he won't let Russia lose or Putin fall. That's it. To borrow your allegory it's like Germany in World War 1 having the USA on its side, rather than opposing, only this time America is right next door to Berlin and Britain cannot blockade any of their trade
I agree with most of this. As I mentioned a few days ago, Hitler was not a nuclear dictator supported by another nuclear-armed dictator.
We need to think very carefully indeed, in this situation, before reaching for what can sometimes be tempting but ahistorical analogies.
I think anyone using historical analogies should be forced to use only ones between 1AD to 1000AD, to screw over those whose only reference is WW2, and upper class Classics types.
Also Reeves IS a ridiculously incompent wanker who lied on her CV and is barely qualified to be a backbench MP let alone Chancellor of the Exchequer. That's simply the case. Is Jenrick meant to pretend this isn't true?
It's also a matter of public record now because her LinkedIn page doesn't match the CV she gave to the Labour selection panel. She lied on her CV to get selected, there's now no disputing it so Jenrick is well within his rights to say that and force Labour into a response.
Yes, Jenrick is well within his rights. However, as for forcing Labour into a response, I'm not sure that Labour will give a flying fuck what a dodgy Tory MP tweets.
Lying did for Boris.
She holds one of the great offices of state.
As did Boris.
It's fraud. She lied on her CV and said she was an economist at a major UK bank, it turns out she was in charge of a customer complaints team. She cultivated this image that she was a serious economist and had real private sector experience which landed her the position of chancellor, it's completely undeserved.
Come off it. I don’t think Starmer appointed her based on her LinkedIn profile or her CV!
She looks a prat for doing this, but it’s hardly a resigning matter. I think it was a bad Budget but she’ll get her SR. When that falls over, and it will, I expect she’ll go in the following reshuffle.
So you don't think that her bigging herself up as an economist for a major private sector UK bank helped her get the shadow chancellor gig when Labour were at their lowest ebb after the 2019 election? It's a view.
No. And nor would you if you were applying logic and rationality rather than partisan hate.
You don’t get appointed Shadow CX because of what you did for a few years before you were an MP. To suggest you do is just silly.
I yield to no one in my criticism of this Government, but based on facts rather than froth.
You do when that job was supposedly being an economist at a major bank and the job in question is being the chief economist of the country. It can't be because of any innate talent because she's fucking useless.
She isn’t chief economist of the country though? You have no idea what the Chancellor does do you?
Given his job, I have a vague sense that @MaxPB is acquainted with the daily role of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
He works in Financial services doesn’t he? A tiny part of the portfolio which barely bothers CX. It’s like saying a footballer understands the role of Minister of Sport.
No, it's like saying a successful executive at a professional football club in English League One has no idea of the pressures and obligations surrounding the head of the FA
Also Reeves IS a ridiculously incompent wanker who lied on her CV and is barely qualified to be a backbench MP let alone Chancellor of the Exchequer. That's simply the case. Is Jenrick meant to pretend this isn't true?
It's also a matter of public record now because her LinkedIn page doesn't match the CV she gave to the Labour selection panel. She lied on her CV to get selected, there's now no disputing it so Jenrick is well within his rights to say that and force Labour into a response.
Yes, Jenrick is well within his rights. However, as for forcing Labour into a response, I'm not sure that Labour will give a flying fuck what a dodgy Tory MP tweets.
Lying did for Boris.
She holds one of the great offices of state.
As did Boris.
It's fraud. She lied on her CV and said she was an economist at a major UK bank, it turns out she was in charge of a customer complaints team. She cultivated this image that she was a serious economist and had real private sector experience which landed her the position of chancellor, it's completely undeserved.
Come off it. I don’t think Starmer appointed her based on her LinkedIn profile or her CV!
She looks a prat for doing this, but it’s hardly a resigning matter. I think it was a bad Budget but she’ll get her SR. When that falls over, and it will, I expect she’ll go in the following reshuffle.
So you don't think that her bigging herself up as an economist for a major private sector UK bank helped her get the shadow chancellor gig when Labour were at their lowest ebb after the 2019 election? It's a view.
No. And nor would you if you were applying logic and rationality rather than partisan hate.
You don’t get appointed Shadow CX because of what you did for a few years before you were an MP. To suggest you do is just silly.
I yield to no one in my criticism of this Government, but based on facts rather than froth.
You do when that job was supposedly being an economist at a major bank and the job in question is being the chief economist of the country. It can't be because of any innate talent because she's fucking useless.
She isn’t chief economist of the country though? You have no idea what the Chancellor does do you?
Given his job, I have a vague sense that @MaxPB is acquainted with the daily role of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
He works in Financial services doesn’t he? A tiny part of the portfolio which barely bothers CX. It’s like saying a footballer understands the role of Minister of Sport.
Fund management for a while but then I moved into startup funding and consulting. As you say I'm not sure it's that relevant other than understanding the basis of why her policies are shite. I still don't understand how she's managed to borrow £150bn extra and produce less growth than before, it implies the rest of her budget measures have hugely negative multipliers which makes her a bad chancellor.
On that, we agree.
Politically she has been foolish in that she’s spent political capital on things that raise trivial amounts of revenue (she and her spads should have spotted and rejected them).
More seriously, her general policy direction seems to have been “can we vaguely do something that sounds left wing, fling some cash at the NHS, and tax employers”. I don’t understand the thesis. I would have disagreed with a John McDonnell Budget but I reckon I’d have understood his intent. And as you say, she’s managed to spend cash and not even stoke an illusionary boom.
I think its time for realpolitik. Ukraine cannot defeat Russia. A wider war where its chunks of Nato + Ukraine vs Russia could defeat Russia, but it seems very likely that Putin would push the button with his back against the wall.
Ukraine doesn't have to defeat Russia, it just has to hold on militarily until the Russian economy collapses. No country can sustain spending 40%+ of GDP on war, particularly not one under severe sanctions and with deep-seated economic issues even in peacetime.
The first signs are there now. Food prices jumping because farms cannot get labour or parts for the machines. An ever increasing percentage of the food that is grown never makes it to market because the railways have the same issues; no people, no spares, no new equipment. This is why Ukraine is expending so many of their drones hitting Russia's fuel infrastructure. Fuel shortages will dramatically these problems.
Right now Russia is Germany in late 1917. Still functioning, still with a powerful army in the field, but with the economic and logistical situation in terminal decline. The Germans knew for some time the Royal Navy's blockade of the North Sea would evidentially strangle them, hence the do-or-die gamble of throwing the entire High Seas fleet at the RN in 1916.
I remember many, many years ago reading an article written by a foreign journalist who was stationed in Berlin during the last months of the war. He went for a walk one day and recounted how all the restaurants he passed were closed, except one. He went in and looked at the menu, which contained only one meat dish; boiled crow.
Russia is at the very most a year and a half away from boiled crow.
But the analogy is entirely wrong
Why? Because Russia has China to help. The biggest trading and manufacturing economy on the planet, right next door, and perhaps the single BIGGEST economy in the world (depending on GDP PPP arguments etc)
China also has vast reserves of manpower and can chivvy tributary states into assisting Putin. NB North Korea suddenly coming up with 100,000 soldiers, what a coincidence
This changes the equation entirely. Xi Jinping has made it clear he won't let Russia lose or Putin fall. That's it. To borrow your allegory it's like Germany in World War 1 having the USA on its side, rather than opposing, only this time America is right next door to Berlin and Britain cannot blockade any of their trade
I agree with most of this. As I mentioned a few days ago, Hitler was not a nuclear dictator supported by another nuclear-armed dictator.
We need to think very carefully indeed, in this situation, before reaching for what can sometimes be tempting but ahistorical analogies.
I think anyone using historical analogies should be forced to use only ones between 1AD to 1000AD, to screw over those whose only reference is WW2, and upper class Classics types.
Bloody Romans...
Good point, should really exclude them as a reference too, make it more challenging.
What lessons can we learn from the Battle of Lechfeld?
Also Reeves IS a ridiculously incompent wanker who lied on her CV and is barely qualified to be a backbench MP let alone Chancellor of the Exchequer. That's simply the case. Is Jenrick meant to pretend this isn't true?
It's also a matter of public record now because her LinkedIn page doesn't match the CV she gave to the Labour selection panel. She lied on her CV to get selected, there's now no disputing it so Jenrick is well within his rights to say that and force Labour into a response.
Yes, Jenrick is well within his rights. However, as for forcing Labour into a response, I'm not sure that Labour will give a flying fuck what a dodgy Tory MP tweets.
Lying did for Boris.
She holds one of the great offices of state.
As did Boris.
It's fraud. She lied on her CV and said she was an economist at a major UK bank, it turns out she was in charge of a customer complaints team. She cultivated this image that she was a serious economist and had real private sector experience which landed her the position of chancellor, it's completely undeserved.
Come off it. I don’t think Starmer appointed her based on her LinkedIn profile or her CV!
She looks a prat for doing this, but it’s hardly a resigning matter. I think it was a bad Budget but she’ll get her SR. When that falls over, and it will, I expect she’ll go in the following reshuffle.
So you don't think that her bigging herself up as an economist for a major private sector UK bank helped her get the shadow chancellor gig when Labour were at their lowest ebb after the 2019 election? It's a view.
No. And nor would you if you were applying logic and rationality rather than partisan hate.
You don’t get appointed Shadow CX because of what you did for a few years before you were an MP. To suggest you do is just silly.
I yield to no one in my criticism of this Government, but based on facts rather than froth.
You do when that job was supposedly being an economist at a major bank and the job in question is being the chief economist of the country. It can't be because of any innate talent because she's fucking useless.
She isn’t chief economist of the country though? You have no idea what the Chancellor does do you?
Given his job, I have a vague sense that @MaxPB is acquainted with the daily role of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
He works in Financial services doesn’t he? A tiny part of the portfolio which barely bothers CX. It’s like saying a footballer understands the role of Minister of Sport.
Fund management for a while but then I moved into startup funding and consulting. As you say I'm not sure it's that relevant other than understanding the basis of why her policies are shite. I still don't understand how she's managed to borrow £150bn extra and produce less growth than before, it implies the rest of her budget measures have hugely negative multipliers which makes her a bad chancellor.
The Employer NI tax increase is completely insane - but their unwillingness to point out how insane the employee NI cuts made anything else impossibly.
We would be better off with 3p on Income Tax and a hack that kept WFA going for a bit (and yes I know I've said that a few times but come up with a better plan that could be implemented in April).
Also Reeves IS a ridiculously incompent wanker who lied on her CV and is barely qualified to be a backbench MP let alone Chancellor of the Exchequer. That's simply the case. Is Jenrick meant to pretend this isn't true?
It's also a matter of public record now because her LinkedIn page doesn't match the CV she gave to the Labour selection panel. She lied on her CV to get selected, there's now no disputing it so Jenrick is well within his rights to say that and force Labour into a response.
Yes, Jenrick is well within his rights. However, as for forcing Labour into a response, I'm not sure that Labour will give a flying fuck what a dodgy Tory MP tweets.
Lying did for Boris.
She holds one of the great offices of state.
As did Boris.
It's fraud. She lied on her CV and said she was an economist at a major UK bank, it turns out she was in charge of a customer complaints team. She cultivated this image that she was a serious economist and had real private sector experience which landed her the position of chancellor, it's completely undeserved.
Come off it. I don’t think Starmer appointed her based on her LinkedIn profile or her CV!
She looks a prat for doing this, but it’s hardly a resigning matter. I think it was a bad Budget but she’ll get her SR. When that falls over, and it will, I expect she’ll go in the following reshuffle.
So you don't think that her bigging herself up as an economist for a major private sector UK bank helped her get the shadow chancellor gig when Labour were at their lowest ebb after the 2019 election? It's a view.
No. And nor would you if you were applying logic and rationality rather than partisan hate.
You don’t get appointed Shadow CX because of what you did for a few years before you were an MP. To suggest you do is just silly.
I yield to no one in my criticism of this Government, but based on facts rather than froth.
You do when that job was supposedly being an economist at a major bank and the job in question is being the chief economist of the country. It can't be because of any innate talent because she's fucking useless.
She isn’t chief economist of the country though? You have no idea what the Chancellor does do you?
I mean it's short hand but, yes, I do know what the chancellor does, it's actually one of the reasons I prefer people who aren't formally educated as economists to do it, they tend to be bad at the job.
We've never had a chancellor trained in economics have we? Actually I looked it up, apparently someone called Hugh Dalton was an economist and chancellor for a couple of years.
Also Reeves IS a ridiculously incompent wanker who lied on her CV and is barely qualified to be a backbench MP let alone Chancellor of the Exchequer. That's simply the case. Is Jenrick meant to pretend this isn't true?
It's also a matter of public record now because her LinkedIn page doesn't match the CV she gave to the Labour selection panel. She lied on her CV to get selected, there's now no disputing it so Jenrick is well within his rights to say that and force Labour into a response.
Yes, Jenrick is well within his rights. However, as for forcing Labour into a response, I'm not sure that Labour will give a flying fuck what a dodgy Tory MP tweets.
Lying did for Boris.
She holds one of the great offices of state.
As did Boris.
It's fraud. She lied on her CV and said she was an economist at a major UK bank, it turns out she was in charge of a customer complaints team. She cultivated this image that she was a serious economist and had real private sector experience which landed her the position of chancellor, it's completely undeserved.
Come off it. I don’t think Starmer appointed her based on her LinkedIn profile or her CV!
She looks a prat for doing this, but it’s hardly a resigning matter. I think it was a bad Budget but she’ll get her SR. When that falls over, and it will, I expect she’ll go in the following reshuffle.
So you don't think that her bigging herself up as an economist for a major private sector UK bank helped her get the shadow chancellor gig when Labour were at their lowest ebb after the 2019 election? It's a view.
No. And nor would you if you were applying logic and rationality rather than partisan hate.
You don’t get appointed Shadow CX because of what you did for a few years before you were an MP. To suggest you do is just silly.
I yield to no one in my criticism of this Government, but based on facts rather than froth.
You do when that job was supposedly being an economist at a major bank and the job in question is being the chief economist of the country. It can't be because of any innate talent because she's fucking useless.
She isn’t chief economist of the country though? You have no idea what the Chancellor does do you?
Given his job, I have a vague sense that @MaxPB is acquainted with the daily role of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
He works in Financial services doesn’t he? A tiny part of the portfolio which barely bothers CX. It’s like saying a footballer understands the role of Minister of Sport.
No, it's like saying a successful executive at a professional football club in English League One has no idea of the pressures and obligations surrounding the head of the FA
Eh? No it really isn’t. But since he understands and recognises my point above, I don’t really need to educate you.
I think its time for realpolitik. Ukraine cannot defeat Russia. A wider war where its chunks of Nato + Ukraine vs Russia could defeat Russia, but it seems very likely that Putin would push the button with his back against the wall.
Ukraine doesn't have to defeat Russia, it just has to hold on militarily until the Russian economy collapses. No country can sustain spending 40%+ of GDP on war, particularly not one under severe sanctions and with deep-seated economic issues even in peacetime.
The first signs are there now. Food prices jumping because farms cannot get labour or parts for the machines. An ever increasing percentage of the food that is grown never makes it to market because the railways have the same issues; no people, no spares, no new equipment. This is why Ukraine is expending so many of their drones hitting Russia's fuel infrastructure. Fuel shortages will dramatically these problems.
Right now Russia is Germany in late 1917. Still functioning, still with a powerful army in the field, but with the economic and logistical situation in terminal decline. The Germans knew for some time the Royal Navy's blockade of the North Sea would evidentially strangle them, hence the do-or-die gamble of throwing the entire High Seas fleet at the RN in 1916.
I remember many, many years ago reading an article written by a foreign journalist who was stationed in Berlin during the last months of the war. He went for a walk one day and recounted how all the restaurants he passed were closed, except one. He went in and looked at the menu, which contained only one meat dish; boiled crow.
Russia is at the very most a year and a half away from boiled crow.
But the analogy is entirely wrong
Why? Because Russia has China to help. The biggest trading and manufacturing economy on the planet, right next door, and perhaps the single BIGGEST economy in the world (depending on GDP PPP arguments etc)
China also has vast reserves of manpower and can chivvy tributary states into assisting Putin. NB North Korea suddenly coming up with 100,000 soldiers, what a coincidence
This changes the equation entirely. Xi Jinping has made it clear he won't let Russia lose or Putin fall. That's it. To borrow your allegory it's like Germany in World War 1 having the USA on its side, rather than opposing, only this time America is right next door to Berlin and Britain cannot blockade any of their trade
I agree with most of this. As I mentioned a few days ago, Hitler was not a nuclear dictator supported by another nuclear-armed dictator.
We need to think very carefully indeed, in this situation, before reaching for what can sometimes be tempting but ahistorical analogies.
I think anyone using historical analogies should be forced to use only ones between 1AD to 1000AD, to screw over those whose only reference is WW2, and upper class Classics types.
It's easy to get warm if it is dry even if it is cold, and cold but bright can be downright nice, but endless warm grey drizzle? Well, it wouldn't be Britain without it, but it's not walking around weather.
Also Reeves IS a ridiculously incompent wanker who lied on her CV and is barely qualified to be a backbench MP let alone Chancellor of the Exchequer. That's simply the case. Is Jenrick meant to pretend this isn't true?
It's also a matter of public record now because her LinkedIn page doesn't match the CV she gave to the Labour selection panel. She lied on her CV to get selected, there's now no disputing it so Jenrick is well within his rights to say that and force Labour into a response.
Yes, Jenrick is well within his rights. However, as for forcing Labour into a response, I'm not sure that Labour will give a flying fuck what a dodgy Tory MP tweets.
Lying did for Boris.
She holds one of the great offices of state.
As did Boris.
It's fraud. She lied on her CV and said she was an economist at a major UK bank, it turns out she was in charge of a customer complaints team. She cultivated this image that she was a serious economist and had real private sector experience which landed her the position of chancellor, it's completely undeserved.
Come off it. I don’t think Starmer appointed her based on her LinkedIn profile or her CV!
She looks a prat for doing this, but it’s hardly a resigning matter. I think it was a bad Budget but she’ll get her SR. When that falls over, and it will, I expect she’ll go in the following reshuffle.
So you don't think that her bigging herself up as an economist for a major private sector UK bank helped her get the shadow chancellor gig when Labour were at their lowest ebb after the 2019 election? It's a view.
No. And nor would you if you were applying logic and rationality rather than partisan hate.
You don’t get appointed Shadow CX because of what you did for a few years before you were an MP. To suggest you do is just silly.
I yield to no one in my criticism of this Government, but based on facts rather than froth.
You do when that job was supposedly being an economist at a major bank and the job in question is being the chief economist of the country. It can't be because of any innate talent because she's fucking useless.
She isn’t chief economist of the country though? You have no idea what the Chancellor does do you?
Given his job, I have a vague sense that @MaxPB is acquainted with the daily role of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
I'm (almost) unemployed these days...
Then you should do it. Go into politics
You have a good brain, you're politically astute, you're affluent, and you're articulate. Allez!
Britain NEEDS smart competent people like you - not these Labour fools - to go into parliament, You have real time career experience and you could surely land a nice safe Tory seat
Also 2028-9 is gonna be carnage for Labour. I genuinely believe they could lose half or 2/3 of their seats. They are clearly clueless and have no idea how to solve any of Britain's big ongoing problems. The Budget was final proof of that. They did zero thinking in opposition. They are like students, constantly calling wanky votes about Palestine
Nah I think we're going to try for a third next year and I always think back to something Alastair Meeks said when we were talking about it, as you climb the greasy pole in politics the suit becomes the man. I don't want to become someone I loathe and politics seems like a good way to do that.
