The Army needs to field a fully equipped warfighting division with another in reserve. So it can place a clear continental deterrent and sustain it on the central European plain for 6 months at a time.
I can't see how it does it without regular forces going back up to 105-120k men.
That's not going to be cheap and will probably take 5-7 years to achieve.
We should learn from the Ukrainians and spend any new ones on drones, lots of drones!
Sir Keir Starmer will resist pressure from military chiefs to increase UK defence spending above the 2.5 per cent of GDP target already set, The Telegraph understands.
Senior military figures are understood to believe the Government’s current ambition would barely “touch the sides” of what is needed to fund Britain’s defence needs.
An ally of the Prime Minister told The Telegraph: “The policy we stood on at the election was 2.5 per cent on defence spending. Our policy is still 2.5 per cent. We’re not going to shift any further.”
How the hell did someone with so little political sense or ability ever become PM? It's honestly amazing how Starmer can't put the ball in the net of an open goal.
Yes, Sir Keir could become the Saviour of the Nation and destroy Reform overnight: 'Sorry Nigel. I had to raise defence spending to 20% because your mate Trump sold us out to Putin.' Sir Keir needs to go in for the kill.
sold us out to your other mate Putin...
Remember Farage's argument is that the west provoked Russia into invading the Ukraine...
Sir Keir Starmer will resist pressure from military chiefs to increase UK defence spending above the 2.5 per cent of GDP target already set, The Telegraph understands.
Senior military figures are understood to believe the Government’s current ambition would barely “touch the sides” of what is needed to fund Britain’s defence needs.
An ally of the Prime Minister told The Telegraph: “The policy we stood on at the election was 2.5 per cent on defence spending. Our policy is still 2.5 per cent. We’re not going to shift any further.”
How the hell did someone with so little political sense or ability ever become PM? It's honestly amazing how Starmer can't put the ball in the net of an open goal.
I don't really like arbitrary expenditure targets. We know that expenditure doesn't equal output, and that it can, as it does now, all go on epaulettes, sensitivity training, abortive weapons projects, and bunging cash at Mauritius.
We need to decide what our military capability needs to be in the 21st century to counter all threats to the UK, and THEN and ONLY THEN think about projecting force to aid UK interests and assist allies, work backwards from there.
Whenever I read news from Birmingham or see quirky videos, or hear Brummy gossip or funny chitchat, I always think “gosh, Birmingham sounds nice, I’d like to live there one day”
The Army needs to field a fully equipped warfighting division with another in reserve. So it can place a clear continental deterrent and sustain it on the central European plain for 6 months at a time.
I can't see how it does it without regular forces going back up to 105-120k men.
That's not going to be cheap and will probably take 5-7 years to achieve.
We should learn from the Ukrainians and spend any new ones on drones, lots of drones!
No.
We should invest in the capability to design drones, and build loads of them. Not necessarily to have tens of thousands going dusty in storage.
But also, invest in the countermeasures. This is somewhere, anecdotally, we are doing somewhat better.
The problem with building drones nowadays is that they'll be rapidly (in the order of months...) be outdated as the battle between drone and countermeasure progresses. Which is why the Ukrainian battlefield is increasingly being raped with fibre-optic cables.
Sir Keir Starmer will resist pressure from military chiefs to increase UK defence spending above the 2.5 per cent of GDP target already set, The Telegraph understands.
Senior military figures are understood to believe the Government’s current ambition would barely “touch the sides” of what is needed to fund Britain’s defence needs.
An ally of the Prime Minister told The Telegraph: “The policy we stood on at the election was 2.5 per cent on defence spending. Our policy is still 2.5 per cent. We’re not going to shift any further.”
It's a bit wet. We were at 4-5% of GDP in the 1980s, because we were in Cold War conditions.
We are now in Cold War conditions.
In the age of Trump and Putin gradualist civil service thinking is just not on. It will be the death of Europe. We need to DOUBLE defence spending. The threat is existential.
I think the word “existential” gets overused. Ukraine alone has held back Russia militarily. Russia is not going to sweep across Europe. I don’t believe Russia threatens the British Isles with invasion.
But we should do more to support Ukraine and our NATO allies other than the US. And we should recognise the threat Russia poses, including in terms of their attempts to sow discord and magnify disinformation. And we should stand up to defend the post-1945 world order and oppose wars of aggression, ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Surprised we aren't talking more about this, yet another of Skyr Toolmakersson's amazing achievements:
NEW: Polling expert John Curtice has delivered his verdict on a new poll which predicts Scottish Labour are set for their worst election result since devolution 🥀
People who talk about Boris destroying the Tories should pay more attention to Starmer destroying Labour with the quick fix of pretending all the country's problems could be solved by getting the Tories out.
And arriving at No. 10 apparently shocked there was no plan waiting for him. Quite extraordinary.
Starmer is a technocrat; Reeves too. They imagine there is a technical solution to every problem that is both obvious and obviously superior, and that the Civil Service keeps them in a Whitehall safe. For the past 14 years, the evil Tories blocked these plans, but hold on, it has been six months so if there is no improvement, ah, well then it must be civil servants ‘comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline’.
Managed decline is the default setting of modern British Government. Broadly speaking, it entails seeking to concentrate all the available wealth in the hands of people who are already well off, investing mainly in already well off places, and secretly hoping that a new crack in the Earth's crust opens up and the country north of a line between the Severn and the Wash simply falls into it. Doing anything differently is too hard, and would entail tax and spending choices that would enrage the wrong people.
This piece, which reminds the reader of the Government's enthusiasm for chucking untold billions at yet another crossing for the Thames, whilst it appears perfectly content to let the Tyne Bridge simply fall down for want of a chicken feed contribution, presents the rap sheet against Labour in the area of regional policy. And why should one be surprised by any of this? Cash for London and rich people places near London. Bugger all for anyone else. More continuity Toryism. Plus ça change.
Hmm, upgrading the A1 has been scrubbed. Didn't know that. Union safe with Labour, really?
The Government is vaguely aware of minor settlements known as "Edunberg" (or something like that) and "New Castle," but the region on the map between them is simply marked "Here Be Dragons." It is rumoured that this savage territory is sparsely populated only by primitive hill tribes, who have not even discovered Gail's or Waitrose, let alone received their own branches. Why one would waste money on these wastelands God only knows.
Ignorance. We have Waitrose in Edinburgh. Two, even. And they even send the cart round if you ask.
I was thinking more of the void to the South of the village of Edunberg. Certainly when I investigated there appeared to be no evidence of Waitrose in the void, and indeed no evidence of Gail's anywhere North of Manchester.
One would expect most of the Cabinet to avoid such remote and heathen places for fear of being captured and boiled in large pots. I doubt that the Civil Service know anything about what happens there, beyond perhaps the evidence contained within obscure medieval scrolls held in the British Library.
Oh, so *that's* why they can't find a civil servant willing to move from London to act as a junior provincial procurator for oils in Obar Dheathain. Not enough rotten-fish sauce in the local market. And the oil is probably mutton fat anyway.
Noone wants to go to the savage lands. They've all seen The Wicker Man.
“They were hard lands. Where men were hard. And sheep were nervous.”
The Army needs to field a fully equipped warfighting division with another in reserve. So it can place a clear continental deterrent and sustain it on the central European plain for 6 months at a time.
I can't see how it does it without regular forces going back up to 105-120k men.
That's not going to be cheap and will probably take 5-7 years to achieve.
We should learn from the Ukrainians and spend any new ones on drones, lots of drones!
Whenever you think “oh it’s reached peak cuteness” or “enough of the funny stabbing vids lolz” or “how can a place be THAT perfect with so many great mosques and fly tipping experts” then Birmingham does something even more fabulous
I see Starmer is planning to 'overrule' HMT/Reeves to get to 2.5% of GDP by the end of this Parliament, which is a tiny move up from this previously being policy but with no timetable. I also understand the SDR will be asked what can be done to better defend Britain within a 2.5% envelope.
Sadly, I fear that's still inadequate. Defence chiefs have asked for 2.65% and I think that's reasonable.
As Hunt said on his podcast the other day if the US totally withdrew from Europe all this 2.5% stuff would go away and we'd be talking about 6, 7, 8 or even 10% of GDP on defence.
Because we'd have no choice.
The value for money choice would be to spend an additional say 0.5% of our gdp financially supporting countries close to Russia that have cheaper manufacturing so that they can spend 10% of their GDP. And to allow Poland to go nuclear.
If any country deserves to have nuclear weapons given its geopolitical situation and history it’s Poland.
But in the meantime the more we can all suppress Russian GDP by not buying anything from them and making life difficult for anyone who does (including the USA it seems), the more we remove the financial driver for 90% of our defence needs in Europe.
Which, of course, is similar to the Napoleonic Wars when we built continental coalitions by doing the same.
But, I don't think there's any escaping the conclusion our Armed Forces are now woefully and dangerously undersized and underprepared, our army is essentially just a performative militia now with some special forces on top, and we're going to have to cough up.
The country ought to. Starmer probably won't. Other priorities. The enormous social security budget, mostly.
That's got to change, I'm afraid.
Social security means nothing without national security.
But the voters.
Unless Trump brings enough economic pressure to bear to frighten him into compliance, he won't do it. There are no votes in defence and, as I said the other day, there won't be until the Russians have reached the Rhine and Britain and France have no cards to play save to threaten nuclear war. By which point it'll be a little late.
Russia is not going to reach the Rhine through conventional military force.
But that’s not to say that we shouldn’t look at our defence spending. I note several people here strongly support increased defence spending, so maybe there are votes in it.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the motivation I confess this is another of those topics that just riles me up irrationally - let the poor buggers in hospital keep their bloody sausages.
These people are insane. How do we get rid of them?
Switching to a carnivore diet has done wonders for my health. Down 70 pounds now since I made the switch, pretty close to my goal weight now, and health is far better than it was. Get rid of plant-based crap.
I don't think one has to share your carnivore based tastes to think letting people enjoy some fried breakfasts when very ill or dying is perhaps worth the risks.
Or that its good for you.
With the fried breakfast, I think it's more the vast amounts of salt and vegetable oil sometimes used in its creation that are the primary health risks, rather than the existence of meat in there.
Indeed. Putting the meat in the air fryer is how I cook mine, no oil necessary then.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the motivation I confess this is another of those topics that just riles me up irrationally - let the poor buggers in hospital keep their bloody sausages.
These people are insane. How do we get rid of them?
Switching to a carnivore diet has done wonders for my health. Down 70 pounds now since I made the switch, pretty close to my goal weight now, and health is far better than it was. Get rid of plant-based crap.
I’m intrigued how fat you were. So you have lost 5 stone, unless you are a big big chap that’s a huge amount of weight to lose voluntarily, what weight are you now?
I peaked at 252lbs during lockdown. When I started my carnivore diet (Oct 2023) I was on 247 lbs.
I'm now 177 lbs, so 70 down since I switched diet, 75 down from my peak.
Can I ask how tall you are? Just seems like a massive weight shift. I’m guessing you aren’t looking anorexic at 12.5 stone?
5'8" so, no, not anorexic. Gone from BMI of 38 to 27.
…………… 38??????
😳
Fucking hell
But bravo on bringing that down to 27. That’s seriously impressive work, my dude
👏
Thanks. No drugs or surgery, just a diet of the five important food groups: meat, cheese, eggs, milk and coffee.
Do you know how/why your weight got so out of hand?
You are under no obligation to answer. I’ve no desire to push buttons
You should be on telly. That’s incredible weight loss, and without ozempic!
Thanks. I've long struggled with my weight, the last time I weighed what I do now was about 15 years ago. I was typically around 220 and would diet and get it close to 200 but never got it down below 200.
I was always active despite being overweight so never too concerned. Lockdown was bad for my health. Went from doing upto 20k steps a day to sub 4k. That's when my weight went up to 252 and I struggled to get it back down again before I switched my diet.
Despite it being rather American, I took a long time ago to weighing in pounds alone. Easier to keep track using that as a decimal rather than messing around with stone conversions, and easier to notice differences when dieting than dealing with kg.
But you calculate bmi with imperial units..?
Just Google a calculator and it does it for you.
I prefer metric on a philosophical basis, but know my height in an imperial one so what difference does it make. I could do the maths but it is easy enough to find a calculator online that takes weight in pounds and height in feet and inches.
It would be nice to have a calculator get the square of height calculating only in feet and inches
Nobody should get too hung up on BMI in any case. It is a poor measure.
Well yes, but I was interested solely in the calculation - what is the square of 5'10" ?
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the motivation I confess this is another of those topics that just riles me up irrationally - let the poor buggers in hospital keep their bloody sausages.
These people are insane. How do we get rid of them?
Switching to a carnivore diet has done wonders for my health. Down 70 pounds now since I made the switch, pretty close to my goal weight now, and health is far better than it was. Get rid of plant-based crap.
I don't think one has to share your carnivore based tastes to think letting people enjoy some fried breakfasts when very ill or dying is perhaps worth the risks.
Or that its good for you.
With the fried breakfast, I think it's more the vast amounts of salt and vegetable oil sometimes used in its creation that are the primary health risks, rather than the existence of meat in there.
Indeed. Putting the meat in the air fryer is how I cook mine, no oil necessary then.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the motivation I confess this is another of those topics that just riles me up irrationally - let the poor buggers in hospital keep their bloody sausages.
These people are insane. How do we get rid of them?
Switching to a carnivore diet has done wonders for my health. Down 70 pounds now since I made the switch, pretty close to my goal weight now, and health is far better than it was. Get rid of plant-based crap.
I’m intrigued how fat you were. So you have lost 5 stone, unless you are a big big chap that’s a huge amount of weight to lose voluntarily, what weight are you now?
I peaked at 252lbs during lockdown. When I started my carnivore diet (Oct 2023) I was on 247 lbs.
I'm now 177 lbs, so 70 down since I switched diet, 75 down from my peak.
Can I ask how tall you are? Just seems like a massive weight shift. I’m guessing you aren’t looking anorexic at 12.5 stone?
5'8" so, no, not anorexic. Gone from BMI of 38 to 27.
…………… 38??????
😳
Fucking hell
But bravo on bringing that down to 27. That’s seriously impressive work, my dude
👏
Thanks. No drugs or surgery, just a diet of the five important food groups: meat, cheese, eggs, milk and coffee.
Do you know how/why your weight got so out of hand?
You are under no obligation to answer. I’ve no desire to push buttons
You should be on telly. That’s incredible weight loss, and without ozempic!
Thanks. I've long struggled with my weight, the last time I weighed what I do now was about 15 years ago. I was typically around 220 and would diet and get it close to 200 but never got it down below 200.
I was always active despite being overweight so never too concerned. Lockdown was bad for my health. Went from doing upto 20k steps a day to sub 4k. That's when my weight went up to 252 and I struggled to get it back down again before I switched my diet.
Despite it being rather American, I took a long time ago to weighing in pounds alone. Easier to keep track using that as a decimal rather than messing around with stone conversions, and easier to notice differences when dieting than dealing with kg.
But you calculate bmi with imperial units..?
Just Google a calculator and it does it for you.
I prefer metric on a philosophical basis, but know my height in an imperial one so what difference does it make. I could do the maths but it is easy enough to find a calculator online that takes weight in pounds and height in feet and inches.
It would be nice to have a calculator get the square of height calculating only in feet and inches
Nobody should get too hung up on BMI in any case. It is a poor measure.
Well yes, but I was interested solely in the calculation - what is the square of 5'10" ?
34 sq ft, 4 sq in
OK, now do the whole bmi ... (Carnix's squaring was neater)
OK 34 sq ft 4 sq in / 177lbs = 27 after suitable adjustment
Whenever you think “oh it’s reached peak cuteness” or “enough of the funny stabbing vids lolz” or “how can a place be THAT perfect with so many great mosques and fly tipping experts” then Birmingham does something even more fabulous
It’s absurd how one place can be so attractive
Yeah, Birmingham is almost as nice as London on the nice stabbing metric.
Sir Keir Starmer will resist pressure from military chiefs to increase UK defence spending above the 2.5 per cent of GDP target already set, The Telegraph understands.