Fair enough, but a shame for UK PLC that people like you - politically aware - can't be arsed
I do understand the desire for larger family. Looking back if I had been given the ability to choose an entirely different life, and forced to do so, I would have gone for a regular well-paying job but a massive entertaining family. Five kids and mess everywhere, but lots of fun, drama and guaranteed grandkids
As it happens I got to do the job of my dreams, travelling for money, and I would barely change a thing, and I still have two kids I adore, albeit widely dispersed....
But when I look at big happy families I do get a quite serious pang of "What If"
Also Reeves IS a ridiculously incompent wanker who lied on her CV and is barely qualified to be a backbench MP let alone Chancellor of the Exchequer. That's simply the case. Is Jenrick meant to pretend this isn't true?
It's also a matter of public record now because her LinkedIn page doesn't match the CV she gave to the Labour selection panel. She lied on her CV to get selected, there's now no disputing it so Jenrick is well within his rights to say that and force Labour into a response.
Yes, Jenrick is well within his rights. However, as for forcing Labour into a response, I'm not sure that Labour will give a flying fuck what a dodgy Tory MP tweets.
Lying did for Boris.
She holds one of the great offices of state.
As did Boris.
It's fraud. She lied on her CV and said she was an economist at a major UK bank, it turns out she was in charge of a customer complaints team. She cultivated this image that she was a serious economist and had real private sector experience which landed her the position of chancellor, it's completely undeserved.
I cannot believe she was in the customer complaints dept. If her education is as stated then no way is she in customer complaints.
Also Reeves IS a ridiculously incompent wanker who lied on her CV and is barely qualified to be a backbench MP let alone Chancellor of the Exchequer. That's simply the case. Is Jenrick meant to pretend this isn't true?
It's also a matter of public record now because her LinkedIn page doesn't match the CV she gave to the Labour selection panel. She lied on her CV to get selected, there's now no disputing it so Jenrick is well within his rights to say that and force Labour into a response.
Yes, Jenrick is well within his rights. However, as for forcing Labour into a response, I'm not sure that Labour will give a flying fuck what a dodgy Tory MP tweets.
Lying did for Boris.
She holds one of the great offices of state.
As did Boris.
It's fraud. She lied on her CV and said she was an economist at a major UK bank, it turns out she was in charge of a customer complaints team. She cultivated this image that she was a serious economist and had real private sector experience which landed her the position of chancellor, it's completely undeserved.
Come off it. I don’t think Starmer appointed her based on her LinkedIn profile or her CV!
She looks a prat for doing this, but it’s hardly a resigning matter. I think it was a bad Budget but she’ll get her SR. When that falls over, and it will, I expect she’ll go in the following reshuffle.
So you don't think that her bigging herself up as an economist for a major private sector UK bank helped her get the shadow chancellor gig when Labour were at their lowest ebb after the 2019 election? It's a view.
No. And nor would you if you were applying logic and rationality rather than partisan hate.
You don’t get appointed Shadow CX because of what you did for a few years before you were an MP. To suggest you do is just silly.
I yield to no one in my criticism of this Government, but based on facts rather than froth.
You do when that job was supposedly being an economist at a major bank and the job in question is being the chief economist of the country. It can't be because of any innate talent because she's fucking useless.
She isn’t chief economist of the country though? You have no idea what the Chancellor does do you?
Given his job, I have a vague sense that @MaxPB is acquainted with the daily role of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
He works in Financial services doesn’t he? A tiny part of the portfolio which barely bothers CX. It’s like saying a footballer understands the role of Minister of Sport.
No, it's like saying a successful executive at a professional football club in English League One has no idea of the pressures and obligations surrounding the head of the FA
Eh? No it really isn’t. But since he understands and recognises my point above, I don’t really need to educate you.
Well I'll try and educate you, then
It means he understands the basic maths of football: crowds, TV, income, transfers, stars, merchandise. However he may not be totally au fait with the extra political role that someone like the head of the FA has to also perform, on TOP of the football maths
Nonetheless he has a basic but informed insight into the job of the FA's head, much more than the average dude from Newent
There ya go. Now you understand. You didn't even have to consult ChatGPT
Also Reeves IS a ridiculously incompent wanker who lied on her CV and is barely qualified to be a backbench MP let alone Chancellor of the Exchequer. That's simply the case. Is Jenrick meant to pretend this isn't true?
It's also a matter of public record now because her LinkedIn page doesn't match the CV she gave to the Labour selection panel. She lied on her CV to get selected, there's now no disputing it so Jenrick is well within his rights to say that and force Labour into a response.
Yes, Jenrick is well within his rights. However, as for forcing Labour into a response, I'm not sure that Labour will give a flying fuck what a dodgy Tory MP tweets.
Lying did for Boris.
She holds one of the great offices of state.
As did Boris.
It's fraud. She lied on her CV and said she was an economist at a major UK bank, it turns out she was in charge of a customer complaints team. She cultivated this image that she was a serious economist and had real private sector experience which landed her the position of chancellor, it's completely undeserved.
Come off it. I don’t think Starmer appointed her based on her LinkedIn profile or her CV!
She looks a prat for doing this, but it’s hardly a resigning matter. I think it was a bad Budget but she’ll get her SR. When that falls over, and it will, I expect she’ll go in the following reshuffle.
So you don't think that her bigging herself up as an economist for a major private sector UK bank helped her get the shadow chancellor gig when Labour were at their lowest ebb after the 2019 election? It's a view.
No. And nor would you if you were applying logic and rationality rather than partisan hate.
You don’t get appointed Shadow CX because of what you did for a few years before you were an MP. To suggest you do is just silly.
I yield to no one in my criticism of this Government, but based on facts rather than froth.
You do when that job was supposedly being an economist at a major bank and the job in question is being the chief economist of the country. It can't be because of any innate talent because she's fucking useless.
She isn’t chief economist of the country though? You have no idea what the Chancellor does do you?
Given his job, I have a vague sense that @MaxPB is acquainted with the daily role of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
He works in Financial services doesn’t he? A tiny part of the portfolio which barely bothers CX. It’s like saying a footballer understands the role of Minister of Sport.
No, it's like saying a successful executive at a professional football club in English League One has no idea of the pressures and obligations surrounding the head of the FA
I think Biggles is right tbf, chancellor is political more than economic but you do need a baseline understanding of how the economy works to do it well and it's clear to me that RR is lacking which is why her advertisement of having been an economist for Halifax is a sackable offence to me.
Anyone who has done even the slightest amount of macroeconomic learning can tell you that pumping prime should produce growth, that she's failed to do so is absolutely shocking.
Also Reeves IS a ridiculously incompent wanker who lied on her CV and is barely qualified to be a backbench MP let alone Chancellor of the Exchequer. That's simply the case. Is Jenrick meant to pretend this isn't true?
It's also a matter of public record now because her LinkedIn page doesn't match the CV she gave to the Labour selection panel. She lied on her CV to get selected, there's now no disputing it so Jenrick is well within his rights to say that and force Labour into a response.
Yes, Jenrick is well within his rights. However, as for forcing Labour into a response, I'm not sure that Labour will give a flying fuck what a dodgy Tory MP tweets.
Lying did for Boris.
She holds one of the great offices of state.
As did Boris.
It's fraud. She lied on her CV and said she was an economist at a major UK bank, it turns out she was in charge of a customer complaints team. She cultivated this image that she was a serious economist and had real private sector experience which landed her the position of chancellor, it's completely undeserved.
I cannot believe she was in the customer complaints dept. If her education is as stated then no way is she in customer complaints.
Maybe she wanted more time to play chess.
"Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of Global Thermonuclear War?"
Also Reeves IS a ridiculously incompent wanker who lied on her CV and is barely qualified to be a backbench MP let alone Chancellor of the Exchequer. That's simply the case. Is Jenrick meant to pretend this isn't true?
It's also a matter of public record now because her LinkedIn page doesn't match the CV she gave to the Labour selection panel. She lied on her CV to get selected, there's now no disputing it so Jenrick is well within his rights to say that and force Labour into a response.
Yes, Jenrick is well within his rights. However, as for forcing Labour into a response, I'm not sure that Labour will give a flying fuck what a dodgy Tory MP tweets.
Lying did for Boris.
She holds one of the great offices of state.
As did Boris.
It's fraud. She lied on her CV and said she was an economist at a major UK bank, it turns out she was in charge of a customer complaints team. She cultivated this image that she was a serious economist and had real private sector experience which landed her the position of chancellor, it's completely undeserved.
Come off it. I don’t think Starmer appointed her based on her LinkedIn profile or her CV!
She looks a prat for doing this, but it’s hardly a resigning matter. I think it was a bad Budget but she’ll get her SR. When that falls over, and it will, I expect she’ll go in the following reshuffle.
So you don't think that her bigging herself up as an economist for a major private sector UK bank helped her get the shadow chancellor gig when Labour were at their lowest ebb after the 2019 election? It's a view.
No. And nor would you if you were applying logic and rationality rather than partisan hate.
You don’t get appointed Shadow CX because of what you did for a few years before you were an MP. To suggest you do is just silly.
I yield to no one in my criticism of this Government, but based on facts rather than froth.
You do when that job was supposedly being an economist at a major bank and the job in question is being the chief economist of the country. It can't be because of any innate talent because she's fucking useless.
She isn’t chief economist of the country though? You have no idea what the Chancellor does do you?
Given his job, I have a vague sense that @MaxPB is acquainted with the daily role of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
He works in Financial services doesn’t he? A tiny part of the portfolio which barely bothers CX. It’s like saying a footballer understands the role of Minister of Sport.
No, it's like saying a successful executive at a professional football club in English League One has no idea of the pressures and obligations surrounding the head of the FA
I think Biggles is right tbf, chancellor is political more than economic but you do need a baseline understanding of how the economy works to do it well and it's clear to me that RR is lacking which is why her advertisement of having been an economist for Halifax is a sackable offence to me.
Anyone who has done even the slightest amount of macroeconomic learning can tell you that pumping prime should produce growth, that she's failed to do so is absolutely shocking.
See my prior comment right below. Yes, what you might not get is the *politics* but you certainly understand the economics
RR has to juggle both balls and she has brilliantly dropped both, simultaneously
'They've killed off North Sea oil, undermining our energy security - they are actively killing off the family farm and threatening our food security. And today they're scrapping key defence capabilities and weakening our National Security! Labour have made their choices they own the consequences.'
PBer DarkAges prediction, of a full “Truss” style collapse of this Labour government within just 2 years is looking more likely all the time - you can’t have crisis stacking up like this not being dealt with without both the markets and voters quickly withdrawing confidence at amazing amounts. Just like what happened in 1970s when markets and everybody just didn’t believe what Labour Government was saying anymore. What support Labour got at the election from right and the centre, is rapidly abandoning this struggling government, is it not? It might not mean a General Election - but will mean Starmer, Reeves, and the rest of the top team Philpson, Streeting, Milliband, Lamy and Cooper will all have to go to the backbenches as the government collapses.
No wonder PB lefties are now increasingly all hyped up and flailing around on here saying the governments not in trouble at all, and now only us offering hyperbole and “we got the support of the BBC” to defend all the governments policies.
You only get “crisis? What crisis?” statements from Labour governments. Check that as a fact, BBC.
If Starmer had to go, then it is inconceivable that the whole cabinet would go as well. Who would be left to take over?
Just had a look at the next Lab leader odds and somewhat surprisingly Reeves is favourite:
Also Reeves IS a ridiculously incompent wanker who lied on her CV and is barely qualified to be a backbench MP let alone Chancellor of the Exchequer. That's simply the case. Is Jenrick meant to pretend this isn't true?
It's also a matter of public record now because her LinkedIn page doesn't match the CV she gave to the Labour selection panel. She lied on her CV to get selected, there's now no disputing it so Jenrick is well within his rights to say that and force Labour into a response.
Yes, Jenrick is well within his rights. However, as for forcing Labour into a response, I'm not sure that Labour will give a flying fuck what a dodgy Tory MP tweets.
Lying did for Boris.
She holds one of the great offices of state.
As did Boris.
It's fraud. She lied on her CV and said she was an economist at a major UK bank, it turns out she was in charge of a customer complaints team. She cultivated this image that she was a serious economist and had real private sector experience which landed her the position of chancellor, it's completely undeserved.
Come off it. I don’t think Starmer appointed her based on her LinkedIn profile or her CV!
She looks a prat for doing this, but it’s hardly a resigning matter. I think it was a bad Budget but she’ll get her SR. When that falls over, and it will, I expect she’ll go in the following reshuffle.
So you don't think that her bigging herself up as an economist for a major private sector UK bank helped her get the shadow chancellor gig when Labour were at their lowest ebb after the 2019 election? It's a view.
No. And nor would you if you were applying logic and rationality rather than partisan hate.
You don’t get appointed Shadow CX because of what you did for a few years before you were an MP. To suggest you do is just silly.
I yield to no one in my criticism of this Government, but based on facts rather than froth.
You do when that job was supposedly being an economist at a major bank and the job in question is being the chief economist of the country. It can't be because of any innate talent because she's fucking useless.
She isn’t chief economist of the country though? You have no idea what the Chancellor does do you?
Given his job, I have a vague sense that @MaxPB is acquainted with the daily role of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
He works in Financial services doesn’t he? A tiny part of the portfolio which barely bothers CX. It’s like saying a footballer understands the role of Minister of Sport.
No, it's like saying a successful executive at a professional football club in English League One has no idea of the pressures and obligations surrounding the head of the FA
Eh? No it really isn’t. But since he understands and recognises my point above, I don’t really need to educate you.
Well I'll try and educate you, then
It means he understands the basic maths of football: crowds, TV, income, transfers, stars, merchandise. However he may not be totally au fait with the extra political role that someone like the head of the FA has to also perform, on TOP of the football maths
Nonetheless he has a basic but informed insight into the job of the FA's head, much more than the average dude from Newent
There ya go. Now you understand. You didn't even have to consult ChatGPT
Sigh….
Yes that’s why your example is silly. You’re implying that the knowledge required to be good at fund management and working with startups represents the majority, or even a decent chunk, of the issues you have to think about as CX.
It doesn’t.
Edit - an admirable career, and by all accounts a successful one. Not attacking him.
Edit 2 - and I’m not ever taking about the politics here. Just all the extra types of economics and fiscal issues.
Also Reeves IS a ridiculously incompent wanker who lied on her CV and is barely qualified to be a backbench MP let alone Chancellor of the Exchequer. That's simply the case. Is Jenrick meant to pretend this isn't true?
It's also a matter of public record now because her LinkedIn page doesn't match the CV she gave to the Labour selection panel. She lied on her CV to get selected, there's now no disputing it so Jenrick is well within his rights to say that and force Labour into a response.
Yes, Jenrick is well within his rights. However, as for forcing Labour into a response, I'm not sure that Labour will give a flying fuck what a dodgy Tory MP tweets.
Lying did for Boris.
She holds one of the great offices of state.
As did Boris.
It's fraud. She lied on her CV and said she was an economist at a major UK bank, it turns out she was in charge of a customer complaints team. She cultivated this image that she was a serious economist and had real private sector experience which landed her the position of chancellor, it's completely undeserved.
I cannot believe she was in the customer complaints dept. If her education is as stated then no way is she in customer complaints.
Maybe she wanted more time to play chess.
"Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of Global Thermonuclear War?"
The quote is
"How about a nice game of Global Thermonuclear War?" - no American would use prefer...
and sorry to correct but your misquote annoyed me for some reason.
We saw that film in Leicester Square as my parents thought Return of the Jedi was still playing there and it wasn't so we saw that instead...
Also Reeves IS a ridiculously incompent wanker who lied on her CV and is barely qualified to be a backbench MP let alone Chancellor of the Exchequer. That's simply the case. Is Jenrick meant to pretend this isn't true?
It's also a matter of public record now because her LinkedIn page doesn't match the CV she gave to the Labour selection panel. She lied on her CV to get selected, there's now no disputing it so Jenrick is well within his rights to say that and force Labour into a response.
Yes, Jenrick is well within his rights. However, as for forcing Labour into a response, I'm not sure that Labour will give a flying fuck what a dodgy Tory MP tweets.
Lying did for Boris.
She holds one of the great offices of state.
As did Boris.
It's fraud. She lied on her CV and said she was an economist at a major UK bank, it turns out she was in charge of a customer complaints team. She cultivated this image that she was a serious economist and had real private sector experience which landed her the position of chancellor, it's completely undeserved.
Come off it. I don’t think Starmer appointed her based on her LinkedIn profile or her CV!
She looks a prat for doing this, but it’s hardly a resigning matter. I think it was a bad Budget but she’ll get her SR. When that falls over, and it will, I expect she’ll go in the following reshuffle.
So you don't think that her bigging herself up as an economist for a major private sector UK bank helped her get the shadow chancellor gig when Labour were at their lowest ebb after the 2019 election? It's a view.
No. And nor would you if you were applying logic and rationality rather than partisan hate.
You don’t get appointed Shadow CX because of what you did for a few years before you were an MP. To suggest you do is just silly.
I yield to no one in my criticism of this Government, but based on facts rather than froth.
You do when that job was supposedly being an economist at a major bank and the job in question is being the chief economist of the country. It can't be because of any innate talent because she's fucking useless.
She isn’t chief economist of the country though? You have no idea what the Chancellor does do you?
Given his job, I have a vague sense that @MaxPB is acquainted with the daily role of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
He works in Financial services doesn’t he? A tiny part of the portfolio which barely bothers CX. It’s like saying a footballer understands the role of Minister of Sport.
No, it's like saying a successful executive at a professional football club in English League One has no idea of the pressures and obligations surrounding the head of the FA
I think Biggles is right tbf, chancellor is political more than economic but you do need a baseline understanding of how the economy works to do it well and it's clear to me that RR is lacking which is why her advertisement of having been an economist for Halifax is a sackable offence to me.
Anyone who has done even the slightest amount of macroeconomic learning can tell you that pumping prime should produce growth, that she's failed to do so is absolutely shocking.
See my prior comment right below. Yes, what you might not get is the *politics* but you certainly understand the economics
RR has to juggle both balls and she has brilliant dropped both
Yes, I think it helps me to quickly understand why her budget is absolutely shit. Even shovelling £22bn at the NHS overnight from next year is going to be a disaster. The money is just going to get pissed up the wall on pay rises, more employees doing busywork and more people just getting in the way of clinicians.
I've been asked to do some business consulting by a partner in a private health clinic (actually my cardiologist after we got chatting after my appointment a few weeks ago) and it's amazing how lean they run and how much automation they have in place for almost all of the admin and they're still looking for cost savings because they need to maintain competitiveness for their services vs the middle east. They're looking to roll out ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini for initial customer interaction and for first stop clinical organisation as a trial to see if the AI can bring casework together better than a person, I think it probably can.
Why? Because Russia has China to help. The biggest trading and manufacturing economy on the planet, right next door, and perhaps the single BIGGEST economy in the world (depending on GDP PPP arguments etc)
You are making the mistake of seeing China as Russia's ally. They're not. To them Putin is a idiot, but one who's stupidity serves China's purpose for the moment.