Senior military figures are understood to believe the Government’s current ambition would barely “touch the sides” of what is needed to fund Britain’s defence needs.
An ally of the Prime Minister told The Telegraph: “The policy we stood on at the election was 2.5 per cent on defence spending. Our policy is still 2.5 per cent. We’re not going to shift any further.”
It's a bit wet. We were at 4-5% of GDP in the 1980s, because we were in Cold War conditions.
We are now in Cold War conditions.
In the age of Trump and Putin gradualist civil service thinking is just not on. It will be the death of Europe. We need to DOUBLE defence spending. The threat is existential.
I think the word “existential” gets overused. Ukraine alone has held back Russia militarily. Russia is not going to sweep across Europe. I don’t believe Russia threatens the British Isles with invasion.
(Snip).
Russia does not threaten us with invasion. But with political interference? Yes, they could. It would not take much for a party to turn anti-war / pro--Russia, and to sell that to the public. Some on here are already more than halfway there....
The Army needs to field a fully equipped warfighting division with another in reserve. So it can place a clear continental deterrent and sustain it on the central European plain for 6 months at a time.
I can't see how it does it without regular forces going back up to 105-120k men.
That's not going to be cheap and will probably take 5-7 years to achieve.
We should learn from the Ukrainians and spend any new ones on drones, lots of drones!
No.
We should invest in the capability to design drones, and build loads of them. Not necessarily to have tens of thousands going dusty in storage.
But also, invest in the countermeasures. This is somewhere, anecdotally, we are doing somewhat better.
The problem with building drones nowadays is that they'll be rapidly (in the order of months...) be outdated as the battle between drone and countermeasure progresses. Which is why the Ukrainian battlefield is increasingly being raped with fibre-optic cables.
We shouldn't be putting them in storage, we should be sending them to the frontlines.
The Army needs to field a fully equipped warfighting division with another in reserve. So it can place a clear continental deterrent and sustain it on the central European plain for 6 months at a time.
I can't see how it does it without regular forces going back up to 105-120k men.
That's not going to be cheap and will probably take 5-7 years to achieve.
We should learn from the Ukrainians and spend any new ones on drones, lots of drones!
No.
We should invest in the capability to design drones, and build loads of them. Not necessarily to have tens of thousands going dusty in storage.
But also, invest in the countermeasures. This is somewhere, anecdotally, we are doing somewhat better.
The problem with building drones nowadays is that they'll be rapidly (in the order of months...) be outdated as the battle between drone and countermeasure progresses. Which is why the Ukrainian battlefield is increasingly being raped with fibre-optic cables.
Need to think bigger.
1-2 Billion Euro a year gets you everything going on at Boca Chica.
In turn that gives you staring surveillance of the whole planet. Plus high bandwidth comms. Plus the ability to Fed Ex 100 tons to any point on the planet. At Mach 27.
Whenever you think “oh it’s reached peak cuteness” or “enough of the funny stabbing vids lolz” or “how can a place be THAT perfect with so many great mosques and fly tipping experts” then Birmingham does something even more fabulous
It’s absurd how one place can be so attractive
Yeah, Birmingham is almost as nice as London on the nice stabbing metric.
The UK has fewer homicides by stabbing than the vast majority of countries.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the motivation I confess this is another of those topics that just riles me up irrationally - let the poor buggers in hospital keep their bloody sausages.
These people are insane. How do we get rid of them?
Switching to a carnivore diet has done wonders for my health. Down 70 pounds now since I made the switch, pretty close to my goal weight now, and health is far better than it was. Get rid of plant-based crap.
I don't think one has to share your carnivore based tastes to think letting people enjoy some fried breakfasts when very ill or dying is perhaps worth the risks.
Or that its good for you.
With the fried breakfast, I think it's more the vast amounts of salt and vegetable oil sometimes used in its creation that are the primary health risks, rather than the existence of meat in there.
Indeed. Putting the meat in the air fryer is how I cook mine, no oil necessary then.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the motivation I confess this is another of those topics that just riles me up irrationally - let the poor buggers in hospital keep their bloody sausages.
These people are insane. How do we get rid of them?
Switching to a carnivore diet has done wonders for my health. Down 70 pounds now since I made the switch, pretty close to my goal weight now, and health is far better than it was. Get rid of plant-based crap.
I’m intrigued how fat you were. So you have lost 5 stone, unless you are a big big chap that’s a huge amount of weight to lose voluntarily, what weight are you now?
I peaked at 252lbs during lockdown. When I started my carnivore diet (Oct 2023) I was on 247 lbs.
I'm now 177 lbs, so 70 down since I switched diet, 75 down from my peak.
Can I ask how tall you are? Just seems like a massive weight shift. I’m guessing you aren’t looking anorexic at 12.5 stone?
5'8" so, no, not anorexic. Gone from BMI of 38 to 27.
…………… 38??????
😳
Fucking hell
But bravo on bringing that down to 27. That’s seriously impressive work, my dude
👏
Thanks. No drugs or surgery, just a diet of the five important food groups: meat, cheese, eggs, milk and coffee.
Do you know how/why your weight got so out of hand?
You are under no obligation to answer. I’ve no desire to push buttons
You should be on telly. That’s incredible weight loss, and without ozempic!
Thanks. I've long struggled with my weight, the last time I weighed what I do now was about 15 years ago. I was typically around 220 and would diet and get it close to 200 but never got it down below 200.
I was always active despite being overweight so never too concerned. Lockdown was bad for my health. Went from doing upto 20k steps a day to sub 4k. That's when my weight went up to 252 and I struggled to get it back down again before I switched my diet.
Despite it being rather American, I took a long time ago to weighing in pounds alone. Easier to keep track using that as a decimal rather than messing around with stone conversions, and easier to notice differences when dieting than dealing with kg.
But you calculate bmi with imperial units..?
Just Google a calculator and it does it for you.
I prefer metric on a philosophical basis, but know my height in an imperial one so what difference does it make. I could do the maths but it is easy enough to find a calculator online that takes weight in pounds and height in feet and inches.
It would be nice to have a calculator get the square of height calculating only in feet and inches
Nobody should get too hung up on BMI in any case. It is a poor measure.
Well yes, but I was interested solely in the calculation - what is the square of 5'10" ?
34 sq ft, 4 sq in
OK, now do the whole bmi ... (Carnix's squaring was neater)
Why is BMI based on a square of height anyway?
Mass proportional to volume which is length cubed. BMI should be calculated based on height cubed.
Whenever you think “oh it’s reached peak cuteness” or “enough of the funny stabbing vids lolz” or “how can a place be THAT perfect with so many great mosques and fly tipping experts” then Birmingham does something even more fabulous
It’s absurd how one place can be so attractive
Yeah, Birmingham is almost as nice as London on the nice stabbing metric.
Let’s keep it in perspective though.
UK knife homicides in 2022/3: 244 USA knife homicides in 2022/3: 1,562
So the USA, where guns are the overwhelming cause of violent death (48,204 in 2023!) manages to have a higher rate of fatal stabbings per capita than the UK.
Remember that next time Musk or some random moans on about Britain’s knife crime epidemic.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the motivation I confess this is another of those topics that just riles me up irrationally - let the poor buggers in hospital keep their bloody sausages.
These people are insane. How do we get rid of them?
Switching to a carnivore diet has done wonders for my health. Down 70 pounds now since I made the switch, pretty close to my goal weight now, and health is far better than it was. Get rid of plant-based crap.
I don't think one has to share your carnivore based tastes to think letting people enjoy some fried breakfasts when very ill or dying is perhaps worth the risks.
Or that its good for you.
With the fried breakfast, I think it's more the vast amounts of salt and vegetable oil sometimes used in its creation that are the primary health risks, rather than the existence of meat in there.
Indeed. Putting the meat in the air fryer is how I cook mine, no oil necessary then.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the motivation I confess this is another of those topics that just riles me up irrationally - let the poor buggers in hospital keep their bloody sausages.
These people are insane. How do we get rid of them?
Switching to a carnivore diet has done wonders for my health. Down 70 pounds now since I made the switch, pretty close to my goal weight now, and health is far better than it was. Get rid of plant-based crap.