The war is useful to China for a variety of reasons, so Xi has been giving Russia some moderate help to keep the conflict rolling along. Mostly by selling them equipment, parts and raw material they can't get elsewhere because of sanctions. Help that, not coincidentally, makes China money.
That's as far as it goes. China will not sell Russia anything but the most primitive weapons, old Soviet era stuff it has lying about in warehouses going rusty. You will not see modern Chinese aircraft, tanks or missiles used by Russia, and certainly no Chinese soldiers. Xi does not want a direct conflict with the West until he's ready to jump for Taiwan.
Given how Russia's economy is cratering China would need to pump in incredible amounts of money, men and hardware to ensure Russia wins. But they're not. Compared to the support Ukraine is getting from the US and Europe, China's support for Russia barely exists. I see zero indications that will change.
Also Reeves IS a ridiculously incompent wanker who lied on her CV and is barely qualified to be a backbench MP let alone Chancellor of the Exchequer. That's simply the case. Is Jenrick meant to pretend this isn't true?
It's also a matter of public record now because her LinkedIn page doesn't match the CV she gave to the Labour selection panel. She lied on her CV to get selected, there's now no disputing it so Jenrick is well within his rights to say that and force Labour into a response.
Yes, Jenrick is well within his rights. However, as for forcing Labour into a response, I'm not sure that Labour will give a flying fuck what a dodgy Tory MP tweets.
Lying did for Boris.
She holds one of the great offices of state.
As did Boris.
It's fraud. She lied on her CV and said she was an economist at a major UK bank, it turns out she was in charge of a customer complaints team. She cultivated this image that she was a serious economist and had real private sector experience which landed her the position of chancellor, it's completely undeserved.
I cannot believe she was in the customer complaints dept. If her education is as stated then no way is she in customer complaints.
Maybe she wanted more time to play chess.
"Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of Global Thermonuclear War?"
The quote is
"How about a nice game of Global Thermonuclear War?" - no American would use prefer...
'They've killed off North Sea oil, undermining our energy security - they are actively killing off the family farm and threatening our food security. And today they're scrapping key defence capabilities and weakening our National Security! Labour have made their choices they own the consequences.'
PBer DarkAges prediction, of a full “Truss” style collapse of this Labour government within just 2 years is looking more likely all the time - you can’t have crisis stacking up like this not being dealt with without both the markets and voters quickly withdrawing confidence at amazing amounts. Just like what happened in 1970s when markets and everybody just didn’t believe what Labour Government was saying anymore. What support Labour got at the election from right and the centre, is rapidly abandoning this struggling government, is it not? It might not mean a General Election - but will mean Starmer, Reeves, and the rest of the top team Philpson, Streeting, Milliband, Lamy and Cooper will all have to go to the backbenches as the government collapses.
No wonder PB lefties are now increasingly all hyped up and flailing around on here saying the governments not in trouble at all, and now only us offering hyperbole and “we got the support of the BBC” to defend all the governments policies.
You only get “crisis? What crisis?” statements from Labour governments. Check that as a fact, BBC.
If Starmer had to go, then it is inconceivable that the whole cabinet would go as well. Who would be left to take over?
Just had a look at the next Lab leader odds and somewhat surprisingly Reeves is favourite:
Also Reeves IS a ridiculously incompent wanker who lied on her CV and is barely qualified to be a backbench MP let alone Chancellor of the Exchequer. That's simply the case. Is Jenrick meant to pretend this isn't true?
It's also a matter of public record now because her LinkedIn page doesn't match the CV she gave to the Labour selection panel. She lied on her CV to get selected, there's now no disputing it so Jenrick is well within his rights to say that and force Labour into a response.
Yes, Jenrick is well within his rights. However, as for forcing Labour into a response, I'm not sure that Labour will give a flying fuck what a dodgy Tory MP tweets.
Lying did for Boris.
She holds one of the great offices of state.
As did Boris.
It's fraud. She lied on her CV and said she was an economist at a major UK bank, it turns out she was in charge of a customer complaints team. She cultivated this image that she was a serious economist and had real private sector experience which landed her the position of chancellor, it's completely undeserved.
Come off it. I don’t think Starmer appointed her based on her LinkedIn profile or her CV!
She looks a prat for doing this, but it’s hardly a resigning matter. I think it was a bad Budget but she’ll get her SR. When that falls over, and it will, I expect she’ll go in the following reshuffle.
So you don't think that her bigging herself up as an economist for a major private sector UK bank helped her get the shadow chancellor gig when Labour were at their lowest ebb after the 2019 election? It's a view.
No. And nor would you if you were applying logic and rationality rather than partisan hate.
You don’t get appointed Shadow CX because of what you did for a few years before you were an MP. To suggest you do is just silly.
I yield to no one in my criticism of this Government, but based on facts rather than froth.
You do when that job was supposedly being an economist at a major bank and the job in question is being the chief economist of the country. It can't be because of any innate talent because she's fucking useless.
She isn’t chief economist of the country though? You have no idea what the Chancellor does do you?
Given his job, I have a vague sense that @MaxPB is acquainted with the daily role of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
He works in Financial services doesn’t he? A tiny part of the portfolio which barely bothers CX. It’s like saying a footballer understands the role of Minister of Sport.
No, it's like saying a successful executive at a professional football club in English League One has no idea of the pressures and obligations surrounding the head of the FA
I think Biggles is right tbf, chancellor is political more than economic but you do need a baseline understanding of how the economy works to do it well and it's clear to me that RR is lacking which is why her advertisement of having been an economist for Halifax is a sackable offence to me.
Anyone who has done even the slightest amount of macroeconomic learning can tell you that pumping prime should produce growth, that she's failed to do so is absolutely shocking.
I'm pausing but only because I thought we originally from the budget until early November had growth forecasted - which means I'm not 100% sure if the issue is RR or Trump's forthcoming tariffs...
I think its time for realpolitik. Ukraine cannot defeat Russia. A wider war where its chunks of Nato + Ukraine vs Russia could defeat Russia, but it seems very likely that Putin would push the button with his back against the wall.
Ukraine doesn't have to defeat Russia, it just has to hold on militarily until the Russian economy collapses. No country can sustain spending 40%+ of GDP on war, particularly not one under severe sanctions and with deep-seated economic issues even in peacetime.
The first signs are there now. Food prices jumping because farms cannot get labour or parts for the machines. An ever increasing percentage of the food that is grown never makes it to market because the railways have the same issues; no people, no spares, no new equipment. This is why Ukraine is expending so many of their drones hitting Russia's fuel infrastructure. Fuel shortages will dramatically these problems.
Right now Russia is Germany in late 1917. Still functioning, still with a powerful army in the field, but with the economic and logistical situation in terminal decline. The Germans knew for some time the Royal Navy's blockade of the North Sea would evidentially strangle them, hence the do-or-die gamble of throwing the entire High Seas fleet at the RN in 1916.
I remember many, many years ago reading an article written by a foreign journalist who was stationed in Berlin during the last months of the war. He went for a walk one day and recounted how all the restaurants he passed were closed, except one. He went in and looked at the menu, which contained only one meat dish; boiled crow.
Russia is at the very most a year and a half away from boiled crow.
But the analogy is entirely wrong
Why? Because Russia has China to help. The biggest trading and manufacturing economy on the planet, right next door, and perhaps the single BIGGEST economy in the world (depending on GDP PPP arguments etc)
China also has vast reserves of manpower and can chivvy tributary states into assisting Putin. NB North Korea suddenly coming up with 100,000 soldiers, what a coincidence
This changes the equation entirely. Xi Jinping has made it clear he won't let Russia lose or Putin fall. That's it. To borrow your allegory it's like Germany in World War 1 having the USA on its side, rather than opposing, only this time America is right next door to Berlin and Britain cannot blockade any of their trade
I agree with most of this. As I mentioned a few days ago, Hitler was not a nuclear dictator supported by another nuclear-armed dictator.
We need to think very carefully indeed, in this situation, before reaching for what can sometimes be tempting but ahistorical analogies.
But, if one is a nuclear-armed power, one absolutely cannot give way to threats from another nuclear-armed power. Otherwise, deterrence collapses.
What worries me is that we don't seem to be functioning within a predictable framework of deterrence , as in the Cold War, though, when roomfulls of strategists on bith sides constantly sought to review it and update it for decades.
I doubt very much that a Soviet Prsident would have ordered a full invasion of Ukraine had it come under Western influence after World War Ii, for instance, or that the West would have provided the wherewithal for Ukraine to fire into Russia in response, for instance. What is precisely most worrying me is that the ratio of unpredictable anarchy to strategy of deterrence seems to be on the rise.
Also Reeves IS a ridiculously incompent wanker who lied on her CV and is barely qualified to be a backbench MP let alone Chancellor of the Exchequer. That's simply the case. Is Jenrick meant to pretend this isn't true?
It's also a matter of public record now because her LinkedIn page doesn't match the CV she gave to the Labour selection panel. She lied on her CV to get selected, there's now no disputing it so Jenrick is well within his rights to say that and force Labour into a response.
Yes, Jenrick is well within his rights. However, as for forcing Labour into a response, I'm not sure that Labour will give a flying fuck what a dodgy Tory MP tweets.
Lying did for Boris.
She holds one of the great offices of state.
As did Boris.
It's fraud. She lied on her CV and said she was an economist at a major UK bank, it turns out she was in charge of a customer complaints team. She cultivated this image that she was a serious economist and had real private sector experience which landed her the position of chancellor, it's completely undeserved.
I cannot believe she was in the customer complaints dept. If her education is as stated then no way is she in customer complaints.
Maybe she wanted more time to play chess.
"Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of Global Thermonuclear War?"
Maybe we should ask Malmesbury what vault he has paid to go in, and what “experiments” they plan to carry out in that one?
I wouldn't have a clue who Simon Russell Beale is..yet the Independent state he's "the greatest living stage actor of his generation" 🤔🥴
I like him - he was superb as Falstaff in the Hollow Crown series - but I think that honour defiently goes to Mark Rylance. I have seen him several times in Shakespeare productions and he is remarkable. I think he is probably the best actor in all fields of his generation.
Agree. Just been watching Rylance in Wolf Hall and he is absolutely mesmerising in an apparently effortless way. I can't quite put my finger on why he's so good, but even when he's silent you can't take your eyes off him.
You actually have put your finger on it. His silence; a stillness that is utterly mesmerising.
Is it any good?
I tried reading Wolf Hall and found the artificiality of Mantel's style insufferable. I guess that's not an issue with the film production, so maybe I should try it?
I would strongly recommend it. Both Damien Lewis and Mark Rylance are very believable as Henry and Cromwell.
Did you meet them? Were you a contemporary?
LOL. I mean they act naturally and beleivably as people. Something that is in short supply in most TV productions even the ones I like. Very few actors have the ability to appear 'real' as people, particularly in historic roles.
'They've killed off North Sea oil, undermining our energy security - they are actively killing off the family farm and threatening our food security. And today they're scrapping key defence capabilities and weakening our National Security! Labour have made their choices they own the consequences.'
PBer DarkAges prediction, of a full “Truss” style collapse of this Labour government within just 2 years is looking more likely all the time - you can’t have crisis stacking up like this not being dealt with without both the markets and voters quickly withdrawing confidence at amazing amounts. Just like what happened in 1970s when markets and everybody just didn’t believe what Labour Government was saying anymore. What support Labour got at the election from right and the centre, is rapidly abandoning this struggling government, is it not? It might not mean a General Election - but will mean Starmer, Reeves, and the rest of the top team Philpson, Streeting, Milliband, Lamy and Cooper will all have to go to the backbenches as the government collapses.
No wonder PB lefties are now increasingly all hyped up and flailing around on here saying the governments not in trouble at all, and now only us offering hyperbole and “we got the support of the BBC” to defend all the governments policies.
You only get “crisis? What crisis?” statements from Labour governments. Check that as a fact, BBC.
If Starmer had to go, then it is inconceivable that the whole cabinet would go as well. Who would be left to take over?
Just had a look at the next Lab leader odds and somewhat surprisingly Reeves is favourite:
Also Reeves IS a ridiculously incompent wanker who lied on her CV and is barely qualified to be a backbench MP let alone Chancellor of the Exchequer. That's simply the case. Is Jenrick meant to pretend this isn't true?
It's also a matter of public record now because her LinkedIn page doesn't match the CV she gave to the Labour selection panel. She lied on her CV to get selected, there's now no disputing it so Jenrick is well within his rights to say that and force Labour into a response.
Yes, Jenrick is well within his rights. However, as for forcing Labour into a response, I'm not sure that Labour will give a flying fuck what a dodgy Tory MP tweets.
Lying did for Boris.
She holds one of the great offices of state.
As did Boris.
It's fraud. She lied on her CV and said she was an economist at a major UK bank, it turns out she was in charge of a customer complaints team. She cultivated this image that she was a serious economist and had real private sector experience which landed her the position of chancellor, it's completely undeserved.
Come off it. I don’t think Starmer appointed her based on her LinkedIn profile or her CV!
She looks a prat for doing this, but it’s hardly a resigning matter. I think it was a bad Budget but she’ll get her SR. When that falls over, and it will, I expect she’ll go in the following reshuffle.
So you don't think that her bigging herself up as an economist for a major private sector UK bank helped her get the shadow chancellor gig when Labour were at their lowest ebb after the 2019 election? It's a view.
No. And nor would you if you were applying logic and rationality rather than partisan hate.
You don’t get appointed Shadow CX because of what you did for a few years before you were an MP. To suggest you do is just silly.
I yield to no one in my criticism of this Government, but based on facts rather than froth.
You do when that job was supposedly being an economist at a major bank and the job in question is being the chief economist of the country. It can't be because of any innate talent because she's fucking useless.
She isn’t chief economist of the country though? You have no idea what the Chancellor does do you?
Given his job, I have a vague sense that @MaxPB is acquainted with the daily role of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
He works in Financial services doesn’t he? A tiny part of the portfolio which barely bothers CX. It’s like saying a footballer understands the role of Minister of Sport.
No, it's like saying a successful executive at a professional football club in English League One has no idea of the pressures and obligations surrounding the head of the FA
Eh? No it really isn’t. But since he understands and recognises my point above, I don’t really need to educate you.
Well I'll try and educate you, then
It means he understands the basic maths of football: crowds, TV, income, transfers, stars, merchandise. However he may not be totally au fait with the extra political role that someone like the head of the FA has to also perform, on TOP of the football maths
Nonetheless he has a basic but informed insight into the job of the FA's head, much more than the average dude from Newent
There ya go. Now you understand. You didn't even have to consult ChatGPT
Sigh….
Yes that’s why your example is silly. You’re implying that the knowledge required to be good at fund management and working with startups represents the majority, or even a decent chunk, of the issues you have to think about as CX.
It doesn’t.
Yes, it does
In an ideal world the job of COTE is simple: to get the economy purring. To get the economics right. Secondary to that - literally, secondary - is the politics. He/she has to be cognisant of politics but in a well-functioning government the politics should mainly be done by the PM, by the rest of the government, the spin doctors, the Civil Service. The COTE should be a crucial boffin in the backroom, or maybe the rhythm section, to the PM's lead vocalist
Probably the last time this system worked really well, in the UK, was Howe and Lawson under Thatcher. Then Clarke under Major. After that Brown under Blair.... but then issues arose...
I think its time for realpolitik. Ukraine cannot defeat Russia. A wider war where its chunks of Nato + Ukraine vs Russia could defeat Russia, but it seems very likely that Putin would push the button with his back against the wall.
Ukraine doesn't have to defeat Russia, it just has to hold on militarily until the Russian economy collapses. No country can sustain spending 40%+ of GDP on war, particularly not one under severe sanctions and with deep-seated economic issues even in peacetime.
The first signs are there now. Food prices jumping because farms cannot get labour or parts for the machines. An ever increasing percentage of the food that is grown never makes it to market because the railways have the same issues; no people, no spares, no new equipment. This is why Ukraine is expending so many of their drones hitting Russia's fuel infrastructure. Fuel shortages will dramatically these problems.
Right now Russia is Germany in late 1917. Still functioning, still with a powerful army in the field, but with the economic and logistical situation in terminal decline. The Germans knew for some time the Royal Navy's blockade of the North Sea would evidentially strangle them, hence the do-or-die gamble of throwing the entire High Seas fleet at the RN in 1916.
I remember many, many years ago reading an article written by a foreign journalist who was stationed in Berlin during the last months of the war. He went for a walk one day and recounted how all the restaurants he passed were closed, except one. He went in and looked at the menu, which contained only one meat dish; boiled crow.
Russia is at the very most a year and a half away from boiled crow.
But the analogy is entirely wrong
Why? Because Russia has China to help. The biggest trading and manufacturing economy on the planet, right next door, and perhaps the single BIGGEST economy in the world (depending on GDP PPP arguments etc)
China also has vast reserves of manpower and can chivvy tributary states into assisting Putin. NB North Korea suddenly coming up with 100,000 soldiers, what a coincidence
This changes the equation entirely. Xi Jinping has made it clear he won't let Russia lose or Putin fall. That's it. To borrow your allegory it's like Germany in World War 1 having the USA on its side, rather than opposing, only this time America is right next door to Berlin and Britain cannot blockade any of their trade
I agree with most of this. As I mentioned a few days ago, Hitler was not a nuclear dictator supported by another nuclear-armed dictator.
We need to think very carefully indeed, in this situation, before reaching for what can sometimes be tempting but ahistorical analogies.
But, if one is a nuclear-armed power, one absolutely cannot give way to threats from another nuclear-armed power. Otherwise, deterrence collapses.
What worries me is that we don't seem to be functioning within a predictable framework of deterrence , as in the Cold War, though, when roomfulls of strategists on bith sides constantly sought to review it and update it for decades.
I doubt very much that a Soviet Prsident would have ordered a full invasion of Ukraine had it come under Western influence after World War Ii, for instance, or that the West would have provided the wherewithal for Ukraine to fire into Russia in response, for instance. What is precisely most worrying me is that the ratio of unpredictable anarchy to strategy of deterrence seems to be on the rise.
Under Cold War rules, Eastern Europe was in the Soviet zone of influence. Any kind of mucking around across the Iron Curtain would have been a breach of the unwritten rules. Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, proper.
Which is part of what upsets Putin so badly. Eastern Europe isn’t supposed to have agency. They are supposed (in his mind) to give fealty to Russia.
'They've killed off North Sea oil, undermining our energy security - they are actively killing off the family farm and threatening our food security. And today they're scrapping key defence capabilities and weakening our National Security! Labour have made their choices they own the consequences.'
PBer DarkAges prediction, of a full “Truss” style collapse of this Labour government within just 2 years is looking more likely all the time - you can’t have crisis stacking up like this not being dealt with without both the markets and voters quickly withdrawing confidence at amazing amounts. Just like what happened in 1970s when markets and everybody just didn’t believe what Labour Government was saying anymore. What support Labour got at the election from right and the centre, is rapidly abandoning this struggling government, is it not? It might not mean a General Election - but will mean Starmer, Reeves, and the rest of the top team Philpson, Streeting, Milliband, Lamy and Cooper will all have to go to the backbenches as the government collapses.
No wonder PB lefties are now increasingly all hyped up and flailing around on here saying the governments not in trouble at all, and now only us offering hyperbole and “we got the support of the BBC” to defend all the governments policies.
You only get “crisis? What crisis?” statements from Labour governments. Check that as a fact, BBC.
If Starmer had to go, then it is inconceivable that the whole cabinet would go as well. Who would be left to take over?
Just had a look at the next Lab leader odds and somewhat surprisingly Reeves is favourite:
Also Reeves IS a ridiculously incompent wanker who lied on her CV and is barely qualified to be a backbench MP let alone Chancellor of the Exchequer. That's simply the case. Is Jenrick meant to pretend this isn't true?
It's also a matter of public record now because her LinkedIn page doesn't match the CV she gave to the Labour selection panel. She lied on her CV to get selected, there's now no disputing it so Jenrick is well within his rights to say that and force Labour into a response.
Yes, Jenrick is well within his rights. However, as for forcing Labour into a response, I'm not sure that Labour will give a flying fuck what a dodgy Tory MP tweets.
Lying did for Boris.
She holds one of the great offices of state.
As did Boris.
It's fraud. She lied on her CV and said she was an economist at a major UK bank, it turns out she was in charge of a customer complaints team. She cultivated this image that she was a serious economist and had real private sector experience which landed her the position of chancellor, it's completely undeserved.
Come off it. I don’t think Starmer appointed her based on her LinkedIn profile or her CV!
She looks a prat for doing this, but it’s hardly a resigning matter. I think it was a bad Budget but she’ll get her SR. When that falls over, and it will, I expect she’ll go in the following reshuffle.
So you don't think that her bigging herself up as an economist for a major private sector UK bank helped her get the shadow chancellor gig when Labour were at their lowest ebb after the 2019 election? It's a view.
No. And nor would you if you were applying logic and rationality rather than partisan hate.
You don’t get appointed Shadow CX because of what you did for a few years before you were an MP. To suggest you do is just silly.
I yield to no one in my criticism of this Government, but based on facts rather than froth.
You do when that job was supposedly being an economist at a major bank and the job in question is being the chief economist of the country. It can't be because of any innate talent because she's fucking useless.
She isn’t chief economist of the country though? You have no idea what the Chancellor does do you?
Given his job, I have a vague sense that @MaxPB is acquainted with the daily role of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
He works in Financial services doesn’t he? A tiny part of the portfolio which barely bothers CX. It’s like saying a footballer understands the role of Minister of Sport.
No, it's like saying a successful executive at a professional football club in English League One has no idea of the pressures and obligations surrounding the head of the FA
I think Biggles is right tbf, chancellor is political more than economic but you do need a baseline understanding of how the economy works to do it well and it's clear to me that RR is lacking which is why her advertisement of having been an economist for Halifax is a sackable offence to me.
Anyone who has done even the slightest amount of macroeconomic learning can tell you that pumping prime should produce growth, that she's failed to do so is absolutely shocking.
See my prior comment right below. Yes, what you might not get is the *politics* but you certainly understand the economics
RR has to juggle both balls and she has brilliant dropped both
Yes, I think it helps me to quickly understand why her budget is absolutely shit. Even shovelling £22bn at the NHS overnight from next year is going to be a disaster. The money is just going to get pissed up the wall on pay rises, more employees doing busywork and more people just getting in the way of clinicians.
I've been asked to do some business consulting by a partner in a private health clinic (actually my cardiologist after we got chatting after my appointment a few weeks ago) and it's amazing how lean they run and how much automation they have in place for almost all of the admin and they're still looking for cost savings because they need to maintain competitiveness for their services vs the middle east. They're looking to roll out ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini for initial customer interaction and for first stop clinical organisation as a trial to see if the AI can bring casework together better than a person, I think it probably can.
If my recent experiences are anything to go by, then AI might be the saviour of the NHS - in the nick of time
And Wes Streeting apparently gets this, or at least he talks about it. He is the one dude who looks like he has ideas and enrgy in this absolute pitiiful shitshow of a government
Also Reeves IS a ridiculously incompent wanker who lied on her CV and is barely qualified to be a backbench MP let alone Chancellor of the Exchequer. That's simply the case. Is Jenrick meant to pretend this isn't true?
It's also a matter of public record now because her LinkedIn page doesn't match the CV she gave to the Labour selection panel. She lied on her CV to get selected, there's now no disputing it so Jenrick is well within his rights to say that and force Labour into a response.
Yes, Jenrick is well within his rights. However, as for forcing Labour into a response, I'm not sure that Labour will give a flying fuck what a dodgy Tory MP tweets.
Lying did for Boris.
She holds one of the great offices of state.
As did Boris.
It's fraud. She lied on her CV and said she was an economist at a major UK bank, it turns out she was in charge of a customer complaints team. She cultivated this image that she was a serious economist and had real private sector experience which landed her the position of chancellor, it's completely undeserved.
Come off it. I don’t think Starmer appointed her based on her LinkedIn profile or her CV!
She looks a prat for doing this, but it’s hardly a resigning matter. I think it was a bad Budget but she’ll get her SR. When that falls over, and it will, I expect she’ll go in the following reshuffle.
So you don't think that her bigging herself up as an economist for a major private sector UK bank helped her get the shadow chancellor gig when Labour were at their lowest ebb after the 2019 election? It's a view.
No. And nor would you if you were applying logic and rationality rather than partisan hate.
You don’t get appointed Shadow CX because of what you did for a few years before you were an MP. To suggest you do is just silly.
I yield to no one in my criticism of this Government, but based on facts rather than froth.
You do when that job was supposedly being an economist at a major bank and the job in question is being the chief economist of the country. It can't be because of any innate talent because she's fucking useless.
She isn’t chief economist of the country though? You have no idea what the Chancellor does do you?
Given his job, I have a vague sense that @MaxPB is acquainted with the daily role of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
He works in Financial services doesn’t he? A tiny part of the portfolio which barely bothers CX. It’s like saying a footballer understands the role of Minister of Sport.
Fund management for a while but then I moved into startup funding and consulting. As you say I'm not sure it's that relevant other than understanding the basis of why her policies are shite. I still don't understand how she's managed to borrow £150bn extra and produce less growth than before, it implies the rest of her budget measures have hugely negative multipliers which makes her a bad chancellor.
It's remarkably simple to those of us who've spent rather too much of our lives with economic models:
- you take some rather overly-optimistic forecasts from the previous administration and make them a bit over-pessimistic so you're getting the bad news out of the way in one go - then you introduce a bunch of supply side measures like increasing the minimum wage that will cripple the labour market - then you change the mood music to talk down the economy, saying your predecessors left you a terrible legacy - and you come to office at a time when everybody is talking about a global trade war - and you increase precisely those taxes in the budget most likely to reduce economic growth
Given her staggering incompetence, I'm surprised we're projecting any growth at all. She is to the economy what Miliband is to our energy industry or Lammy to our global influence.
I think its time for realpolitik. Ukraine cannot defeat Russia. A wider war where its chunks of Nato + Ukraine vs Russia could defeat Russia, but it seems very likely that Putin would push the button with his back against the wall.
Ukraine doesn't have to defeat Russia, it just has to hold on militarily until the Russian economy collapses. No country can sustain spending 40%+ of GDP on war, particularly not one under severe sanctions and with deep-seated economic issues even in peacetime.
The first signs are there now. Food prices jumping because farms cannot get labour or parts for the machines. An ever increasing percentage of the food that is grown never makes it to market because the railways have the same issues; no people, no spares, no new equipment. This is why Ukraine is expending so many of their drones hitting Russia's fuel infrastructure. Fuel shortages will dramatically these problems.
Right now Russia is Germany in late 1917. Still functioning, still with a powerful army in the field, but with the economic and logistical situation in terminal decline. The Germans knew for some time the Royal Navy's blockade of the North Sea would evidentially strangle them, hence the do-or-die gamble of throwing the entire High Seas fleet at the RN in 1916.
I remember many, many years ago reading an article written by a foreign journalist who was stationed in Berlin during the last months of the war. He went for a walk one day and recounted how all the restaurants he passed were closed, except one. He went in and looked at the menu, which contained only one meat dish; boiled crow.
Russia is at the very most a year and a half away from boiled crow.
But the analogy is entirely wrong
Why? Because Russia has China to help. The biggest trading and manufacturing economy on the planet, right next door, and perhaps the single BIGGEST economy in the world (depending on GDP PPP arguments etc)
China also has vast reserves of manpower and can chivvy tributary states into assisting Putin. NB North Korea suddenly coming up with 100,000 soldiers, what a coincidence
This changes the equation entirely. Xi Jinping has made it clear he won't let Russia lose or Putin fall. That's it. To borrow your allegory it's like Germany in World War 1 having the USA on its side, rather than opposing, only this time America is right next door to Berlin and Britain cannot blockade any of their trade
I agree with most of this. As I mentioned a few days ago, Hitler was not a nuclear dictator supported by another nuclear-armed dictator.
We need to think very carefully indeed, in this situation, before reaching for what can sometimes be tempting but ahistorical analogies.
But, if one is a nuclear-armed power, one absolutely cannot give way to threats from another nuclear-armed power. Otherwise, deterrence collapses.
What worries me is that we don't seem to be functioning within a predictable framework of deterrence , as in the Cold War, though, when roomfulls of strategists on bith sides constantly sought to review it and update it for decades.
I doubt very much that a Soviet Prsident would have ordered a full invasion of Ukraine had it come under Western influence after World War Ii, for instance, or that the West would have provided the wherewithal for Ukraine to fire into Russia in response, for instance. What is precisely most worrying me is that the ratio of unpredictable anarchy to strategy of deterrence seems to be on the rise.
Under Cold War rules, Eastern Europe was in the Soviet zone of influence. Any kind of mucking around across the Iron Curtain would have been a breach of the unwritten rules. Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, proper.
Which is part of what upsets Putin so badly. Eastern Europe isn’t supposed to have agency. They are supposed (in his mind) to give fealty to Russia.
The West didn't intervene when Stalin organised a coup in Czechoslovakia after WW2. Maybe we should have done.
Also Reeves IS a ridiculously incompent wanker who lied on her CV and is barely qualified to be a backbench MP let alone Chancellor of the Exchequer. That's simply the case. Is Jenrick meant to pretend this isn't true?
It's also a matter of public record now because her LinkedIn page doesn't match the CV she gave to the Labour selection panel. She lied on her CV to get selected, there's now no disputing it so Jenrick is well within his rights to say that and force Labour into a response.
Yes, Jenrick is well within his rights. However, as for forcing Labour into a response, I'm not sure that Labour will give a flying fuck what a dodgy Tory MP tweets.
Lying did for Boris.
She holds one of the great offices of state.
As did Boris.
It's fraud. She lied on her CV and said she was an economist at a major UK bank, it turns out she was in charge of a customer complaints team. She cultivated this image that she was a serious economist and had real private sector experience which landed her the position of chancellor, it's completely undeserved.
Come off it. I don’t think Starmer appointed her based on her LinkedIn profile or her CV!
She looks a prat for doing this, but it’s hardly a resigning matter. I think it was a bad Budget but she’ll get her SR. When that falls over, and it will, I expect she’ll go in the following reshuffle.
So you don't think that her bigging herself up as an economist for a major private sector UK bank helped her get the shadow chancellor gig when Labour were at their lowest ebb after the 2019 election? It's a view.
No. And nor would you if you were applying logic and rationality rather than partisan hate.
You don’t get appointed Shadow CX because of what you did for a few years before you were an MP. To suggest you do is just silly.
I yield to no one in my criticism of this Government, but based on facts rather than froth.
You do when that job was supposedly being an economist at a major bank and the job in question is being the chief economist of the country. It can't be because of any innate talent because she's fucking useless.
She isn’t chief economist of the country though? You have no idea what the Chancellor does do you?
Given his job, I have a vague sense that @MaxPB is acquainted with the daily role of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
He works in Financial services doesn’t he? A tiny part of the portfolio which barely bothers CX. It’s like saying a footballer understands the role of Minister of Sport.
No, it's like saying a successful executive at a professional football club in English League One has no idea of the pressures and obligations surrounding the head of the FA
Eh? No it really isn’t. But since he understands and recognises my point above, I don’t really need to educate you.
Well I'll try and educate you, then
It means he understands the basic maths of football: crowds, TV, income, transfers, stars, merchandise. However he may not be totally au fait with the extra political role that someone like the head of the FA has to also perform, on TOP of the football maths
Nonetheless he has a basic but informed insight into the job of the FA's head, much more than the average dude from Newent
There ya go. Now you understand. You didn't even have to consult ChatGPT
Sigh….
Yes that’s why your example is silly. You’re implying that the knowledge required to be good at fund management and working with startups represents the majority, or even a decent chunk, of the issues you have to think about as CX.
It doesn’t.
Yes, it does
In an ideal world the job of COTE is simple: to get the economy purring. To get the economics right. Secondary to that - literally, secondary - is the politics. He/she has to be cognisant of politics but in a well-functioning government the politics should mainly be done by the PM, by the rest of the government, the spin doctors, the Civil Service. The COTE should be a crucial boffin in the backroom, or maybe the rhythm section, to the PM's lead vocalist
Probably the last time this system worked really well, in the UK, was Howe and Lawson under Thatcher. Then Clarke under Major. After that Brown under Blair.... but then issues arose...
Since then, nada
You don’t seem to realise that the sort of policy you are talking about is only one part of the Treasury’s job, and some of it sits outside completely. I’m not sure you realise what sits in the Bank/FCA and what functions sit in BEIS. You aren’t thinking about HMRC, spending control, debt management, or international engagement.
Also Reeves IS a ridiculously incompent wanker who lied on her CV and is barely qualified to be a backbench MP let alone Chancellor of the Exchequer. That's simply the case. Is Jenrick meant to pretend this isn't true?
It's also a matter of public record now because her LinkedIn page doesn't match the CV she gave to the Labour selection panel. She lied on her CV to get selected, there's now no disputing it so Jenrick is well within his rights to say that and force Labour into a response.
Yes, Jenrick is well within his rights. However, as for forcing Labour into a response, I'm not sure that Labour will give a flying fuck what a dodgy Tory MP tweets.
Lying did for Boris.
She holds one of the great offices of state.
As did Boris.
It's fraud. She lied on her CV and said she was an economist at a major UK bank, it turns out she was in charge of a customer complaints team. She cultivated this image that she was a serious economist and had real private sector experience which landed her the position of chancellor, it's completely undeserved.
Come off it. I don’t think Starmer appointed her based on her LinkedIn profile or her CV!
She looks a prat for doing this, but it’s hardly a resigning matter. I think it was a bad Budget but she’ll get her SR. When that falls over, and it will, I expect she’ll go in the following reshuffle.
So you don't think that her bigging herself up as an economist for a major private sector UK bank helped her get the shadow chancellor gig when Labour were at their lowest ebb after the 2019 election? It's a view.
No. And nor would you if you were applying logic and rationality rather than partisan hate.
You don’t get appointed Shadow CX because of what you did for a few years before you were an MP. To suggest you do is just silly.
I yield to no one in my criticism of this Government, but based on facts rather than froth.
You do when that job was supposedly being an economist at a major bank and the job in question is being the chief economist of the country. It can't be because of any innate talent because she's fucking useless.
She isn’t chief economist of the country though? You have no idea what the Chancellor does do you?
Given his job, I have a vague sense that @MaxPB is acquainted with the daily role of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
He works in Financial services doesn’t he? A tiny part of the portfolio which barely bothers CX. It’s like saying a footballer understands the role of Minister of Sport.
No, it's like saying a successful executive at a professional football club in English League One has no idea of the pressures and obligations surrounding the head of the FA
Eh? No it really isn’t. But since he understands and recognises my point above, I don’t really need to educate you.
Well I'll try and educate you, then
It means he understands the basic maths of football: crowds, TV, income, transfers, stars, merchandise. However he may not be totally au fait with the extra political role that someone like the head of the FA has to also perform, on TOP of the football maths
Nonetheless he has a basic but informed insight into the job of the FA's head, much more than the average dude from Newent
There ya go. Now you understand. You didn't even have to consult ChatGPT
Sigh….
Yes that’s why your example is silly. You’re implying that the knowledge required to be good at fund management and working with startups represents the majority, or even a decent chunk, of the issues you have to think about as CX.
It doesn’t.
Yes, it does
In an ideal world the job of COTE is simple: to get the economy purring. To get the economics right. Secondary to that - literally, secondary - is the politics. He/she has to be cognisant of politics but in a well-functioning government the politics should mainly be done by the PM, by the rest of the government, the spin doctors, the Civil Service. The COTE should be a crucial boffin in the backroom, or maybe the rhythm section, to the PM's lead vocalist
Probably the last time this system worked really well, in the UK, was Howe and Lawson under Thatcher. Then Clarke under Major. After that Brown under Blair.... but then issues arose...
Since then, nada
You don’t seem to realise that the sort of policy you are talking about is only one part of the Treasury’s job, and some of it sits outside completely. I’m not sure you realise what sits in the Bank/FCA and what functions sit in BEIS. You aren’t thinking about HMRC, spending control, debt management, or international engagement.
Yes, goddamit, you're right, I am entirely unaware of the concepts of "tax" and "debt"
The current situation is that there is assisted dying for people with money, but not for the poor.
I'm not sure that's morally justifiable.
Don’t worry. After this government is finished with us no one is going to have any money
As I have written about, when my mother was dying in hospital, a nurse openly wanted her dead. Because she was terminally ill.
There’s a reason why people who’ve studied the history of ethics don’t want the same people treating patients and “assisting” suicides.
Even silly comedies like Scrubs touched upon people in hospitals becoming callously desensitised to older, ill people taking up time and attention rather than just dying.
Yes, it is one of a number of reasons that I am not keen on the Euthanasia* Bill.
I have seen it too many times, and sometimes in myself. It's not just being glad that someone's suffering is over, but also often relief that you won't be called to see them again. There is relief for staff too when someone dies. The journey from bereavement counselling to Ash Cash is a short one.
* let's call it what it is rather than use the term "Assisted Dying"
I think its time for realpolitik. Ukraine cannot defeat Russia. A wider war where its chunks of Nato + Ukraine vs Russia could defeat Russia, but it seems very likely that Putin would push the button with his back against the wall.
Ukraine doesn't have to defeat Russia, it just has to hold on militarily until the Russian economy collapses. No country can sustain spending 40%+ of GDP on war, particularly not one under severe sanctions and with deep-seated economic issues even in peacetime.
The first signs are there now. Food prices jumping because farms cannot get labour or parts for the machines. An ever increasing percentage of the food that is grown never makes it to market because the railways have the same issues; no people, no spares, no new equipment. This is why Ukraine is expending so many of their drones hitting Russia's fuel infrastructure. Fuel shortages will dramatically these problems.
Right now Russia is Germany in late 1917. Still functioning, still with a powerful army in the field, but with the economic and logistical situation in terminal decline. The Germans knew for some time the Royal Navy's blockade of the North Sea would evidentially strangle them, hence the do-or-die gamble of throwing the entire High Seas fleet at the RN in 1916.
I remember many, many years ago reading an article written by a foreign journalist who was stationed in Berlin during the last months of the war. He went for a walk one day and recounted how all the restaurants he passed were closed, except one. He went in and looked at the menu, which contained only one meat dish; boiled crow.
Russia is at the very most a year and a half away from boiled crow.
But the analogy is entirely wrong
Why? Because Russia has China to help. The biggest trading and manufacturing economy on the planet, right next door, and perhaps the single BIGGEST economy in the world (depending on GDP PPP arguments etc)
China also has vast reserves of manpower and can chivvy tributary states into assisting Putin. NB North Korea suddenly coming up with 100,000 soldiers, what a coincidence
This changes the equation entirely. Xi Jinping has made it clear he won't let Russia lose or Putin fall. That's it. To borrow your allegory it's like Germany in World War 1 having the USA on its side, rather than opposing, only this time America is right next door to Berlin and Britain cannot blockade any of their trade
I agree with most of this. As I mentioned a few days ago, Hitler was not a nuclear dictator supported by another nuclear-armed dictator.