I’m intrigued how fat you were. So you have lost 5 stone, unless you are a big big chap that’s a huge amount of weight to lose voluntarily, what weight are you now?
I peaked at 252lbs during lockdown. When I started my carnivore diet (Oct 2023) I was on 247 lbs.
I'm now 177 lbs, so 70 down since I switched diet, 75 down from my peak.
Can I ask how tall you are? Just seems like a massive weight shift. I’m guessing you aren’t looking anorexic at 12.5 stone?
5'8" so, no, not anorexic. Gone from BMI of 38 to 27.
…………… 38??????
😳
Fucking hell
But bravo on bringing that down to 27. That’s seriously impressive work, my dude
👏
Thanks. No drugs or surgery, just a diet of the five important food groups: meat, cheese, eggs, milk and coffee.
Do you know how/why your weight got so out of hand?
You are under no obligation to answer. I’ve no desire to push buttons
You should be on telly. That’s incredible weight loss, and without ozempic!
Thanks. I've long struggled with my weight, the last time I weighed what I do now was about 15 years ago. I was typically around 220 and would diet and get it close to 200 but never got it down below 200.
I was always active despite being overweight so never too concerned. Lockdown was bad for my health. Went from doing upto 20k steps a day to sub 4k. That's when my weight went up to 252 and I struggled to get it back down again before I switched my diet.
Despite it being rather American, I took a long time ago to weighing in pounds alone. Easier to keep track using that as a decimal rather than messing around with stone conversions, and easier to notice differences when dieting than dealing with kg.
Interesting, ta. And yes I agree on “pounds”. Best measure
I do stones and pounds.
That does seem a strange one. Most people still use it for newborns (well pounds and ounces) but I know few GenZ who weigh themselves that way, when they all know their height in feet and inches.
I’m now a weird mix of kilos and feet/inches. So I have a tricky choice when doing the BMI.
My height 5'8 is near enough to the square root of 3 in metres that I just divide my weight in kilos by 3.
The Army needs to field a fully equipped warfighting division with another in reserve. So it can place a clear continental deterrent and sustain it on the central European plain for 6 months at a time.
I can't see how it does it without regular forces going back up to 105-120k men.
That's not going to be cheap and will probably take 5-7 years to achieve.
We should learn from the Ukrainians and spend any new ones on drones, lots of drones!
No.
We should invest in the capability to design drones, and build loads of them. Not necessarily to have tens of thousands going dusty in storage.
But also, invest in the countermeasures. This is somewhere, anecdotally, we are doing somewhat better.
The problem with building drones nowadays is that they'll be rapidly (in the order of months...) be outdated as the battle between drone and countermeasure progresses. Which is why the Ukrainian battlefield is increasingly being raped with fibre-optic cables.
We shouldn't be putting them in storage, we should be sending them to the frontlines.
True - no better testing ground for weapons than an actual war. Just keep trialing new things over and over again against our most likely enemy whilst we can.
I’m guessing military boffins have learnt infinitely more about their own country’s weapons and other countries’ weapons in the Ukraine war than in decades of testing and trials. Myths busted, surprising upsides, are helicopters obsolete in war, have sea drones made warships too vulnerable, would tea making facilities make Russian tanks a more pleasant place to spend your last days?
Whenever you think “oh it’s reached peak cuteness” or “enough of the funny stabbing vids lolz” or “how can a place be THAT perfect with so many great mosques and fly tipping experts” then Birmingham does something even more fabulous
It’s absurd how one place can be so attractive
Yeah, Birmingham is almost as nice as London on the nice stabbing metric.
The UK has fewer homicides by stabbing than the vast majority of countries.
I don't disagree with that, but being serious its still more than I'd like to see.
My comment you responded to wasn't serious though, it was tongue very firmly in cheek mocking how the person I was responding to is always saying how great London is while chastising Birmingham for stabbings as if there's never any knife crime in his beloved London.
I see Starmer is planning to 'overrule' HMT/Reeves to get to 2.5% of GDP by the end of this Parliament, which is a tiny move up from this previously being policy but with no timetable. I also understand the SDR will be asked what can be done to better defend Britain within a 2.5% envelope.
Sadly, I fear that's still inadequate. Defence chiefs have asked for 2.65% and I think that's reasonable.
As Hunt said on his podcast the other day if the US totally withdrew from Europe all this 2.5% stuff would go away and we'd be talking about 6, 7, 8 or even 10% of GDP on defence.
Because we'd have no choice.
The value for money choice would be to spend an additional say 0.5% of our gdp financially supporting countries close to Russia that have cheaper manufacturing so that they can spend 10% of their GDP. And to allow Poland to go nuclear.
If any country deserves to have nuclear weapons given its geopolitical situation and history it’s Poland.
But in the meantime the more we can all suppress Russian GDP by not buying anything from them and making life difficult for anyone who does (including the USA it seems), the more we remove the financial driver for 90% of our defence needs in Europe.
Do you understand that someone reading this 'might' think that you are arguing, perhaps by habit, against the UK's national interest?
1. You support a legal situation that makes manufacturing in the UK cost prohibitive, and that threatens the production of virgin steel, essential for the armaments industry, which is a key industry for us and (up until now) a success story.
2. You suggest that rather than support this vital industry and its development in this country, we give half a percent of our GDP directly to countries 'that have cheaper manufacturing' - I mean why the fuck do you think they have cheap manufacturing in the first place? This actively accelerates our economical decline, and means that if somehow Russia does overrun Europe (which is presumably what you purport to be the danger, we lose those facilities altogether.
3. In the meantime, we antagonise everyone who buys stuff from Russia (which is basically everyone except continental Europe), but we do nothing to restart our own hydrocarbon industry, which would be the only *actual* thing that would make us safe from Russian energy blackmail.
I find your suggestions and thought process quite disturbing.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the motivation I confess this is another of those topics that just riles me up irrationally - let the poor buggers in hospital keep their bloody sausages.
These people are insane. How do we get rid of them?
Switching to a carnivore diet has done wonders for my health. Down 70 pounds now since I made the switch, pretty close to my goal weight now, and health is far better than it was. Get rid of plant-based crap.
I don't think one has to share your carnivore based tastes to think letting people enjoy some fried breakfasts when very ill or dying is perhaps worth the risks.
Or that its good for you.
With the fried breakfast, I think it's more the vast amounts of salt and vegetable oil sometimes used in its creation that are the primary health risks, rather than the existence of meat in there.
Indeed. Putting the meat in the air fryer is how I cook mine, no oil necessary then.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the motivation I confess this is another of those topics that just riles me up irrationally - let the poor buggers in hospital keep their bloody sausages.
These people are insane. How do we get rid of them?
Switching to a carnivore diet has done wonders for my health. Down 70 pounds now since I made the switch, pretty close to my goal weight now, and health is far better than it was. Get rid of plant-based crap.
I’m intrigued how fat you were. So you have lost 5 stone, unless you are a big big chap that’s a huge amount of weight to lose voluntarily, what weight are you now?
I peaked at 252lbs during lockdown. When I started my carnivore diet (Oct 2023) I was on 247 lbs.
I'm now 177 lbs, so 70 down since I switched diet, 75 down from my peak.
Can I ask how tall you are? Just seems like a massive weight shift. I’m guessing you aren’t looking anorexic at 12.5 stone?
5'8" so, no, not anorexic. Gone from BMI of 38 to 27.
…………… 38??????
😳
Fucking hell
But bravo on bringing that down to 27. That’s seriously impressive work, my dude
👏
Thanks. No drugs or surgery, just a diet of the five important food groups: meat, cheese, eggs, milk and coffee.
Do you know how/why your weight got so out of hand?
You are under no obligation to answer. I’ve no desire to push buttons
You should be on telly. That’s incredible weight loss, and without ozempic!
Thanks. I've long struggled with my weight, the last time I weighed what I do now was about 15 years ago. I was typically around 220 and would diet and get it close to 200 but never got it down below 200.
I was always active despite being overweight so never too concerned. Lockdown was bad for my health. Went from doing upto 20k steps a day to sub 4k. That's when my weight went up to 252 and I struggled to get it back down again before I switched my diet.