We need to think very carefully indeed, in this situation, before reaching for what can sometimes be tempting but ahistorical analogies.
But, if one is a nuclear-armed power, one absolutely cannot give way to threats from another nuclear-armed power. Otherwise, deterrence collapses.
What worries me is that we don't seem to be functioning within a predictable framework of deterrence , as in the Cold War, though, when roomfulls of strategists on bith sides constantly sought to review it and update it for decades.
I doubt very much that a Soviet Prsident would have ordered a full invasion of Ukraine had it come under Western influence after World War Ii, for instance, or that the West would have provided the wherewithal for Ukraine to fire into Russia in response, for instance. What is precisely most worrying me is that the ratio of unpredictable anarchy to strategy of deterrence seems to be on the rise.
Under Cold War rules, Eastern Europe was in the Soviet zone of influence. Any kind of mucking around across the Iron Curtain would have been a breach of the unwritten rules. Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, proper.
Which is part of what upsets Putin so badly. Eastern Europe isn’t supposed to have agency. They are supposed (in his mind) to give fealty to Russia.
The West didn't intervene when Stalin organised a coup in Czechoslovakia after WW2. Maybe we should have done.
With (a lot of) hindsight, we probably should have told the German army to about turn in 1945, kept them intact, and marched with them to Moscow.
I think its time for realpolitik. Ukraine cannot defeat Russia. A wider war where its chunks of Nato + Ukraine vs Russia could defeat Russia, but it seems very likely that Putin would push the button with his back against the wall.
Ukraine doesn't have to defeat Russia, it just has to hold on militarily until the Russian economy collapses. No country can sustain spending 40%+ of GDP on war, particularly not one under severe sanctions and with deep-seated economic issues even in peacetime.
The first signs are there now. Food prices jumping because farms cannot get labour or parts for the machines. An ever increasing percentage of the food that is grown never makes it to market because the railways have the same issues; no people, no spares, no new equipment. This is why Ukraine is expending so many of their drones hitting Russia's fuel infrastructure. Fuel shortages will dramatically these problems.
Right now Russia is Germany in late 1917. Still functioning, still with a powerful army in the field, but with the economic and logistical situation in terminal decline. The Germans knew for some time the Royal Navy's blockade of the North Sea would evidentially strangle them, hence the do-or-die gamble of throwing the entire High Seas fleet at the RN in 1916.
I remember many, many years ago reading an article written by a foreign journalist who was stationed in Berlin during the last months of the war. He went for a walk one day and recounted how all the restaurants he passed were closed, except one. He went in and looked at the menu, which contained only one meat dish; boiled crow.
Russia is at the very most a year and a half away from boiled crow.
But the analogy is entirely wrong
Why? Because Russia has China to help. The biggest trading and manufacturing economy on the planet, right next door, and perhaps the single BIGGEST economy in the world (depending on GDP PPP arguments etc)
China also has vast reserves of manpower and can chivvy tributary states into assisting Putin. NB North Korea suddenly coming up with 100,000 soldiers, what a coincidence
This changes the equation entirely. Xi Jinping has made it clear he won't let Russia lose or Putin fall. That's it. To borrow your allegory it's like Germany in World War 1 having the USA on its side, rather than opposing, only this time America is right next door to Berlin and Britain cannot blockade any of their trade
I agree with most of this. As I mentioned a few days ago, Hitler was not a nuclear dictator supported by another nuclear-armed dictator.
We need to think very carefully indeed, in this situation, before reaching for what can sometimes be tempting but ahistorical analogies.
But, if one is a nuclear-armed power, one absolutely cannot give way to threats from another nuclear-armed power. Otherwise, deterrence collapses.
What worries me is that we don't seem to be functioning within a predictable framework of deterrence , as in the Cold War, though, when roomfulls of strategists on bith sides constantly sought to review it and update it for decades.
I doubt very much that a Soviet Prsident would have ordered a full invasion of Ukraine had it come under Western influence after World War Ii, for instance, or that the West would have provided the wherewithal for Ukraine to fire into Russia in response, for instance. What is precisely most worrying me is that the ratio of unpredictable anarchy to strategy of deterrence seems to be on the rise.
Under Cold War rules, Eastern Europe was in the Soviet zone of influence. Any kind of mucking around across the Iron Curtain would have been a breach of the unwritten rules. Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, proper.
Which is part of what upsets Putin so badly. Eastern Europe isn’t supposed to have agency. They are supposed (in his mind) to give fealty to Russia.
The West didn't intervene when Stalin organised a coup in Czechoslovakia after WW2. Maybe we should have done.
With (a lot of) hindsight, we probably should have told the German army to about turn in 1945, kept them intact, and marched with them to Moscow.
You are the ghost of General Patton and I claim my £5.
I think its time for realpolitik. Ukraine cannot defeat Russia. A wider war where its chunks of Nato + Ukraine vs Russia could defeat Russia, but it seems very likely that Putin would push the button with his back against the wall.
Ukraine doesn't have to defeat Russia, it just has to hold on militarily until the Russian economy collapses. No country can sustain spending 40%+ of GDP on war, particularly not one under severe sanctions and with deep-seated economic issues even in peacetime.
The first signs are there now. Food prices jumping because farms cannot get labour or parts for the machines. An ever increasing percentage of the food that is grown never makes it to market because the railways have the same issues; no people, no spares, no new equipment. This is why Ukraine is expending so many of their drones hitting Russia's fuel infrastructure. Fuel shortages will dramatically these problems.
Right now Russia is Germany in late 1917. Still functioning, still with a powerful army in the field, but with the economic and logistical situation in terminal decline. The Germans knew for some time the Royal Navy's blockade of the North Sea would evidentially strangle them, hence the do-or-die gamble of throwing the entire High Seas fleet at the RN in 1916.
I remember many, many years ago reading an article written by a foreign journalist who was stationed in Berlin during the last months of the war. He went for a walk one day and recounted how all the restaurants he passed were closed, except one. He went in and looked at the menu, which contained only one meat dish; boiled crow.
Russia is at the very most a year and a half away from boiled crow.
But the analogy is entirely wrong
Why? Because Russia has China to help. The biggest trading and manufacturing economy on the planet, right next door, and perhaps the single BIGGEST economy in the world (depending on GDP PPP arguments etc)
China also has vast reserves of manpower and can chivvy tributary states into assisting Putin. NB North Korea suddenly coming up with 100,000 soldiers, what a coincidence
This changes the equation entirely. Xi Jinping has made it clear he won't let Russia lose or Putin fall. That's it. To borrow your allegory it's like Germany in World War 1 having the USA on its side, rather than opposing, only this time America is right next door to Berlin and Britain cannot blockade any of their trade
I agree with most of this. As I mentioned a few days ago, Hitler was not a nuclear dictator supported by another nuclear-armed dictator.
We need to think very carefully indeed, in this situation, before reaching for what can sometimes be tempting but ahistorical analogies.
But, if one is a nuclear-armed power, one absolutely cannot give way to threats from another nuclear-armed power. Otherwise, deterrence collapses.
What worries me is that we don't seem to be functioning within a predictable framework of deterrence , as in the Cold War, though, when roomfulls of strategists on bith sides constantly sought to review it and update it for decades.
I doubt very much that a Soviet Prsident would have ordered a full invasion of Ukraine had it come under Western influence after World War Ii, for instance, or that the West would have provided the wherewithal for Ukraine to fire into Russia in response, for instance. What is precisely most worrying me is that the ratio of unpredictable anarchy to strategy of deterrence seems to be on the rise.
Under Cold War rules, Eastern Europe was in the Soviet zone of influence. Any kind of mucking around across the Iron Curtain would have been a breach of the unwritten rules. Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, proper.
Which is part of what upsets Putin so badly. Eastern Europe isn’t supposed to have agency. They are supposed (in his mind) to give fealty to Russia.
Indeed. Another way of looking might he that the West and.Putin are operating under different assumptions of rules of deterrence and spheres of influence, creating dangerously unpredictable anarchy.
Putin assumes that Ukraine in particular, is effectively part of Russia. as it was during his formative KGB years, and so that he should use almost maximum deterrence to prevent it "falling" to the West.
The West sees Ukraine as an independent actor with sympathy to its own values, whose fall may imperial its values and territory further West.
These concepts are so divergent that any mutually understood framework for what you are deterring or limiting is very hard.
I wouldn't have a clue who Simon Russell Beale is..yet the Independent state he's "the greatest living stage actor of his generation" 🤔🥴
I like him - he was superb as Falstaff in the Hollow Crown series - but I think that honour defiently goes to Mark Rylance. I have seen him several times in Shakespeare productions and he is remarkable. I think he is probably the best actor in all fields of his generation.
Agree. Just been watching Rylance in Wolf Hall and he is absolutely mesmerising in an apparently effortless way. I can't quite put my finger on why he's so good, but even when he's silent you can't take your eyes off him.
You actually have put your finger on it. His silence; a stillness that is utterly mesmerising.
Is it any good?
I tried reading Wolf Hall and found the artificiality of Mantel's style insufferable. I guess that's not an issue with the film production, so maybe I should try it?
I would strongly recommend it. Both Damien Lewis and Mark Rylance are very believable as Henry and Cromwell.
Did you meet them? Were you a contemporary?
LOL. I mean they act naturally and beleivably as people. Something that is in short supply in most TV productions even the ones I like. Very few actors have the ability to appear 'real' as people, particularly in historic roles.
I've thought Rylance a bit mannered and unconvincing in some roles I've seen him in. In this he's excellent - despite being physically unlikely for Cromwell.
Leon's disdain, and Topping's Proust comparison both seem OTT as far as Mantel's books are concerned. FWIW, I enjoy her style.
Also Reeves IS a ridiculously incompent wanker who lied on her CV and is barely qualified to be a backbench MP let alone Chancellor of the Exchequer. That's simply the case. Is Jenrick meant to pretend this isn't true?
It's also a matter of public record now because her LinkedIn page doesn't match the CV she gave to the Labour selection panel. She lied on her CV to get selected, there's now no disputing it so Jenrick is well within his rights to say that and force Labour into a response.
Yes, Jenrick is well within his rights. However, as for forcing Labour into a response, I'm not sure that Labour will give a flying fuck what a dodgy Tory MP tweets.
Lying did for Boris.
She holds one of the great offices of state.
As did Boris.
It's fraud. She lied on her CV and said she was an economist at a major UK bank, it turns out she was in charge of a customer complaints team. She cultivated this image that she was a serious economist and had real private sector experience which landed her the position of chancellor, it's completely undeserved.
Come off it. I don’t think Starmer appointed her based on her LinkedIn profile or her CV!
She looks a prat for doing this, but it’s hardly a resigning matter. I think it was a bad Budget but she’ll get her SR. When that falls over, and it will, I expect she’ll go in the following reshuffle.
So you don't think that her bigging herself up as an economist for a major private sector UK bank helped her get the shadow chancellor gig when Labour were at their lowest ebb after the 2019 election? It's a view.
No. And nor would you if you were applying logic and rationality rather than partisan hate.
You don’t get appointed Shadow CX because of what you did for a few years before you were an MP. To suggest you do is just silly.
I yield to no one in my criticism of this Government, but based on facts rather than froth.
You do when that job was supposedly being an economist at a major bank and the job in question is being the chief economist of the country. It can't be because of any innate talent because she's fucking useless.
She isn’t chief economist of the country though? You have no idea what the Chancellor does do you?
Given his job, I have a vague sense that @MaxPB is acquainted with the daily role of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
He works in Financial services doesn’t he? A tiny part of the portfolio which barely bothers CX. It’s like saying a footballer understands the role of Minister of Sport.
No, it's like saying a successful executive at a professional football club in English League One has no idea of the pressures and obligations surrounding the head of the FA
Eh? No it really isn’t. But since he understands and recognises my point above, I don’t really need to educate you.
Well I'll try and educate you, then
It means he understands the basic maths of football: crowds, TV, income, transfers, stars, merchandise. However he may not be totally au fait with the extra political role that someone like the head of the FA has to also perform, on TOP of the football maths
Nonetheless he has a basic but informed insight into the job of the FA's head, much more than the average dude from Newent
There ya go. Now you understand. You didn't even have to consult ChatGPT
Sigh….
Yes that’s why your example is silly. You’re implying that the knowledge required to be good at fund management and working with startups represents the majority, or even a decent chunk, of the issues you have to think about as CX.
It doesn’t.
Yes, it does
In an ideal world the job of COTE is simple: to get the economy purring. To get the economics right. Secondary to that - literally, secondary - is the politics. He/she has to be cognisant of politics but in a well-functioning government the politics should mainly be done by the PM, by the rest of the government, the spin doctors, the Civil Service. The COTE should be a crucial boffin in the backroom, or maybe the rhythm section, to the PM's lead vocalist
Probably the last time this system worked really well, in the UK, was Howe and Lawson under Thatcher. Then Clarke under Major. After that Brown under Blair.... but then issues arose...
Since then, nada
You don’t seem to realise that the sort of policy you are talking about is only one part of the Treasury’s job, and some of it sits outside completely. I’m not sure you realise what sits in the Bank/FCA and what functions sit in BEIS. You aren’t thinking about HMRC, spending control, debt management, or international engagement.
Yes, goddamit, you're right, I am entirely unaware of the concepts of "tax" and "debt"
In fact, reading your posts, I am not sure you even know what economics is and isn’t. Bless.
I think its time for realpolitik. Ukraine cannot defeat Russia. A wider war where its chunks of Nato + Ukraine vs Russia could defeat Russia, but it seems very likely that Putin would push the button with his back against the wall.
Ukraine doesn't have to defeat Russia, it just has to hold on militarily until the Russian economy collapses. No country can sustain spending 40%+ of GDP on war, particularly not one under severe sanctions and with deep-seated economic issues even in peacetime.
The first signs are there now. Food prices jumping because farms cannot get labour or parts for the machines. An ever increasing percentage of the food that is grown never makes it to market because the railways have the same issues; no people, no spares, no new equipment. This is why Ukraine is expending so many of their drones hitting Russia's fuel infrastructure. Fuel shortages will dramatically these problems.
Right now Russia is Germany in late 1917. Still functioning, still with a powerful army in the field, but with the economic and logistical situation in terminal decline. The Germans knew for some time the Royal Navy's blockade of the North Sea would evidentially strangle them, hence the do-or-die gamble of throwing the entire High Seas fleet at the RN in 1916.
I remember many, many years ago reading an article written by a foreign journalist who was stationed in Berlin during the last months of the war. He went for a walk one day and recounted how all the restaurants he passed were closed, except one. He went in and looked at the menu, which contained only one meat dish; boiled crow.
Russia is at the very most a year and a half away from boiled crow.
But the analogy is entirely wrong
Why? Because Russia has China to help. The biggest trading and manufacturing economy on the planet, right next door, and perhaps the single BIGGEST economy in the world (depending on GDP PPP arguments etc)
China also has vast reserves of manpower and can chivvy tributary states into assisting Putin. NB North Korea suddenly coming up with 100,000 soldiers, what a coincidence
This changes the equation entirely. Xi Jinping has made it clear he won't let Russia lose or Putin fall. That's it. To borrow your allegory it's like Germany in World War 1 having the USA on its side, rather than opposing, only this time America is right next door to Berlin and Britain cannot blockade any of their trade
I agree with most of this. As I mentioned a few days ago, Hitler was not a nuclear dictator supported by another nuclear-armed dictator.
We need to think very carefully indeed, in this situation, before reaching for what can sometimes be tempting but ahistorical analogies.
But, if one is a nuclear-armed power, one absolutely cannot give way to threats from another nuclear-armed power. Otherwise, deterrence collapses.
What worries me is that we don't seem to be functioning within a predictable framework of deterrence , as in the Cold War, though, when roomfulls of strategists on bith sides constantly sought to review it and update it for decades.
I doubt very much that a Soviet Prsident would have ordered a full invasion of Ukraine had it come under Western influence after World War Ii, for instance, or that the West would have provided the wherewithal for Ukraine to fire into Russia in response, for instance. What is precisely most worrying me is that the ratio of unpredictable anarchy to strategy of deterrence seems to be on the rise.
Under Cold War rules, Eastern Europe was in the Soviet zone of influence. Any kind of mucking around across the Iron Curtain would have been a breach of the unwritten rules. Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, proper.
Which is part of what upsets Putin so badly. Eastern Europe isn’t supposed to have agency. They are supposed (in his mind) to give fealty to Russia.
The West didn't intervene when Stalin organised a coup in Czechoslovakia after WW2. Maybe we should have done.
With (a lot of) hindsight, we probably should have told the German army to about turn in 1945, kept them intact, and marched with them to Moscow.
You are the ghost of General Patton and I claim my £5.
Also Reeves IS a ridiculously incompent wanker who lied on her CV and is barely qualified to be a backbench MP let alone Chancellor of the Exchequer. That's simply the case. Is Jenrick meant to pretend this isn't true?
It's also a matter of public record now because her LinkedIn page doesn't match the CV she gave to the Labour selection panel. She lied on her CV to get selected, there's now no disputing it so Jenrick is well within his rights to say that and force Labour into a response.
Yes, Jenrick is well within his rights. However, as for forcing Labour into a response, I'm not sure that Labour will give a flying fuck what a dodgy Tory MP tweets.
Lying did for Boris.
She holds one of the great offices of state.
As did Boris.
It's fraud. She lied on her CV and said she was an economist at a major UK bank, it turns out she was in charge of a customer complaints team. She cultivated this image that she was a serious economist and had real private sector experience which landed her the position of chancellor, it's completely undeserved.
Come off it. I don’t think Starmer appointed her based on her LinkedIn profile or her CV!
She looks a prat for doing this, but it’s hardly a resigning matter. I think it was a bad Budget but she’ll get her SR. When that falls over, and it will, I expect she’ll go in the following reshuffle.
So you don't think that her bigging herself up as an economist for a major private sector UK bank helped her get the shadow chancellor gig when Labour were at their lowest ebb after the 2019 election? It's a view.
No. And nor would you if you were applying logic and rationality rather than partisan hate.
You don’t get appointed Shadow CX because of what you did for a few years before you were an MP. To suggest you do is just silly.
I yield to no one in my criticism of this Government, but based on facts rather than froth.
You do when that job was supposedly being an economist at a major bank and the job in question is being the chief economist of the country. It can't be because of any innate talent because she's fucking useless.
She isn’t chief economist of the country though? You have no idea what the Chancellor does do you?
Given his job, I have a vague sense that @MaxPB is acquainted with the daily role of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
He works in Financial services doesn’t he? A tiny part of the portfolio which barely bothers CX. It’s like saying a footballer understands the role of Minister of Sport.
No, it's like saying a successful executive at a professional football club in English League One has no idea of the pressures and obligations surrounding the head of the FA
Eh? No it really isn’t. But since he understands and recognises my point above, I don’t really need to educate you.
Well I'll try and educate you, then
It means he understands the basic maths of football: crowds, TV, income, transfers, stars, merchandise. However he may not be totally au fait with the extra political role that someone like the head of the FA has to also perform, on TOP of the football maths
Nonetheless he has a basic but informed insight into the job of the FA's head, much more than the average dude from Newent
There ya go. Now you understand. You didn't even have to consult ChatGPT
Sigh….