Despite it being rather American, I took a long time ago to weighing in pounds alone. Easier to keep track using that as a decimal rather than messing around with stone conversions, and easier to notice differences when dieting than dealing with kg.
But you calculate bmi with imperial units..?
Just Google a calculator and it does it for you.
I prefer metric on a philosophical basis, but know my height in an imperial one so what difference does it make. I could do the maths but it is easy enough to find a calculator online that takes weight in pounds and height in feet and inches.
It would be nice to have a calculator get the square of height calculating only in feet and inches
Nobody should get too hung up on BMI in any case. It is a poor measure.
Well yes, but I was interested solely in the calculation - what is the square of 5'10" ?
34 sq ft, 4 sq in
OK, now do the whole bmi ... (Carnix's squaring was neater)
Why is BMI based on a square of height anyway?
Mass proportional to volume which is length cubed. BMI should be calculated based on height cubed.
Presumably because we aren't as deep as we are tall, so our volume is not our height cubed. So squared works as a reasonable approximation, though its a flawed measure anyway.
I see Starmer is planning to 'overrule' HMT/Reeves to get to 2.5% of GDP by the end of this Parliament, which is a tiny move up from this previously being policy but with no timetable. I also understand the SDR will be asked what can be done to better defend Britain within a 2.5% envelope.
Sadly, I fear that's still inadequate. Defence chiefs have asked for 2.65% and I think that's reasonable.
As Hunt said on his podcast the other day if the US totally withdrew from Europe all this 2.5% stuff would go away and we'd be talking about 6, 7, 8 or even 10% of GDP on defence.
Because we'd have no choice.
The value for money choice would be to spend an additional say 0.5% of our gdp financially supporting countries close to Russia that have cheaper manufacturing so that they can spend 10% of their GDP. And to allow Poland to go nuclear.
If any country deserves to have nuclear weapons given its geopolitical situation and history it’s Poland.
But in the meantime the more we can all suppress Russian GDP by not buying anything from them and making life difficult for anyone who does (including the USA it seems), the more we remove the financial driver for 90% of our defence needs in Europe.
Which, of course, is similar to the Napoleonic Wars when we built continental coalitions by doing the same.
But, I don't think there's any escaping the conclusion our Armed Forces are now woefully and dangerously undersized and underprepared, our army is essentially just a performative militia now with some special forces on top, and we're going to have to cough up.
The country ought to. Starmer probably won't. Other priorities. The enormous social security budget, mostly.
That's got to change, I'm afraid.
Social security means nothing without national security.
But the voters.
Unless Trump brings enough economic pressure to bear to frighten him into compliance, he won't do it. There are no votes in defence and, as I said the other day, there won't be until the Russians have reached the Rhine and Britain and France have no cards to play save to threaten nuclear war. By which point it'll be a little late.
Russia is not going to reach the Rhine through conventional military force.
But that’s not to say that we shouldn’t look at our defence spending. I note several people here strongly support increased defence spending, so maybe there are votes in it.
Putin doesn't want go to the Rhine. He wants to absorb the Baltics, and subvert most of E Europe including Poland and poss the Scandis. He's an old man in a hurry with a war economy facing a demogrsphic cliff edge. With the US out of the picture very serious stuff could very likely happen.
Whenever you think “oh it’s reached peak cuteness” or “enough of the funny stabbing vids lolz” or “how can a place be THAT perfect with so many great mosques and fly tipping experts” then Birmingham does something even more fabulous
It’s absurd how one place can be so attractive
Yeah, Birmingham is almost as nice as London on the nice stabbing metric.
Let’s keep it in perspective though.
UK knife homicides in 2022/3: 244 USA knife homicides in 2022/3: 1,562
So the USA, where guns are the overwhelming cause of violent death (48,204 in 2023!) manages to have a higher rate of fatal stabbings per capita than the UK.
Remember that next time Musk or some random moans on about Britain’s knife crime epidemic.
Why compare us to a much larger, even more unequal, famously violent country on a different continent? Why not try, say, Poland?
I see Starmer is planning to 'overrule' HMT/Reeves to get to 2.5% of GDP by the end of this Parliament, which is a tiny move up from this previously being policy but with no timetable. I also understand the SDR will be asked what can be done to better defend Britain within a 2.5% envelope.
Sadly, I fear that's still inadequate. Defence chiefs have asked for 2.65% and I think that's reasonable.
As Hunt said on his podcast the other day if the US totally withdrew from Europe all this 2.5% stuff would go away and we'd be talking about 6, 7, 8 or even 10% of GDP on defence.
Because we'd have no choice.
The value for money choice would be to spend an additional say 0.5% of our gdp financially supporting countries close to Russia that have cheaper manufacturing so that they can spend 10% of their GDP. And to allow Poland to go nuclear.
If any country deserves to have nuclear weapons given its geopolitical situation and history it’s Poland.
But in the meantime the more we can all suppress Russian GDP by not buying anything from them and making life difficult for anyone who does (including the USA it seems), the more we remove the financial driver for 90% of our defence needs in Europe.
Which, of course, is similar to the Napoleonic Wars when we built continental coalitions by doing the same.
But, I don't think there's any escaping the conclusion our Armed Forces are now woefully and dangerously undersized and underprepared, our army is essentially just a performative militia now with some special forces on top, and we're going to have to cough up.
The country ought to. Starmer probably won't. Other priorities. The enormous social security budget, mostly.
That's got to change, I'm afraid.
Social security means nothing without national security.
But the voters.
Unless Trump brings enough economic pressure to bear to frighten him into compliance, he won't do it. There are no votes in defence and, as I said the other day, there won't be until the Russians have reached the Rhine and Britain and France have no cards to play save to threaten nuclear war. By which point it'll be a little late.
Russia is not going to reach the Rhine through conventional military force.
But that’s not to say that we shouldn’t look at our defence spending. I note several people here strongly support increased defence spending, so maybe there are votes in it.
The problem is, there are always votes in raising spending, but precious few in raising taxes.
The BMI is expressed in kg/m2, resulting from mass in kilograms and height in metres. If pounds and inches are used, a conversion factor of 703 (kg/m2)/(lb/in2) is applied. (If pounds and feet are used, a conversion factor of 4.88 is used.)
Whenever you think “oh it’s reached peak cuteness” or “enough of the funny stabbing vids lolz” or “how can a place be THAT perfect with so many great mosques and fly tipping experts” then Birmingham does something even more fabulous
It’s absurd how one place can be so attractive
Yeah, Birmingham is almost as nice as London on the nice stabbing metric.
The UK has fewer homicides by stabbing than the vast majority of countries.
I don't disagree with that, but being serious its still more than I'd like to see.
My comment you responded to wasn't serious though, it was tongue very firmly in cheek mocking how the person I was responding to is always saying how great London is while chastising Birmingham for stabbings as if there's never any knife crime in his beloved London.
It’s worry. If Birmingham eclipses London in stabbings, it’s like Taiwan losing chip production.
I see Starmer is planning to 'overrule' HMT/Reeves to get to 2.5% of GDP by the end of this Parliament, which is a tiny move up from this previously being policy but with no timetable. I also understand the SDR will be asked what can be done to better defend Britain within a 2.5% envelope.
Sadly, I fear that's still inadequate. Defence chiefs have asked for 2.65% and I think that's reasonable.
As Hunt said on his podcast the other day if the US totally withdrew from Europe all this 2.5% stuff would go away and we'd be talking about 6, 7, 8 or even 10% of GDP on defence.
Because we'd have no choice.
The value for money choice would be to spend an additional say 0.5% of our gdp financially supporting countries close to Russia that have cheaper manufacturing so that they can spend 10% of their GDP. And to allow Poland to go nuclear.
If any country deserves to have nuclear weapons given its geopolitical situation and history it’s Poland.
But in the meantime the more we can all suppress Russian GDP by not buying anything from them and making life difficult for anyone who does (including the USA it seems), the more we remove the financial driver for 90% of our defence needs in Europe.
Which, of course, is similar to the Napoleonic Wars when we built continental coalitions by doing the same.
But, I don't think there's any escaping the conclusion our Armed Forces are now woefully and dangerously undersized and underprepared, our army is essentially just a performative militia now with some special forces on top, and we're going to have to cough up.
The country ought to. Starmer probably won't. Other priorities. The enormous social security budget, mostly.
That's got to change, I'm afraid.
Social security means nothing without national security.
But the voters.
Unless Trump brings enough economic pressure to bear to frighten him into compliance, he won't do it. There are no votes in defence and, as I said the other day, there won't be until the Russians have reached the Rhine and Britain and France have no cards to play save to threaten nuclear war. By which point it'll be a little late.
Russia is not going to reach the Rhine through conventional military force.
But that’s not to say that we shouldn’t look at our defence spending. I note several people here strongly support increased defence spending, so maybe there are votes in it.
I exaggerated, but you can see Putin going for the Baltic States next and getting away with it. The excuse will most likely be absorbing Russian sympathising minorities, or demanding a land bridge to Kaliningrad.
People on here are not representative. Most folk care about their immediate living circumstances (bank balances, investments, housing) first, followed by any public services that they use, plus maybe immigration, and the constitutional argument in Scotland and NI. Everything else is niche.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the motivation I confess this is another of those topics that just riles me up irrationally - let the poor buggers in hospital keep their bloody sausages.
These people are insane. How do we get rid of them?
Switching to a carnivore diet has done wonders for my health. Down 70 pounds now since I made the switch, pretty close to my goal weight now, and health is far better than it was. Get rid of plant-based crap.
I don't think one has to share your carnivore based tastes to think letting people enjoy some fried breakfasts when very ill or dying is perhaps worth the risks.
Or that its good for you.
With the fried breakfast, I think it's more the vast amounts of salt and vegetable oil sometimes used in its creation that are the primary health risks, rather than the existence of meat in there.
Indeed. Putting the meat in the air fryer is how I cook mine, no oil necessary then.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the motivation I confess this is another of those topics that just riles me up irrationally - let the poor buggers in hospital keep their bloody sausages.
These people are insane. How do we get rid of them?
Switching to a carnivore diet has done wonders for my health. Down 70 pounds now since I made the switch, pretty close to my goal weight now, and health is far better than it was. Get rid of plant-based crap.
I’m intrigued how fat you were. So you have lost 5 stone, unless you are a big big chap that’s a huge amount of weight to lose voluntarily, what weight are you now?
I peaked at 252lbs during lockdown. When I started my carnivore diet (Oct 2023) I was on 247 lbs.
I'm now 177 lbs, so 70 down since I switched diet, 75 down from my peak.
Can I ask how tall you are? Just seems like a massive weight shift. I’m guessing you aren’t looking anorexic at 12.5 stone?
5'8" so, no, not anorexic. Gone from BMI of 38 to 27.
…………… 38??????
😳
Fucking hell
But bravo on bringing that down to 27. That’s seriously impressive work, my dude
👏
Thanks. No drugs or surgery, just a diet of the five important food groups: meat, cheese, eggs, milk and coffee.
Do you know how/why your weight got so out of hand?
You are under no obligation to answer. I’ve no desire to push buttons
You should be on telly. That’s incredible weight loss, and without ozempic!
Thanks. I've long struggled with my weight, the last time I weighed what I do now was about 15 years ago. I was typically around 220 and would diet and get it close to 200 but never got it down below 200.
I was always active despite being overweight so never too concerned. Lockdown was bad for my health. Went from doing upto 20k steps a day to sub 4k. That's when my weight went up to 252 and I struggled to get it back down again before I switched my diet.
Despite it being rather American, I took a long time ago to weighing in pounds alone. Easier to keep track using that as a decimal rather than messing around with stone conversions, and easier to notice differences when dieting than dealing with kg.
But you calculate bmi with imperial units..?
Just Google a calculator and it does it for you.
I prefer metric on a philosophical basis, but know my height in an imperial one so what difference does it make. I could do the maths but it is easy enough to find a calculator online that takes weight in pounds and height in feet and inches.
It would be nice to have a calculator get the square of height calculating only in feet and inches
Nobody should get too hung up on BMI in any case. It is a poor measure.
Well yes, but I was interested solely in the calculation - what is the square of 5'10" ?
34 sq ft, 4 sq in
OK, now do the whole bmi ... (Carnix's squaring was neater)
Why is BMI based on a square of height anyway?
Mass proportional to volume which is length cubed. BMI should be calculated based on height cubed.
Using the cube is called the corpulence index and can be argued to be better. Wikipedia suggests an exponent of 2.5 has been shown to be best.
I see Starmer is planning to 'overrule' HMT/Reeves to get to 2.5% of GDP by the end of this Parliament, which is a tiny move up from this previously being policy but with no timetable. I also understand the SDR will be asked what can be done to better defend Britain within a 2.5% envelope.
Sadly, I fear that's still inadequate. Defence chiefs have asked for 2.65% and I think that's reasonable.
As Hunt said on his podcast the other day if the US totally withdrew from Europe all this 2.5% stuff would go away and we'd be talking about 6, 7, 8 or even 10% of GDP on defence.
Because we'd have no choice.
The value for money choice would be to spend an additional say 0.5% of our gdp financially supporting countries close to Russia that have cheaper manufacturing so that they can spend 10% of their GDP. And to allow Poland to go nuclear.
If any country deserves to have nuclear weapons given its geopolitical situation and history it’s Poland.
But in the meantime the more we can all suppress Russian GDP by not buying anything from them and making life difficult for anyone who does (including the USA it seems), the more we remove the financial driver for 90% of our defence needs in Europe.
Which, of course, is similar to the Napoleonic Wars when we built continental coalitions by doing the same.
But, I don't think there's any escaping the conclusion our Armed Forces are now woefully and dangerously undersized and underprepared, our army is essentially just a performative militia now with some special forces on top, and we're going to have to cough up.
The country ought to. Starmer probably won't. Other priorities. The enormous social security budget, mostly.
That's got to change, I'm afraid.
Social security means nothing without national security.
But the voters.
Unless Trump brings enough economic pressure to bear to frighten him into compliance, he won't do it. There are no votes in defence and, as I said the other day, there won't be until the Russians have reached the Rhine and Britain and France have no cards to play save to threaten nuclear war. By which point it'll be a little late.
Russia is not going to reach the Rhine through conventional military force.
But that’s not to say that we shouldn’t look at our defence spending. I note several people here strongly support increased defence spending, so maybe there are votes in it.
The problem is, there are always votes in raising spending, but precious few in raising taxes.
Or cutting spending elsewhere to compensate.
The man needs to do the right thing but he's clearly also worried that Labour will go the way of the Tories at the next election if he does. No prizes for guessing what takes priority.
I see Starmer is planning to 'overrule' HMT/Reeves to get to 2.5% of GDP by the end of this Parliament, which is a tiny move up from this previously being policy but with no timetable. I also understand the SDR will be asked what can be done to better defend Britain within a 2.5% envelope.
Sadly, I fear that's still inadequate. Defence chiefs have asked for 2.65% and I think that's reasonable.
As Hunt said on his podcast the other day if the US totally withdrew from Europe all this 2.5% stuff would go away and we'd be talking about 6, 7, 8 or even 10% of GDP on defence.
Because we'd have no choice.
The value for money choice would be to spend an additional say 0.5% of our gdp financially supporting countries close to Russia that have cheaper manufacturing so that they can spend 10% of their GDP. And to allow Poland to go nuclear.
If any country deserves to have nuclear weapons given its geopolitical situation and history it’s Poland.
But in the meantime the more we can all suppress Russian GDP by not buying anything from them and making life difficult for anyone who does (including the USA it seems), the more we remove the financial driver for 90% of our defence needs in Europe.
Which, of course, is similar to the Napoleonic Wars when we built continental coalitions by doing the same.
But, I don't think there's any escaping the conclusion our Armed Forces are now woefully and dangerously undersized and underprepared, our army is essentially just a performative militia now with some special forces on top, and we're going to have to cough up.
The country ought to. Starmer probably won't. Other priorities. The enormous social security budget, mostly.
That's got to change, I'm afraid.