Yes that’s why your example is silly. You’re implying that the knowledge required to be good at fund management and working with startups represents the majority, or even a decent chunk, of the issues you have to think about as CX.
It doesn’t.
Yes, it does
In an ideal world the job of COTE is simple: to get the economy purring. To get the economics right. Secondary to that - literally, secondary - is the politics. He/she has to be cognisant of politics but in a well-functioning government the politics should mainly be done by the PM, by the rest of the government, the spin doctors, the Civil Service. The COTE should be a crucial boffin in the backroom, or maybe the rhythm section, to the PM's lead vocalist
Probably the last time this system worked really well, in the UK, was Howe and Lawson under Thatcher. Then Clarke under Major. After that Brown under Blair.... but then issues arose...
Since then, nada
You don’t seem to realise that the sort of policy you are talking about is only one part of the Treasury’s job, and some of it sits outside completely. I’m not sure you realise what sits in the Bank/FCA and what functions sit in BEIS. You aren’t thinking about HMRC, spending control, debt management, or international engagement.
Yes, goddamit, you're right, I am entirely unaware of the concepts of "tax" and "debt"
In fact, reading your posts, I am not sure you even know what economics is and isn’t. Bless.
You're a retired civil servant who worries that he won't make it to the loo on time
After getting mugged in Rome at the start of the year, I decided to go to somewhere that might not be famous for "spontaneity" according to Sean_T on PB about 6 years ago IIRC, but hopefully I won't get robbed, lol.
Looking at the papers. This seems a huge moment for the British Press. First British Weapons on Russian soil, since we tried to stop Putin’s equally undemocratic and murderous predecessors in 1919. And I strongly agree with you all, if Trump had not won, Biden and Starmer would never have got this involved.
Hopefully the Russian media reports how humiliating it is for them, as our press is seeing it, their battlefield commanders wiped out in bunkers by UK today. And we have beaten the French into the game as well, bet they are livid too.
If London is nuked, the bad radiation clouds may never reach Yorkshire, it depends which way the wind blows? That would have to be a cyclone in the North Sea?
Also Reeves IS a ridiculously incompent wanker who lied on her CV and is barely qualified to be a backbench MP let alone Chancellor of the Exchequer. That's simply the case. Is Jenrick meant to pretend this isn't true?
It's also a matter of public record now because her LinkedIn page doesn't match the CV she gave to the Labour selection panel. She lied on her CV to get selected, there's now no disputing it so Jenrick is well within his rights to say that and force Labour into a response.
Yes, Jenrick is well within his rights. However, as for forcing Labour into a response, I'm not sure that Labour will give a flying fuck what a dodgy Tory MP tweets.
Lying did for Boris.
She holds one of the great offices of state.
As did Boris.
It's fraud. She lied on her CV and said she was an economist at a major UK bank, it turns out she was in charge of a customer complaints team. She cultivated this image that she was a serious economist and had real private sector experience which landed her the position of chancellor, it's completely undeserved.
Come off it. I don’t think Starmer appointed her based on her LinkedIn profile or her CV!
She looks a prat for doing this, but it’s hardly a resigning matter. I think it was a bad Budget but she’ll get her SR. When that falls over, and it will, I expect she’ll go in the following reshuffle.
So you don't think that her bigging herself up as an economist for a major private sector UK bank helped her get the shadow chancellor gig when Labour were at their lowest ebb after the 2019 election? It's a view.
No. And nor would you if you were applying logic and rationality rather than partisan hate.
You don’t get appointed Shadow CX because of what you did for a few years before you were an MP. To suggest you do is just silly.
I yield to no one in my criticism of this Government, but based on facts rather than froth.
You do when that job was supposedly being an economist at a major bank and the job in question is being the chief economist of the country. It can't be because of any innate talent because she's fucking useless.
She isn’t chief economist of the country though? You have no idea what the Chancellor does do you?
Given his job, I have a vague sense that @MaxPB is acquainted with the daily role of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
He works in Financial services doesn’t he? A tiny part of the portfolio which barely bothers CX. It’s like saying a footballer understands the role of Minister of Sport.
No, it's like saying a successful executive at a professional football club in English League One has no idea of the pressures and obligations surrounding the head of the FA
Eh? No it really isn’t. But since he understands and recognises my point above, I don’t really need to educate you.
Well I'll try and educate you, then
It means he understands the basic maths of football: crowds, TV, income, transfers, stars, merchandise. However he may not be totally au fait with the extra political role that someone like the head of the FA has to also perform, on TOP of the football maths
Nonetheless he has a basic but informed insight into the job of the FA's head, much more than the average dude from Newent
There ya go. Now you understand. You didn't even have to consult ChatGPT
Sigh….
Yes that’s why your example is silly. You’re implying that the knowledge required to be good at fund management and working with startups represents the majority, or even a decent chunk, of the issues you have to think about as CX.
It doesn’t.
Yes, it does
In an ideal world the job of COTE is simple: to get the economy purring. To get the economics right. Secondary to that - literally, secondary - is the politics. He/she has to be cognisant of politics but in a well-functioning government the politics should mainly be done by the PM, by the rest of the government, the spin doctors, the Civil Service. The COTE should be a crucial boffin in the backroom, or maybe the rhythm section, to the PM's lead vocalist
Probably the last time this system worked really well, in the UK, was Howe and Lawson under Thatcher. Then Clarke under Major. After that Brown under Blair.... but then issues arose...
Since then, nada
You don’t seem to realise that the sort of policy you are talking about is only one part of the Treasury’s job, and some of it sits outside completely. I’m not sure you realise what sits in the Bank/FCA and what functions sit in BEIS. You aren’t thinking about HMRC, spending control, debt management, or international engagement.
Yes, goddamit, you're right, I am entirely unaware of the concepts of "tax" and "debt"
In fact, reading your posts, I am not sure you even know what economics is and isn’t. Bless.
You're a retired civil servant who worries that he won't make it to the loo on time
Such is the relentless march of time, happens to us all, some sooner than others.
The current situation is that there is assisted dying for people with money, but not for the poor.
I'm not sure that's morally justifiable.
Don’t worry. After this government is finished with us no one is going to have any money
As I have written about, when my mother was dying in hospital, a nurse openly wanted her dead. Because she was terminally ill.
There’s a reason why people who’ve studied the history of ethics don’t want the same people treating patients and “assisting” suicides.
Even silly comedies like Scrubs touched upon people in hospitals becoming callously desensitised to older, ill people taking up time and attention rather than just dying.
Yes, it is one of a number of reasons that I am not keen on the Euthanasia* Bill.
I have seen it too many times, and sometimes in myself. It's not just being glad that someone's suffering is over, but also often relief that you won't be called to see them again. There is relief for staff too when someone dies. The journey from bereavement counselling to Ash Cash is a short one.
* let's call it what it is rather than use the term "Assisted Dying"
A brutal but honest reflection there, well done.
I'm opposed for a number of reasons, but what it could do to people in the medical field is an aspect of it.
Almost a quarter of a billion quid spent on this "lessons will learnt" farce..🧐🥴
Well 300,000 people died, almost as many as died in WW2 so maybe it’s worth a go? There are some very important lessons, which sadly, I doubt will really make changes. But it needed doing.
I think its time for realpolitik. Ukraine cannot defeat Russia. A wider war where its chunks of Nato + Ukraine vs Russia could defeat Russia, but it seems very likely that Putin would push the button with his back against the wall.
Ukraine doesn't have to defeat Russia, it just has to hold on militarily until the Russian economy collapses. No country can sustain spending 40%+ of GDP on war, particularly not one under severe sanctions and with deep-seated economic issues even in peacetime.
The first signs are there now. Food prices jumping because farms cannot get labour or parts for the machines. An ever increasing percentage of the food that is grown never makes it to market because the railways have the same issues; no people, no spares, no new equipment. This is why Ukraine is expending so many of their drones hitting Russia's fuel infrastructure. Fuel shortages will dramatically these problems.
Right now Russia is Germany in late 1917. Still functioning, still with a powerful army in the field, but with the economic and logistical situation in terminal decline. The Germans knew for some time the Royal Navy's blockade of the North Sea would evidentially strangle them, hence the do-or-die gamble of throwing the entire High Seas fleet at the RN in 1916.
I remember many, many years ago reading an article written by a foreign journalist who was stationed in Berlin during the last months of the war. He went for a walk one day and recounted how all the restaurants he passed were closed, except one. He went in and looked at the menu, which contained only one meat dish; boiled crow.
Russia is at the very most a year and a half away from boiled crow.
But the analogy is entirely wrong
Why? Because Russia has China to help. The biggest trading and manufacturing economy on the planet, right next door, and perhaps the single BIGGEST economy in the world (depending on GDP PPP arguments etc)
China also has vast reserves of manpower and can chivvy tributary states into assisting Putin. NB North Korea suddenly coming up with 100,000 soldiers, what a coincidence
This changes the equation entirely. Xi Jinping has made it clear he won't let Russia lose or Putin fall. That's it. To borrow your allegory it's like Germany in World War 1 having the USA on its side, rather than opposing, only this time America is right next door to Berlin and Britain cannot blockade any of their trade
I agree with most of this. As I mentioned a few days ago, Hitler was not a nuclear dictator supported by another nuclear-armed dictator.
We need to think very carefully indeed, in this situation, before reaching for what can sometimes be tempting but ahistorical analogies.
But, if one is a nuclear-armed power, one absolutely cannot give way to threats from another nuclear-armed power. Otherwise, deterrence collapses.
What worries me is that we don't seem to be functioning within a predictable framework of deterrence , as in the Cold War, though, when roomfulls of strategists on bith sides constantly sought to review it and update it for decades.
I doubt very much that a Soviet Prsident would have ordered a full invasion of Ukraine had it come under Western influence after World War Ii, for instance, or that the West would have provided the wherewithal for Ukraine to fire into Russia in response, for instance. What is precisely most worrying me is that the ratio of unpredictable anarchy to strategy of deterrence seems to be on the rise.
Under Cold War rules, Eastern Europe was in the Soviet zone of influence. Any kind of mucking around across the Iron Curtain would have been a breach of the unwritten rules. Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, proper.
Which is part of what upsets Putin so badly. Eastern Europe isn’t supposed to have agency. They are supposed (in his mind) to give fealty to Russia.
The West didn't intervene when Stalin organised a coup in Czechoslovakia after WW2. Maybe we should have done.
With (a lot of) hindsight, we probably should have told the German army to about turn in 1945, kept them intact, and marched with them to Moscow.
You are the ghost of General Patton and I claim my £5.
That’s pretty much what the Stauffenberg plotters hoped to achieve, I think. They rather misjudged the attitudes in the West.
Also Reeves IS a ridiculously incompent wanker who lied on her CV and is barely qualified to be a backbench MP let alone Chancellor of the Exchequer. That's simply the case. Is Jenrick meant to pretend this isn't true?
It's also a matter of public record now because her LinkedIn page doesn't match the CV she gave to the Labour selection panel. She lied on her CV to get selected, there's now no disputing it so Jenrick is well within his rights to say that and force Labour into a response.
Yes, Jenrick is well within his rights. However, as for forcing Labour into a response, I'm not sure that Labour will give a flying fuck what a dodgy Tory MP tweets.
Lying did for Boris.
She holds one of the great offices of state.
As did Boris.
It's fraud. She lied on her CV and said she was an economist at a major UK bank, it turns out she was in charge of a customer complaints team. She cultivated this image that she was a serious economist and had real private sector experience which landed her the position of chancellor, it's completely undeserved.
Come off it. I don’t think Starmer appointed her based on her LinkedIn profile or her CV!
She looks a prat for doing this, but it’s hardly a resigning matter. I think it was a bad Budget but she’ll get her SR. When that falls over, and it will, I expect she’ll go in the following reshuffle.
So you don't think that her bigging herself up as an economist for a major private sector UK bank helped her get the shadow chancellor gig when Labour were at their lowest ebb after the 2019 election? It's a view.
No. And nor would you if you were applying logic and rationality rather than partisan hate.
You don’t get appointed Shadow CX because of what you did for a few years before you were an MP. To suggest you do is just silly.
I yield to no one in my criticism of this Government, but based on facts rather than froth.
You do when that job was supposedly being an economist at a major bank and the job in question is being the chief economist of the country. It can't be because of any innate talent because she's fucking useless.
She isn’t chief economist of the country though? You have no idea what the Chancellor does do you?
Given his job, I have a vague sense that @MaxPB is acquainted with the daily role of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
He works in Financial services doesn’t he? A tiny part of the portfolio which barely bothers CX. It’s like saying a footballer understands the role of Minister of Sport.
No, it's like saying a successful executive at a professional football club in English League One has no idea of the pressures and obligations surrounding the head of the FA
Eh? No it really isn’t. But since he understands and recognises my point above, I don’t really need to educate you.
Well I'll try and educate you, then
It means he understands the basic maths of football: crowds, TV, income, transfers, stars, merchandise. However he may not be totally au fait with the extra political role that someone like the head of the FA has to also perform, on TOP of the football maths
Nonetheless he has a basic but informed insight into the job of the FA's head, much more than the average dude from Newent
There ya go. Now you understand. You didn't even have to consult ChatGPT
Sigh….
Yes that’s why your example is silly. You’re implying that the knowledge required to be good at fund management and working with startups represents the majority, or even a decent chunk, of the issues you have to think about as CX.
It doesn’t.
Yes, it does
In an ideal world the job of COTE is simple: to get the economy purring. To get the economics right. Secondary to that - literally, secondary - is the politics. He/she has to be cognisant of politics but in a well-functioning government the politics should mainly be done by the PM, by the rest of the government, the spin doctors, the Civil Service. The COTE should be a crucial boffin in the backroom, or maybe the rhythm section, to the PM's lead vocalist
Probably the last time this system worked really well, in the UK, was Howe and Lawson under Thatcher. Then Clarke under Major. After that Brown under Blair.... but then issues arose...
Since then, nada
You don’t seem to realise that the sort of policy you are talking about is only one part of the Treasury’s job, and some of it sits outside completely. I’m not sure you realise what sits in the Bank/FCA and what functions sit in BEIS. You aren’t thinking about HMRC, spending control, debt management, or international engagement.
Yes, goddamit, you're right, I am entirely unaware of the concepts of "tax" and "debt"
In fact, reading your posts, I am not sure you even know what economics is and isn’t. Bless.
You're a retired civil servant who worries that he won't make it to the loo on time
Such is the relentless march of time, happens to us all, some sooner than others.
Oh indeed. I can see the horizon, myself
But I won't let that stop me gratuitously insulting others
Almost a quarter of a billion quid spent on this "lessons will learnt" farce..🧐🥴
Well 300,000 people died, almost as many as died in WW2 so maybe it’s worth a go? There are some very important lessons, which sadly, I doubt will really make changes. But it needed doing.
They could have investigated the obvious origin in the Wuhan lab, but when the great Michael Gove brought that up - and he is truly a great man, editor or politician - then he was very briskly hushed and told NOT to talk about it. Weird, that. Almost like they were all worried the lab origin might become obvously true after about two minutes of scrutiny, along with the fact that the science establishment in the UK conspired with their equivalents in the USA to cover up this fact, for at least a year
Almost a quarter of a billion quid spent on this "lessons will learnt" farce..🧐🥴
Well 300,000 people died, almost as many as died in WW2 so maybe it’s worth a go? There are some very important lessons, which sadly, I doubt will really make changes. But it needed doing.
Also Reeves IS a ridiculously incompent wanker who lied on her CV and is barely qualified to be a backbench MP let alone Chancellor of the Exchequer. That's simply the case. Is Jenrick meant to pretend this isn't true?
It's also a matter of public record now because her LinkedIn page doesn't match the CV she gave to the Labour selection panel. She lied on her CV to get selected, there's now no disputing it so Jenrick is well within his rights to say that and force Labour into a response.
Yes, Jenrick is well within his rights. However, as for forcing Labour into a response, I'm not sure that Labour will give a flying fuck what a dodgy Tory MP tweets.
Lying did for Boris.
She holds one of the great offices of state.
As did Boris.
It's fraud. She lied on her CV and said she was an economist at a major UK bank, it turns out she was in charge of a customer complaints team. She cultivated this image that she was a serious economist and had real private sector experience which landed her the position of chancellor, it's completely undeserved.
Come off it. I don’t think Starmer appointed her based on her LinkedIn profile or her CV!
She looks a prat for doing this, but it’s hardly a resigning matter. I think it was a bad Budget but she’ll get her SR. When that falls over, and it will, I expect she’ll go in the following reshuffle.
So you don't think that her bigging herself up as an economist for a major private sector UK bank helped her get the shadow chancellor gig when Labour were at their lowest ebb after the 2019 election? It's a view.
No. And nor would you if you were applying logic and rationality rather than partisan hate.
You don’t get appointed Shadow CX because of what you did for a few years before you were an MP. To suggest you do is just silly.
I yield to no one in my criticism of this Government, but based on facts rather than froth.
You do when that job was supposedly being an economist at a major bank and the job in question is being the chief economist of the country. It can't be because of any innate talent because she's fucking useless.
She isn’t chief economist of the country though? You have no idea what the Chancellor does do you?
Given his job, I have a vague sense that @MaxPB is acquainted with the daily role of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
He works in Financial services doesn’t he? A tiny part of the portfolio which barely bothers CX. It’s like saying a footballer understands the role of Minister of Sport.
Fund management for a while but then I moved into startup funding and consulting. As you say I'm not sure it's that relevant other than understanding the basis of why her policies are shite. I still don't understand how she's managed to borrow £150bn extra and produce less growth than before, it implies the rest of her budget measures have hugely negative multipliers which makes her a bad chancellor.
We have no idea how much growth there is going to be (if any) over the next few years
Almost a quarter of a billion quid spent on this "lessons will learnt" farce..🧐🥴
Well 300,000 people died, almost as many as died in WW2 so maybe it’s worth a go? There are some very important lessons, which sadly, I doubt will really make changes. But it needed doing.
They could have investigated the obvious origin in the Wuhan lab, but when the great Michael Gove brought that up - and he is truly a great man, editor or politician - then he was very briskly hushed and told NOT to talk about it. Weird, that. Almost like they were all worried the lan origin might become obvously true after about two minutes of scrutiny, along with the fact that the science establishment in the UK conspired with their equivalents in the USA to cover up this fact, for at least a year
The origin is irrelevant to our response. Issues such as running very efficient hospitals (e.g. occupancy into the high 90’s) meant there was little surge capacity for instance. The sticks of PPE that never got rotated into use. Lots of lessons to be learned. Avoiding betting the house on the wrong mode of transmission. Taking other factors into account when considering imprisoning the country in their homes. Sadly I doubt that we will implement much of the findings.
The current situation is that there is assisted dying for people with money, but not for the poor.
I'm not sure that's morally justifiable.
Don’t worry. After this government is finished with us no one is going to have any money
As I have written about, when my mother was dying in hospital, a nurse openly wanted her dead. Because she was terminally ill.
There’s a reason why people who’ve studied the history of ethics don’t want the same people treating patients and “assisting” suicides.
Even silly comedies like Scrubs touched upon people in hospitals becoming callously desensitised to older, ill people taking up time and attention rather than just dying.
Yes, it is one of a number of reasons that I am not keen on the Euthanasia* Bill.