Social security means nothing without national security.
But the voters.
Unless Trump brings enough economic pressure to bear to frighten him into compliance, he won't do it. There are no votes in defence and, as I said the other day, there won't be until the Russians have reached the Rhine and Britain and France have no cards to play save to threaten nuclear war. By which point it'll be a little late.
Russia is not going to reach the Rhine through conventional military force.
But that’s not to say that we shouldn’t look at our defence spending. I note several people here strongly support increased defence spending, so maybe there are votes in it.
The problem is, there are always votes in raising spending, but precious few in raising taxes.
I am inclined to think we *may* need to spend a bit more to get A LOT more, but just keep the current system and bung a massive chunk more money at the MOD? Piss off. Tell us precisely what you want the money for.
I see Starmer is planning to 'overrule' HMT/Reeves to get to 2.5% of GDP by the end of this Parliament, which is a tiny move up from this previously being policy but with no timetable. I also understand the SDR will be asked what can be done to better defend Britain within a 2.5% envelope.
Sadly, I fear that's still inadequate. Defence chiefs have asked for 2.65% and I think that's reasonable.
As Hunt said on his podcast the other day if the US totally withdrew from Europe all this 2.5% stuff would go away and we'd be talking about 6, 7, 8 or even 10% of GDP on defence.
Because we'd have no choice.
The value for money choice would be to spend an additional say 0.5% of our gdp financially supporting countries close to Russia that have cheaper manufacturing so that they can spend 10% of their GDP. And to allow Poland to go nuclear.
If any country deserves to have nuclear weapons given its geopolitical situation and history it’s Poland.
But in the meantime the more we can all suppress Russian GDP by not buying anything from them and making life difficult for anyone who does (including the USA it seems), the more we remove the financial driver for 90% of our defence needs in Europe.
Which, of course, is similar to the Napoleonic Wars when we built continental coalitions by doing the same.
But, I don't think there's any escaping the conclusion our Armed Forces are now woefully and dangerously undersized and underprepared, our army is essentially just a performative militia now with some special forces on top, and we're going to have to cough up.
The country ought to. Starmer probably won't. Other priorities. The enormous social security budget, mostly.
That's got to change, I'm afraid.
Social security means nothing without national security.
But the voters.
Unless Trump brings enough economic pressure to bear to frighten him into compliance, he won't do it. There are no votes in defence and, as I said the other day, there won't be until the Russians have reached the Rhine and Britain and France have no cards to play save to threaten nuclear war. By which point it'll be a little late.
Russia is not going to reach the Rhine through conventional military force.
But that’s not to say that we shouldn’t look at our defence spending. I note several people here strongly support increased defence spending, so maybe there are votes in it.
Putin doesn't want go to the Rhine. He wants to absorb the Baltics, and subvert most of E Europe including Poland and poss the Scandis. He's an old man in a hurry with a war economy facing a demogrsphic cliff edge. With the US out of the picture very serious stuff could very likely happen.
He wont succeed with Poland or the Scandinavian countries, but the Baltics are so small he could easily be tempted to conquer them and dare us to do something about it. The man is obviously trying to reassemble the Soviet Union, either by annexation or the establishment of secure client regimes.
I see Starmer is planning to 'overrule' HMT/Reeves to get to 2.5% of GDP by the end of this Parliament, which is a tiny move up from this previously being policy but with no timetable. I also understand the SDR will be asked what can be done to better defend Britain within a 2.5% envelope.
Sadly, I fear that's still inadequate. Defence chiefs have asked for 2.65% and I think that's reasonable.
As Hunt said on his podcast the other day if the US totally withdrew from Europe all this 2.5% stuff would go away and we'd be talking about 6, 7, 8 or even 10% of GDP on defence.
Because we'd have no choice.
The value for money choice would be to spend an additional say 0.5% of our gdp financially supporting countries close to Russia that have cheaper manufacturing so that they can spend 10% of their GDP. And to allow Poland to go nuclear.
If any country deserves to have nuclear weapons given its geopolitical situation and history it’s Poland.
But in the meantime the more we can all suppress Russian GDP by not buying anything from them and making life difficult for anyone who does (including the USA it seems), the more we remove the financial driver for 90% of our defence needs in Europe.
Which, of course, is similar to the Napoleonic Wars when we built continental coalitions by doing the same.
But, I don't think there's any escaping the conclusion our Armed Forces are now woefully and dangerously undersized and underprepared, our army is essentially just a performative militia now with some special forces on top, and we're going to have to cough up.
The country ought to. Starmer probably won't. Other priorities. The enormous social security budget, mostly.
That's got to change, I'm afraid.
Social security means nothing without national security.
But the voters.
Unless Trump brings enough economic pressure to bear to frighten him into compliance, he won't do it. There are no votes in defence and, as I said the other day, there won't be until the Russians have reached the Rhine and Britain and France have no cards to play save to threaten nuclear war. By which point it'll be a little late.
Russia is not going to reach the Rhine through conventional military force.
But that’s not to say that we shouldn’t look at our defence spending. I note several people here strongly support increased defence spending, so maybe there are votes in it.
Putin doesn't want go to the Rhine. He wants to absorb the Baltics, and subvert most of E Europe including Poland and poss the Scandis. He's an old man in a hurry with a war economy facing a demogrsphic cliff edge. With the US out of the picture very serious stuff could very likely happen.
Are there any examples of a state launching a war of territorial expansion, winning and then saying "splendid, that's enough for us, thanks"?
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the motivation I confess this is another of those topics that just riles me up irrationally - let the poor buggers in hospital keep their bloody sausages.
These people are insane. How do we get rid of them?
Switching to a carnivore diet has done wonders for my health. Down 70 pounds now since I made the switch, pretty close to my goal weight now, and health is far better than it was. Get rid of plant-based crap.
I don't think one has to share your carnivore based tastes to think letting people enjoy some fried breakfasts when very ill or dying is perhaps worth the risks.
Or that its good for you.
With the fried breakfast, I think it's more the vast amounts of salt and vegetable oil sometimes used in its creation that are the primary health risks, rather than the existence of meat in there.
Indeed. Putting the meat in the air fryer is how I cook mine, no oil necessary then.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the motivation I confess this is another of those topics that just riles me up irrationally - let the poor buggers in hospital keep their bloody sausages.
These people are insane. How do we get rid of them?
Switching to a carnivore diet has done wonders for my health. Down 70 pounds now since I made the switch, pretty close to my goal weight now, and health is far better than it was. Get rid of plant-based crap.
I’m intrigued how fat you were. So you have lost 5 stone, unless you are a big big chap that’s a huge amount of weight to lose voluntarily, what weight are you now?
I peaked at 252lbs during lockdown. When I started my carnivore diet (Oct 2023) I was on 247 lbs.
I'm now 177 lbs, so 70 down since I switched diet, 75 down from my peak.
Can I ask how tall you are? Just seems like a massive weight shift. I’m guessing you aren’t looking anorexic at 12.5 stone?
5'8" so, no, not anorexic. Gone from BMI of 38 to 27.
…………… 38??????
😳
Fucking hell
But bravo on bringing that down to 27. That’s seriously impressive work, my dude
👏
Thanks. No drugs or surgery, just a diet of the five important food groups: meat, cheese, eggs, milk and coffee.
Do you know how/why your weight got so out of hand?
You are under no obligation to answer. I’ve no desire to push buttons
You should be on telly. That’s incredible weight loss, and without ozempic!
Thanks. I've long struggled with my weight, the last time I weighed what I do now was about 15 years ago. I was typically around 220 and would diet and get it close to 200 but never got it down below 200.
I was always active despite being overweight so never too concerned. Lockdown was bad for my health. Went from doing upto 20k steps a day to sub 4k. That's when my weight went up to 252 and I struggled to get it back down again before I switched my diet.
Despite it being rather American, I took a long time ago to weighing in pounds alone. Easier to keep track using that as a decimal rather than messing around with stone conversions, and easier to notice differences when dieting than dealing with kg.
But you calculate bmi with imperial units..?
Just Google a calculator and it does it for you.