I have seen it too many times, and sometimes in myself. It's not just being glad that someone's suffering is over, but also often relief that you won't be called to see them again. There is relief for staff too when someone dies. The journey from bereavement counselling to Ash Cash is a short one.
* let's call it what it is rather than use the term "Assisted Dying"
A brutal but honest reflection there, well done.
I'm opposed for a number of reasons, but what it could do to people in the medical field is an aspect of it.
Keeping the right balance between empathy and objectivity is the hardest bit to being a Doctor. Over empathise with patients and you risk losing objectivity in their treatment, don't empathise enough and you risk becoming callously and arrogant. You need a certain mental detachment in order to drill a hole in someone's skull, or stick a needle in their heart, you can't be thinking of what will happen to their dependents if you slip. I have seen people fail both ways and recognised warning signs in myself.
I think its time for realpolitik. Ukraine cannot defeat Russia. A wider war where its chunks of Nato + Ukraine vs Russia could defeat Russia, but it seems very likely that Putin would push the button with his back against the wall.
Ukraine doesn't have to defeat Russia, it just has to hold on militarily until the Russian economy collapses. No country can sustain spending 40%+ of GDP on war, particularly not one under severe sanctions and with deep-seated economic issues even in peacetime.
The first signs are there now. Food prices jumping because farms cannot get labour or parts for the machines. An ever increasing percentage of the food that is grown never makes it to market because the railways have the same issues; no people, no spares, no new equipment. This is why Ukraine is expending so many of their drones hitting Russia's fuel infrastructure. Fuel shortages will dramatically these problems.
Right now Russia is Germany in late 1917. Still functioning, still with a powerful army in the field, but with the economic and logistical situation in terminal decline. The Germans knew for some time the Royal Navy's blockade of the North Sea would evidentially strangle them, hence the do-or-die gamble of throwing the entire High Seas fleet at the RN in 1916.
I remember many, many years ago reading an article written by a foreign journalist who was stationed in Berlin during the last months of the war. He went for a walk one day and recounted how all the restaurants he passed were closed, except one. He went in and looked at the menu, which contained only one meat dish; boiled crow.
Russia is at the very most a year and a half away from boiled crow.
But the analogy is entirely wrong
Why? Because Russia has China to help. The biggest trading and manufacturing economy on the planet, right next door, and perhaps the single BIGGEST economy in the world (depending on GDP PPP arguments etc)
China also has vast reserves of manpower and can chivvy tributary states into assisting Putin. NB North Korea suddenly coming up with 100,000 soldiers, what a coincidence
This changes the equation entirely. Xi Jinping has made it clear he won't let Russia lose or Putin fall. That's it. To borrow your allegory it's like Germany in World War 1 having the USA on its side, rather than opposing, only this time America is right next door to Berlin and Britain cannot blockade any of their trade
I agree with most of this. As I mentioned a few days ago, Hitler was not a nuclear dictator supported by another nuclear-armed dictator.
We need to think very carefully indeed, in this situation, before reaching for what can sometimes be tempting but ahistorical analogies.
But, if one is a nuclear-armed power, one absolutely cannot give way to threats from another nuclear-armed power. Otherwise, deterrence collapses.
What worries me is that we don't seem to be functioning within a predictable framework of deterrence , as in the Cold War, though, when roomfulls of strategists on bith sides constantly sought to review it and update it for decades.
I doubt very much that a Soviet Prsident would have ordered a full invasion of Ukraine had it come under Western influence after World War Ii, for instance, or that the West would have provided the wherewithal for Ukraine to fire into Russia in response, for instance. What is precisely most worrying me is that the ratio of unpredictable anarchy to strategy of deterrence seems to be on the rise.
Under Cold War rules, Eastern Europe was in the Soviet zone of influence. Any kind of mucking around across the Iron Curtain would have been a breach of the unwritten rules. Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, proper.
Which is part of what upsets Putin so badly. Eastern Europe isn’t supposed to have agency. They are supposed (in his mind) to give fealty to Russia.
The West didn't intervene when Stalin organised a coup in Czechoslovakia after WW2. Maybe we should have done.
With (a lot of) hindsight, we probably should have told the German army to about turn in 1945, kept them intact, and marched with them to Moscow.
You are the ghost of General Patton and I claim my £5.
That’s pretty much what the Stauffenberg plotters hoped to achieve, I think. They rather misjudged the attitudes in the West.
Looking at the papers. This seems a huge moment for the British Press. First British Weapons on Russian soil, since we tried to stop Putin’s equally undemocratic and murderous predecessors in 1919. And I strongly agree with you all, if Trump had not won, Biden and Starmer would never have got this involved.
Hopefully the Russian media reports how humiliating it is for them, as our press is seeing it, their battlefield commanders wiped out in bunkers by UK today. And we have beaten the French into the game as well, bet they are livid too.
If London is nuked, the bad radiation clouds may never reach Yorkshire, it depends which way the wind blows? That would have to be a cyclone in the North Sea?
Why did so many people want to shut down any discussion of the possibility that the virus may have come from a Wuhan lab? I still don't get it.
1. A bunch of Americans slyly funded the Wuhan coronavirus research: Fauci, Collins, the NIH
2. This was arguably against US law brought in by Obama, which forbade "gain of function" virology, precisely because it is so dangerous (Fauci is actually on record on video saying this GOF research is "risky, but worth it")
3. They knew from the start Covid probably came from the lab ("it is so friggin likely") and they panicked
4. They were terrified they'd get lynched for killing 25 million people
5. They "genuinely" feared that being honest would jeopardise co-operation, on many fronts, with China
6. A lot of them rely on Chinese funding and goodwill, see point 5
7. They "genuinely" feared that being honest would reduce the public trust of science, and science journals etc
8. Naked cowardice
Add it all up, and you have LOTS of people, in the USA and China (and also the UK, Holland, etc) with mighty motivations to deny the obvious, and to overtly lie in this cause (eg the Lancet Letter, now utterly discredited)
The current situation is that there is assisted dying for people with money, but not for the poor.
I'm not sure that's morally justifiable.
Don’t worry. After this government is finished with us no one is going to have any money
As I have written about, when my mother was dying in hospital, a nurse openly wanted her dead. Because she was terminally ill.
There’s a reason why people who’ve studied the history of ethics don’t want the same people treating patients and “assisting” suicides.
Even silly comedies like Scrubs touched upon people in hospitals becoming callously desensitised to older, ill people taking up time and attention rather than just dying.
Yes, it is one of a number of reasons that I am not keen on the Euthanasia* Bill.
I have seen it too many times, and sometimes in myself. It's not just being glad that someone's suffering is over, but also often relief that you won't be called to see them again. There is relief for staff too when someone dies. The journey from bereavement counselling to Ash Cash is a short one.
* let's call it what it is rather than use the term "Assisted Dying"
A brutal but honest reflection there, well done.
I'm opposed for a number of reasons, but what it could do to people in the medical field is an aspect of it.
Keeping the right balance between empathy and objectivity is the hardest bit to being a Doctor. Over empathise with patients and you risk losing objectivity in their treatment, don't empathise enough and you risk becoming callously and arrogant. You need a certain mental detachment in order to drill a hole in someone's skull, or stick a needle in their heart, you can't be thinking of what will happen to their dependents if you slip. I have seen people fail both ways and recognised warning signs in myself.
To take it back to silly comedies*, I remember a scene from Scrubs again on that topic, with a senior doctor talking to a younger one about why they make dark jokes sometimes and are detached, looking at a surgeon explaining to a family that something went wrong and the patient died, that he will say he's sorry, and then he would be going back to work. 'Do you think anyone else in that room is going back to work today?'.
*I get most of my life lessons from TV shows and movies.
Almost a quarter of a billion quid spent on this "lessons will learnt" farce..🧐🥴
Well 300,000 people died, almost as many as died in WW2 so maybe it’s worth a go? There are some very important lessons, which sadly, I doubt will really make changes. But it needed doing.
They could have investigated the obvious origin in the Wuhan lab, but when the great Michael Gove brought that up - and he is truly a great man, editor or politician - then he was very briskly hushed and told NOT to talk about it. Weird, that. Almost like they were all worried the lan origin might become obvously true after about two minutes of scrutiny, along with the fact that the science establishment in the UK conspired with their equivalents in the USA to cover up this fact, for at least a year
The origin is irrelevant to our response. Issues such as running very efficient hospitals (e.g. occupancy into the high 90’s) meant there was little surge capacity for instance. The sticks of PPE that never got rotated into use. Lots of lessons to be learned. Avoiding betting the house on the wrong mode of transmission. Taking other factors into account when considering imprisoning the country in their homes. Sadly I doubt that we will implement much of the findings.
Ha no.
Those are the things that *won’t* get into the findings.
I actually asked - any discussion of the policy of all in on disposable PPE (standard policy in the Western World) was Out Of Scope.
Totally agree with the premise that Opinion polling has become corrupted by the need to set an agenda for the media. It is affecting the outcome of elections and that`s not good for Democracy.
Weird polls like the Iowa poll just before the US election screamed agenda that the Selzer woman has had to retire.
Alan Cleaver @thelonningsguy · 2h On this day (Nov 20) in 1989, the last surviving postal path in Britain still being walked by a rural postman was trod for the last time. Steve McCombe walked the 7 miles from Tarbert to Rhenigidale on the Isle of Harris. A road had been built, making the path redundant.
Why did so many people want to shut down any discussion of the possibility that the virus may have come from a Wuhan lab? I still don't get it.
1. A bunch of Americans slyly funded the Wuhan coronavirus research: Fauci, Collins, the NIH
2. This was arguably against US law brought in by Obama, which forbade "gain of function" virology, precisely because it is so dangerous (Fauci is actually on record on video saying this GOF research is "risky, but worth it")
3. They knew from the start Covid probably came from the lab ("it is so friggin likely") and they panicked
4. They were terrified they'd get lynched for killing 25 million people
5. They "genuinely" feared that being honest would jeopardise co-operation, on many fronts, with China
6. A lot of them rely on Chinese funding and goodwill, see point 5 They 7. They "genuinely" feared that being honest would reduce the public trust of science, and science journals etc
8. Naked cowardice
Add it all up, and you have LOTS of people, in the USA and China (and also the UK, Holland, etc) with mighty motivations to deny the obvious, and to overtly lie in this cause (eg the Lancet Letter, now utterly discredited)
They succeeded and made fools of 8 billion people.
The current situation is that there is assisted dying for people with money, but not for the poor.
I'm not sure that's morally justifiable.
Don’t worry. After this government is finished with us no one is going to have any money
As I have written about, when my mother was dying in hospital, a nurse openly wanted her dead. Because she was terminally ill.
There’s a reason why people who’ve studied the history of ethics don’t want the same people treating patients and “assisting” suicides.
Even silly comedies like Scrubs touched upon people in hospitals becoming callously desensitised to older, ill people taking up time and attention rather than just dying.
Yes, it is one of a number of reasons that I am not keen on the Euthanasia* Bill.
I have seen it too many times, and sometimes in myself. It's not just being glad that someone's suffering is over, but also often relief that you won't be called to see them again. There is relief for staff too when someone dies. The journey from bereavement counselling to Ash Cash is a short one.
* let's call it what it is rather than use the term "Assisted Dying"
A brutal but honest reflection there, well done.
I'm opposed for a number of reasons, but what it could do to people in the medical field is an aspect of it.
Keeping the right balance between empathy and objectivity is the hardest bit to being a Doctor. Over empathise with patients and you risk losing objectivity in their treatment, don't empathise enough and you risk becoming callously and arrogant. You need a certain mental detachment in order to drill a hole in someone's skull, or stick a needle in their heart, you can't be thinking of what will happen to their dependents if you slip. I have seen people fail both ways and recognised warning signs in myself.
To take it back to silly comedies*, I remember a scene from Scrubs again on that topic, with a senior doctor talking to a younger one about why they make dark jokes sometimes and are detached, looking at a surgeon explaining to a family that something went wrong and the patient died, that he will say he's sorry, and then he would be going back to work. 'Do you think anyone else in that room is going back to work today?'.
*I get most of my life lessons from TV shows and movies.
I don't watch hospital shows as a general rule. It must be even worse for the police. I need to escape work not watch it for entertainment.
I think the moral danger is more obvious in Medicine, but I see it in other walks of life too, particularly where an individual can act in ways that impact on others. I think @DavidL manages well with his prosecutions of sex offenders. Living in that sewer corrodes ones ideas of how men and women should interact. It's hard to retain a moral compass in such work, but someone has to do it.
It's also why cops become callous. The notion that everyone else is on the make and can't be trusted seeps into how they act. Politicians risk it too, and journalists. Financiers start to believe that everyone has their price.
It's why people need time to psychologically decompress and spend time with people in completely different walks of life. We all live in bubbles to a greater or lesser degree, and that isn't always a bad thing, but some bubbles can become toxic very quickly. I've seen too many go over to the Dark Side.
The current situation is that there is assisted dying for people with money, but not for the poor.
I'm not sure that's morally justifiable.
Don’t worry. After this government is finished with us no one is going to have any money
As I have written about, when my mother was dying in hospital, a nurse openly wanted her dead. Because she was terminally ill.
There’s a reason why people who’ve studied the history of ethics don’t want the same people treating patients and “assisting” suicides.
Even silly comedies like Scrubs touched upon people in hospitals becoming callously desensitised to older, ill people taking up time and attention rather than just dying.
Yes, it is one of a number of reasons that I am not keen on the Euthanasia* Bill.
I have seen it too many times, and sometimes in myself. It's not just being glad that someone's suffering is over, but also often relief that you won't be called to see them again. There is relief for staff too when someone dies. The journey from bereavement counselling to Ash Cash is a short one.
* let's call it what it is rather than use the term "Assisted Dying"
A brutal but honest reflection there, well done.
I'm opposed for a number of reasons, but what it could do to people in the medical field is an aspect of it.
Keeping the right balance between empathy and objectivity is the hardest bit to being a Doctor. Over empathise with patients and you risk losing objectivity in their treatment, don't empathise enough and you risk becoming callously and arrogant. You need a certain mental detachment in order to drill a hole in someone's skull, or stick a needle in their heart, you can't be thinking of what will happen to their dependents if you slip. I have seen people fail both ways and recognised warning signs in myself.
To take it back to silly comedies*, I remember a scene from Scrubs again on that topic, with a senior doctor talking to a younger one about why they make dark jokes sometimes and are detached, looking at a surgeon explaining to a family that something went wrong and the patient died, that he will say he's sorry, and then he would be going back to work. 'Do you think anyone else in that room is going back to work today?'.
*I get most of my life lessons from TV shows and movies.
I don't watch hospital shows as a general rule. It must be even worse for the police. I need to escape work not watch it for entertainment.
I think the moral danger is more obvious in Medicine, but I see it in other walks of life too, particularly where an individual can act in ways that impact on others. I think @DavidL manages well with his prosecutions of sex offenders. Living in that sewer corrodes ones ideas of how men and women should interact. It's hard to retain a moral compass in such work, but someone has to do it.
It's also why cops become callous. The notion that everyone else is on the make and can't be trusted seeps into how they act. Politicians risk it too, and journalists. Financiers start to believe that everyone has their price.
It's why people need time to psychologically decompress and spend time with people in completely different walks of life. We all live in bubbles to a greater or lesser degree, and that isn't always a bad thing, but some bubbles can become toxic very quickly. I've seen too many go over to the Dark Side.
I think its time for realpolitik. Ukraine cannot defeat Russia. A wider war where its chunks of Nato + Ukraine vs Russia could defeat Russia, but it seems very likely that Putin would push the button with his back against the wall.
Ukraine doesn't have to defeat Russia, it just has to hold on militarily until the Russian economy collapses. No country can sustain spending 40%+ of GDP on war, particularly not one under severe sanctions and with deep-seated economic issues even in peacetime.
The first signs are there now. Food prices jumping because farms cannot get labour or parts for the machines. An ever increasing percentage of the food that is grown never makes it to market because the railways have the same issues; no people, no spares, no new equipment. This is why Ukraine is expending so many of their drones hitting Russia's fuel infrastructure. Fuel shortages will dramatically these problems.
Right now Russia is Germany in late 1917. Still functioning, still with a powerful army in the field, but with the economic and logistical situation in terminal decline. The Germans knew for some time the Royal Navy's blockade of the North Sea would evidentially strangle them, hence the do-or-die gamble of throwing the entire High Seas fleet at the RN in 1916.
I remember many, many years ago reading an article written by a foreign journalist who was stationed in Berlin during the last months of the war. He went for a walk one day and recounted how all the restaurants he passed were closed, except one. He went in and looked at the menu, which contained only one meat dish; boiled crow.
Russia is at the very most a year and a half away from boiled crow.
But the analogy is entirely wrong
Why? Because Russia has China to help. The biggest trading and manufacturing economy on the planet, right next door, and perhaps the single BIGGEST economy in the world (depending on GDP PPP arguments etc)
China also has vast reserves of manpower and can chivvy tributary states into assisting Putin. NB North Korea suddenly coming up with 100,000 soldiers, what a coincidence
This changes the equation entirely. Xi Jinping has made it clear he won't let Russia lose or Putin fall. That's it. To borrow your allegory it's like Germany in World War 1 having the USA on its side, rather than opposing, only this time America is right next door to Berlin and Britain cannot blockade any of their trade
I agree with most of this. As I mentioned a few days ago, Hitler was not a nuclear dictator supported by another nuclear-armed dictator.
We need to think very carefully indeed, in this situation, before reaching for what can sometimes be tempting but ahistorical analogies.
But, if one is a nuclear-armed power, one absolutely cannot give way to threats from another nuclear-armed power. Otherwise, deterrence collapses.
What worries me is that we don't seem to be functioning within a predictable framework of deterrence , as in the Cold War, though, when roomfulls of strategists on bith sides constantly sought to review it and update it for decades.
I doubt very much that a Soviet Prsident would have ordered a full invasion of Ukraine had it come under Western influence after World War Ii, for instance, or that the West would have provided the wherewithal for Ukraine to fire into Russia in response, for instance. What is precisely most worrying me is that the ratio of unpredictable anarchy to strategy of deterrence seems to be on the rise.
Under Cold War rules, Eastern Europe was in the Soviet zone of influence. Any kind of mucking around across the Iron Curtain would have been a breach of the unwritten rules. Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, proper.
Which is part of what upsets Putin so badly. Eastern Europe isn’t supposed to have agency. They are supposed (in his mind) to give fealty to Russia.
The West didn't intervene when Stalin organised a coup in Czechoslovakia after WW2. Maybe we should have done.
With (a lot of) hindsight, we probably should have told the German army to about turn in 1945, kept them intact, and marched with them to Moscow.
You are the ghost of General Patton and I claim my £5.
That’s pretty much what the Stauffenberg plotters hoped to achieve, I think. They rather misjudged the attitudes in the West.
"You did not bear the shame.
"You resisted.
"You bestowed the eternally vigilant signal to turn back
"by sacrificing your impassioned lives for freedom, justice and honour."
The current situation is that there is assisted dying for people with money, but not for the poor.
I'm not sure that's morally justifiable.
Don’t worry. After this government is finished with us no one is going to have any money
As I have written about, when my mother was dying in hospital, a nurse openly wanted her dead. Because she was terminally ill.
There’s a reason why people who’ve studied the history of ethics don’t want the same people treating patients and “assisting” suicides.
Even silly comedies like Scrubs touched upon people in hospitals becoming callously desensitised to older, ill people taking up time and attention rather than just dying.
Yes, it is one of a number of reasons that I am not keen on the Euthanasia* Bill.
I have seen it too many times, and sometimes in myself. It's not just being glad that someone's suffering is over, but also often relief that you won't be called to see them again. There is relief for staff too when someone dies. The journey from bereavement counselling to Ash Cash is a short one.
* let's call it what it is rather than use the term "Assisted Dying"
A brutal but honest reflection there, well done.
I'm opposed for a number of reasons, but what it could do to people in the medical field is an aspect of it.
Keeping the right balance between empathy and objectivity is the hardest bit to being a Doctor. Over empathise with patients and you risk losing objectivity in their treatment, don't empathise enough and you risk becoming callously and arrogant. You need a certain mental detachment in order to drill a hole in someone's skull, or stick a needle in their heart, you can't be thinking of what will happen to their dependents if you slip. I have seen people fail both ways and recognised warning signs in myself.
To take it back to silly comedies*, I remember a scene from Scrubs again on that topic, with a senior doctor talking to a younger one about why they make dark jokes sometimes and are detached, looking at a surgeon explaining to a family that something went wrong and the patient died, that he will say he's sorry, and then he would be going back to work. 'Do you think anyone else in that room is going back to work today?'.
*I get most of my life lessons from TV shows and movies.
I don't watch hospital shows as a general rule. It must be even worse for the police. I need to escape work not watch it for entertainment.
I think the moral danger is more obvious in Medicine, but I see it in other walks of life too, particularly where an individual can act in ways that impact on others. I think @DavidL manages well with his prosecutions of sex offenders. Living in that sewer corrodes ones ideas of how men and women should interact. It's hard to retain a moral compass in such work, but someone has to do it.
It's also why cops become callous. The notion that everyone else is on the make and can't be trusted seeps into how they act. Politicians risk it too, and journalists. Financiers start to believe that everyone has their price.
It's why people need time to psychologically decompress and spend time with people in completely different walks of life. We all live in bubbles to a greater or lesser degree, and that isn't always a bad thing, but some bubbles can become toxic very quickly. I've seen too many go over to the Dark Side.
Try Waterloo Road!!
Even I can see the absurdity in that show!
That's the other reason that I don't watch hospital shows. The medical and procedural gaffes grate so much.
I do make an occasional exception. I loved Green Wing for example, though perhaps because it is about staff interactions with patients barely feature.
I loathed "This is going to Hurt" by Adam Kay, though critics seemed to love it.
The current situation is that there is assisted dying for people with money, but not for the poor.
I'm not sure that's morally justifiable.
Don’t worry. After this government is finished with us no one is going to have any money
As I have written about, when my mother was dying in hospital, a nurse openly wanted her dead. Because she was terminally ill.
There’s a reason why people who’ve studied the history of ethics don’t want the same people treating patients and “assisting” suicides.
Even silly comedies like Scrubs touched upon people in hospitals becoming callously desensitised to older, ill people taking up time and attention rather than just dying.
Yes, it is one of a number of reasons that I am not keen on the Euthanasia* Bill.
I have seen it too many times, and sometimes in myself. It's not just being glad that someone's suffering is over, but also often relief that you won't be called to see them again. There is relief for staff too when someone dies. The journey from bereavement counselling to Ash Cash is a short one.
* let's call it what it is rather than use the term "Assisted Dying"
A brutal but honest reflection there, well done.
I'm opposed for a number of reasons, but what it could do to people in the medical field is an aspect of it.
Keeping the right balance between empathy and objectivity is the hardest bit to being a Doctor. Over empathise with patients and you risk losing objectivity in their treatment, don't empathise enough and you risk becoming callously and arrogant. You need a certain mental detachment in order to drill a hole in someone's skull, or stick a needle in their heart, you can't be thinking of what will happen to their dependents if you slip. I have seen people fail both ways and recognised warning signs in myself.
To take it back to silly comedies*, I remember a scene from Scrubs again on that topic, with a senior doctor talking to a younger one about why they make dark jokes sometimes and are detached, looking at a surgeon explaining to a family that something went wrong and the patient died, that he will say he's sorry, and then he would be going back to work. 'Do you think anyone else in that room is going back to work today?'.
*I get most of my life lessons from TV shows and movies.
I don't watch hospital shows as a general rule. It must be even worse for the police. I need to escape work not watch it for entertainment.
I think the moral danger is more obvious in Medicine, but I see it in other walks of life too, particularly where an individual can act in ways that impact on others. I think @DavidL manages well with his prosecutions of sex offenders. Living in that sewer corrodes ones ideas of how men and women should interact. It's hard to retain a moral compass in such work, but someone has to do it.
It's also why cops become callous. The notion that everyone else is on the make and can't be trusted seeps into how they act. Politicians risk it too, and journalists. Financiers start to believe that everyone has their price.
It's why people need time to psychologically decompress and spend time with people in completely different walks of life. We all live in bubbles to a greater or lesser degree, and that isn't always a bad thing, but some bubbles can become toxic very quickly. I've seen too many go over to the Dark Side.
Try Waterloo Road!!
Even I can see the absurdity in that show!
That's the other reason that I don't watch hospital shows. The medical and procedural gaffes grate so much.
I do make an occasional exception. I loved Green Wing for example, though perhaps because it is about staff interactions with patients barely feature.
I loathed "This is going to Hurt" by Adam Kay, though critics seemed to love it.
If we are doing medical comedies - I loved 'Getting On'.
...To take it back to silly comedies*, I remember a scene from Scrubs again on that topic, with a senior doctor talking to a younger one about why they make dark jokes sometimes and are detached, looking at a surgeon explaining to a family that something went wrong and the patient died, that he will say he's sorry, and then he would be going back to work. 'Do you think anyone else in that room is going back to work today?'...
Why? Because Russia has China to help. The biggest trading and manufacturing economy on the planet, right next door, and perhaps the single BIGGEST economy in the world (depending on GDP PPP arguments etc)
You are making the mistake of seeing China as Russia's ally. They're not. To them Putin is a idiot, but one who's stupidity serves China's purpose for the moment.
The war is useful to China for a variety of reasons, so Xi has been giving Russia some moderate help to keep the conflict rolling along. Mostly by selling them equipment, parts and raw material they can't get elsewhere because of sanctions. Help that, not coincidentally, makes China money.
That's as far as it goes. China will not sell Russia anything but the most primitive weapons, old Soviet era stuff it has lying about in warehouses going rusty. You will not see modern Chinese aircraft, tanks or missiles used by Russia, and certainly no Chinese soldiers. Xi does not want a direct conflict with the West until he's ready to jump for Taiwan.
Given how Russia's economy is cratering China would need to pump in incredible amounts of money, men and hardware to ensure Russia wins. But they're not. Compared to the support Ukraine is getting from the US and Europe, China's support for Russia barely exists. I see zero indications that will change.
I think that's complacent.
China is obviously seeking to play this for their advantage, and at the moment this means not being all-in supporting Russia. Recently this has involved Chinese banks cutting off some payment options for Russian firms, to keep on the right side of Western sanctions. But this calculation could easily change.
Consider the effect of two known Trump policies. Stopping support for Ukraine and imposing tariffs on China. The combined effect of these two policies would be to reduce the amount of help that Russia would require to prevail over Ukraine, and to reduce the incentive to China to limit their support to Russia to avoid Western sanctions.
The result could be a change in Chinese policy to provide sufficient support to Russia that it can overcome the limited European support for Ukraine, because the tariffs will mean that China will already have suffered much of any consequence for doing so.
I think it should be a swap deal, for each one of these celebs we take, we should be able to send one of ours to US. James Corden your flight to America is departing....
The internet is having so much fun with Jaguar rebrand. If the task for the PR agency was to get lots of people taking about the brand, they certainly achieved that. Not sure it will lead to lots of people buying their new perfume, that's what they sell right given the ad?
Comments
Politically she has been foolish in that she’s spent political capital on things that raise trivial amounts of revenue (she and her spads should have spotted and rejected them).
More seriously, her general policy direction seems to have been “can we vaguely do something that sounds left wing, fling some cash at the NHS, and tax employers”. I don’t understand the thesis. I would have disagreed with a John McDonnell Budget but I reckon I’d have understood his intent. And as you say, she’s managed to spend cash and not even stoke an illusionary boom.
What lessons can we learn from the Battle of Lechfeld?
We would be better off with 3p on Income Tax and a hack that kept WFA going for a bit (and yes I know I've said that a few times but come up with a better plan that could be implemented in April).
Actually I looked it up, apparently someone called Hugh Dalton was an economist and chancellor for a couple of years.
I do understand the desire for larger family. Looking back if I had been given the ability to choose an entirely different life, and forced to do so, I would have gone for a regular well-paying job but a massive entertaining family. Five kids and mess everywhere, but lots of fun, drama and guaranteed grandkids
As it happens I got to do the job of my dreams, travelling for money, and I would barely change a thing, and I still have two kids I adore, albeit widely dispersed....
But when I look at big happy families I do get a quite serious pang of "What If"
It means he understands the basic maths of football: crowds, TV, income, transfers, stars, merchandise. However he may not be totally au fait with the extra political role that someone like the head of the FA has to also perform, on TOP of the football maths
Nonetheless he has a basic but informed insight into the job of the FA's head, much more than the average dude from Newent
There ya go. Now you understand. You didn't even have to consult ChatGPT
Anyone who has done even the slightest amount of macroeconomic learning can tell you that pumping prime should produce growth, that she's failed to do so is absolutely shocking.
RR has to juggle both balls and she has brilliantly dropped both, simultaneously
Just had a look at the next Lab leader odds and somewhat surprisingly Reeves is favourite:
Rachel Reeves
5 13/2 5 13/2 11/2 7 6 6 11/2 15/2 6 7
Wes Streeting
5 15/2 7 15/2 8 7 7 6 5 7 8
Angela Rayner
10 9 8 9 10 10 9 9 9 9 9 10 823/ 100
Yvette Cooper
10 10 12 10 11 12 11 12 10 10 11 12
Andy Burnham
10 10 10 10 8 10 9 12 10 12 9 10 127/ 10
Bridget Phillipson
11 12 12 12 10 14 12 14 10 14 12 14
Lisa Nandy
14 10 14 10 14 14 14 16 16 16 14 14
I would be betting on Cooper there all day long as the only one with previous ministerial experience
Yes that’s why your example is silly. You’re implying that the knowledge required to be good at fund management and working with startups represents the majority, or even a decent chunk, of the issues you have to think about as CX.
It doesn’t.
Edit - an admirable career, and by all accounts a successful one. Not attacking him.
Edit 2 - and I’m not ever taking about the politics here. Just all the extra types of economics and fiscal issues.
"How about a nice game of Global Thermonuclear War?" - no American would use prefer...
and sorry to correct but your misquote annoyed me for some reason.
We saw that film in Leicester Square as my parents thought Return of the Jedi was still playing there and it wasn't so we saw that instead...
I've been asked to do some business consulting by a partner in a private health clinic (actually my cardiologist after we got chatting after my appointment a few weeks ago) and it's amazing how lean they run and how much automation they have in place for almost all of the admin and they're still looking for cost savings because they need to maintain competitiveness for their services vs the middle east. They're looking to roll out ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini for initial customer interaction and for first stop clinical organisation as a trial to see if the AI can bring casework together better than a person, I think it probably can.
The war is useful to China for a variety of reasons, so Xi has been giving Russia some moderate help to keep the conflict rolling along. Mostly by selling them equipment, parts and raw material they can't get elsewhere because of sanctions. Help that, not coincidentally, makes China money.
That's as far as it goes. China will not sell Russia anything but the most primitive weapons, old Soviet era stuff it has lying about in warehouses going rusty. You will not see modern Chinese aircraft, tanks or missiles used by Russia, and certainly no Chinese soldiers. Xi does not want a direct conflict with the West until he's ready to jump for Taiwan.
Given how Russia's economy is cratering China would need to pump in incredible amounts of money, men and hardware to ensure Russia wins. But they're not. Compared to the support Ukraine is getting from the US and Europe, China's support for Russia barely exists. I see zero indications that will change.
"But you don't drink, Sunil!" eek reminded him.
Oh, yeah!
Though I don't think Osborne became seen as a likely successor to Cameron until after 2015.
I doubt very much that a Soviet Prsident would have ordered a full invasion of Ukraine had it come under Western influence after World War Ii, for instance, or that the West would have provided the wherewithal for Ukraine to fire into Russia in response, for instance. What is precisely most worrying me is that the ratio of unpredictable anarchy to strategy of deterrence seems to be on the rise.
In an ideal world the job of COTE is simple: to get the economy purring. To get the economics right. Secondary to that - literally, secondary - is the politics. He/she has to be cognisant of politics but in a well-functioning government the politics should mainly be done by the PM, by the rest of the government, the spin doctors, the Civil Service. The COTE should be a crucial boffin in the backroom, or maybe the rhythm section, to the PM's lead vocalist
Probably the last time this system worked really well, in the UK, was Howe and Lawson under Thatcher. Then Clarke under Major. After that Brown under Blair.... but then issues arose...
Since then, nada
Which is part of what upsets Putin so badly. Eastern Europe isn’t supposed to have agency. They are supposed (in his mind) to give fealty to Russia.
And Wes Streeting apparently gets this, or at least he talks about it. He is the one dude who looks like he has ideas and enrgy in this absolute pitiiful shitshow of a government
- you take some rather overly-optimistic forecasts from the previous administration and make them a bit over-pessimistic so you're getting the bad news out of the way in one go
- then you introduce a bunch of supply side measures like increasing the minimum wage that will cripple the labour market
- then you change the mood music to talk down the economy, saying your predecessors left you a terrible legacy
- and you come to office at a time when everybody is talking about a global trade war
- and you increase precisely those taxes in the budget most likely to reduce economic growth
Given her staggering incompetence, I'm surprised we're projecting any growth at all. She is to the economy what Miliband is to our energy industry or Lammy to our global influence.
Almost a quarter of a billion quid spent on this "lessons will learnt" farce..🧐🥴
https://youtu.be/Kg4pGxdPTH4?si=5rVLVB4ton2kpnc9&t=129
I have seen it too many times, and sometimes in myself. It's not just being glad that someone's suffering is over, but also often relief that you won't be called to see them again. There is relief for staff too when someone dies. The journey from bereavement counselling to Ash Cash is a short one.
* let's call it what it is rather than use the term "Assisted Dying"
Putin assumes that Ukraine in particular, is effectively part of Russia. as it was during his formative KGB years, and so that he should use almost maximum deterrence to prevent it "falling" to the West.
The West sees Ukraine as an independent actor with sympathy to its own values, whose fall may imperial its values and territory further West.
These concepts are so divergent that any mutually understood framework for what you are deterring or limiting is very hard.
Leon's disdain, and Topping's Proust comparison both seem OTT as far as Mantel's books are concerned. FWIW, I enjoy her style.
"Imperial" should be imperil.
Hopefully the Russian media reports how humiliating it is for them, as our press is seeing it, their battlefield commanders wiped out in bunkers by UK today. And we have beaten the French into the game as well, bet they are livid too.
If London is nuked, the bad radiation clouds may never reach Yorkshire, it depends which way the wind blows? That would have to be a cyclone in the North Sea?
I'm opposed for a number of reasons, but what it could do to people in the medical field is an aspect of it.
There are some very important lessons, which sadly, I doubt will really make changes. But it needed doing.
That leaves only 57 (in theory) that need active whipping to vote with the party.
So each whip gets 2 - 3 people to whip.
Kemi "I will cut bureaucracy" Badenoch, everyone!
https://bsky.app/profile/garius.bsky.social/post/3lbfhdkgv4c2n
But I won't let that stop me gratuitously insulting others
How to open a door? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wof0xPUmW38
How to disco-dance? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJj6d5QSYaE
And so many more....
Strange as it sounds, we will miss them if they go
By Jack Flockhart"
https://thecritic.co.uk/why-twitter-needs-the-libs/
Sadly I doubt that we will implement much of the findings.
2. This was arguably against US law brought in by Obama, which forbade "gain of function" virology, precisely because it is so dangerous (Fauci is actually on record on video saying this GOF research is "risky, but worth it")
3. They knew from the start Covid probably came from the lab ("it is so friggin likely") and they panicked
4. They were terrified they'd get lynched for killing 25 million people
5. They "genuinely" feared that being honest would jeopardise co-operation, on many fronts, with China
6. A lot of them rely on Chinese funding and goodwill, see point 5
7. They "genuinely" feared that being honest would reduce the public trust of science, and science journals etc
8. Naked cowardice
Add it all up, and you have LOTS of people, in the USA and China (and also the UK, Holland, etc) with mighty motivations to deny the obvious, and to overtly lie in this cause (eg the Lancet Letter, now utterly discredited)
*I get most of my life lessons from TV shows and movies.
Those are the things that *won’t* get into the findings.
I actually asked - any discussion of the policy of all in on disposable PPE (standard policy in the Western World) was Out Of Scope.
Weird polls like the Iowa poll just before the US election screamed agenda that the Selzer woman has had to retire.
Alan Cleaver
@thelonningsguy
·
2h
On this day (Nov 20) in 1989, the last surviving postal path in Britain still being walked by a rural postman was trod for the last time. Steve McCombe walked the 7 miles from Tarbert to Rhenigidale on the Isle of Harris. A road had been built, making the path redundant.
https://x.com/thelonningsguy/status/1859339145048371359
I think the moral danger is more obvious in Medicine, but I see it in other walks of life too, particularly where an individual can act in ways that impact on others. I think @DavidL manages well with his prosecutions of sex offenders. Living in that sewer corrodes ones ideas of how men and women should interact. It's hard to retain a moral compass in such work, but someone has to do it.
It's also why cops become callous. The notion that everyone else is on the make and can't be trusted seeps into how they act. Politicians risk it too, and journalists. Financiers start to believe that everyone has their price.
It's why people need time to psychologically decompress and spend time with people in completely different walks of life. We all live in bubbles to a greater or lesser degree, and that isn't always a bad thing, but some bubbles can become toxic very quickly. I've seen too many go over to the Dark Side.
"You resisted.
"You bestowed the eternally vigilant signal to turn back
"by sacrificing your impassioned lives for freedom, justice and honour."
That's the other reason that I don't watch hospital shows. The medical and procedural gaffes grate so much.
I do make an occasional exception. I loved Green Wing for example, though perhaps because it is about staff interactions with patients barely feature.
I loathed "This is going to Hurt" by Adam Kay, though critics seemed to love it.
Absolute scumbags.
(ducks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_Faraway_Tree_(film)
China is obviously seeking to play this for their advantage, and at the moment this means not being all-in supporting Russia. Recently this has involved Chinese banks cutting off some payment options for Russian firms, to keep on the right side of Western sanctions. But this calculation could easily change.
Consider the effect of two known Trump policies. Stopping support for Ukraine and imposing tariffs on China. The combined effect of these two policies would be to reduce the amount of help that Russia would require to prevail over Ukraine, and to reduce the incentive to China to limit their support to Russia to avoid Western sanctions.
The result could be a change in Chinese policy to provide sufficient support to Russia that it can overcome the limited European support for Ukraine, because the tariffs will mean that China will already have suffered much of any consequence for doing so.
https://www.eonline.com/news/1410235/ellen-degeneres-and-portia-de-rossi-are-leaving-the-u-s-and-moving-to-the-u-k