I prefer metric on a philosophical basis, but know my height in an imperial one so what difference does it make. I could do the maths but it is easy enough to find a calculator online that takes weight in pounds and height in feet and inches.
It would be nice to have a calculator get the square of height calculating only in feet and inches
Nobody should get too hung up on BMI in any case. It is a poor measure.
Well yes, but I was interested solely in the calculation - what is the square of 5'10" ?
34 sq ft, 4 sq in
OK, now do the whole bmi ... (Carnix's squaring was neater)
Why is BMI based on a square of height anyway?
Mass proportional to volume which is length cubed. BMI should be calculated based on height cubed.
Using the cube is called the corpulence index and can be argued to be better. Wikipedia suggests an exponent of 2.5 has been shown to be best.
No amount of tweaking BMI allows one to factor in anything indicative of body composition. The height to waist size ratio is a better ready reckoner.
Reading these reports from Birmingham…. Jesus fucks
Fuck Putin, fuck Ukraine, fuck the EU, let them fight it out. We should just upgrade our nukes and subs, buy a trillion drones, defend our island, and focus on the very very broken cities of our own nation. They’ve already been Putin’d. They need help
The Army needs to field a fully equipped warfighting division with another in reserve. So it can place a clear continental deterrent and sustain it on the central European plain for 6 months at a time.
I can't see how it does it without regular forces going back up to 105-120k men.
That's not going to be cheap and will probably take 5-7 years to achieve.
I’m not sure the UK should necessarily be in the business of providing a huge land army. We should stick to high quality specialist troops but build up the navy and air force (but using large quantity drones instead of hugely expensive fighter jets as their role).
We should have a huge sub expansion and provide a large part of the naval deterrent for Europe. We can send Marines to bolster the Scandi countries who can focus on specialist armies for the arctic borders and seas.
France and Spain and Portugal can be the same, mainly Naval with air and infantry as they are suitably far away.
Germany, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria can focus on land armies, supplemented by British, French etc regiments.
Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Luxembourg are rich countries but small so can focus on air power.
Italy, Greece and the balkans can cover the Med with Navy and air to cover the Black Sea exit to the Med and beyond.
Ireland can sit there doing nothing and nodding disapprovingly at the UK for being so uncivilised and militaristic.
I know this is pretty bonkers in a way but all European countries need to contribute but it makes sense that they contribute in ways where their geography or populations are best employed.
And Europe as a whole should chip in towards the British and French Nuclear deterrent if they are happy to shelter under it now.
I see Starmer is planning to 'overrule' HMT/Reeves to get to 2.5% of GDP by the end of this Parliament, which is a tiny move up from this previously being policy but with no timetable. I also understand the SDR will be asked what can be done to better defend Britain within a 2.5% envelope.
Sadly, I fear that's still inadequate. Defence chiefs have asked for 2.65% and I think that's reasonable.
As Hunt said on his podcast the other day if the US totally withdrew from Europe all this 2.5% stuff would go away and we'd be talking about 6, 7, 8 or even 10% of GDP on defence.
Because we'd have no choice.
The value for money choice would be to spend an additional say 0.5% of our gdp financially supporting countries close to Russia that have cheaper manufacturing so that they can spend 10% of their GDP. And to allow Poland to go nuclear.
If any country deserves to have nuclear weapons given its geopolitical situation and history it’s Poland.
But in the meantime the more we can all suppress Russian GDP by not buying anything from them and making life difficult for anyone who does (including the USA it seems), the more we remove the financial driver for 90% of our defence needs in Europe.
Which, of course, is similar to the Napoleonic Wars when we built continental coalitions by doing the same.
But, I don't think there's any escaping the conclusion our Armed Forces are now woefully and dangerously undersized and underprepared, our army is essentially just a performative militia now with some special forces on top, and we're going to have to cough up.
The country ought to. Starmer probably won't. Other priorities. The enormous social security budget, mostly.
That's got to change, I'm afraid.
Social security means nothing without national security.
But the voters.
Unless Trump brings enough economic pressure to bear to frighten him into compliance, he won't do it. There are no votes in defence and, as I said the other day, there won't be until the Russians have reached the Rhine and Britain and France have no cards to play save to threaten nuclear war. By which point it'll be a little late.
Russia is not going to reach the Rhine through conventional military force.
But that’s not to say that we shouldn’t look at our defence spending. I note several people here strongly support increased defence spending, so maybe there are votes in it.
Putin doesn't want go to the Rhine. He wants to absorb the Baltics, and subvert most of E Europe including Poland and poss the Scandis. He's an old man in a hurry with a war economy facing a demogrsphic cliff edge. With the US out of the picture very serious stuff could very likely happen.
Are there any examples of a state launching a war of territorial expansion, winning and then saying "splendid, that's enough for us, thanks"?
Arguably the US after the Mexican War. They got huge swathes of territory in the west and south and stopped. They never went further to take México (always wondered how amazing México would be if it had been either a British colony or taken over by the US early on). They never decided to go North after that or overseas so maybe an example.
I see Starmer is planning to 'overrule' HMT/Reeves to get to 2.5% of GDP by the end of this Parliament, which is a tiny move up from this previously being policy but with no timetable. I also understand the SDR will be asked what can be done to better defend Britain within a 2.5% envelope.
Sadly, I fear that's still inadequate. Defence chiefs have asked for 2.65% and I think that's reasonable.
As Hunt said on his podcast the other day if the US totally withdrew from Europe all this 2.5% stuff would go away and we'd be talking about 6, 7, 8 or even 10% of GDP on defence.
Because we'd have no choice.
The value for money choice would be to spend an additional say 0.5% of our gdp financially supporting countries close to Russia that have cheaper manufacturing so that they can spend 10% of their GDP. And to allow Poland to go nuclear.
If any country deserves to have nuclear weapons given its geopolitical situation and history it’s Poland.
But in the meantime the more we can all suppress Russian GDP by not buying anything from them and making life difficult for anyone who does (including the USA it seems), the more we remove the financial driver for 90% of our defence needs in Europe.
Which, of course, is similar to the Napoleonic Wars when we built continental coalitions by doing the same.
But, I don't think there's any escaping the conclusion our Armed Forces are now woefully and dangerously undersized and underprepared, our army is essentially just a performative militia now with some special forces on top, and we're going to have to cough up.
The country ought to. Starmer probably won't. Other priorities. The enormous social security budget, mostly.
That's got to change, I'm afraid.
Social security means nothing without national security.
But the voters.
Unless Trump brings enough economic pressure to bear to frighten him into compliance, he won't do it. There are no votes in defence and, as I said the other day, there won't be until the Russians have reached the Rhine and Britain and France have no cards to play save to threaten nuclear war. By which point it'll be a little late.
Russia is not going to reach the Rhine through conventional military force.
But that’s not to say that we shouldn’t look at our defence spending. I note several people here strongly support increased defence spending, so maybe there are votes in it.
The problem is, there are always votes in raising spending, but precious few in raising taxes.
Or cutting spending elsewhere to compensate.
The man needs to do the right thing but he's clearly also worried that Labour will go the way of the Tories at the next election if he does. No prizes for guessing what takes priority.
The Greens aren't polling as high as Reform but nonetheless are now up to about 9% on average
The Army needs to field a fully equipped warfighting division with another in reserve. So it can place a clear continental deterrent and sustain it on the central European plain for 6 months at a time.
I can't see how it does it without regular forces going back up to 105-120k men.
That's not going to be cheap and will probably take 5-7 years to achieve.
We should learn from the Ukrainians and spend any new ones on drones, lots of drones!
Now you've said that it's only a matter of time before Sunil turns up, to say: he will make an excellent drone.
I see Starmer is planning to 'overrule' HMT/Reeves to get to 2.5% of GDP by the end of this Parliament, which is a tiny move up from this previously being policy but with no timetable. I also understand the SDR will be asked what can be done to better defend Britain within a 2.5% envelope.
Sadly, I fear that's still inadequate. Defence chiefs have asked for 2.65% and I think that's reasonable.
As Hunt said on his podcast the other day if the US totally withdrew from Europe all this 2.5% stuff would go away and we'd be talking about 6, 7, 8 or even 10% of GDP on defence.
Because we'd have no choice.
The value for money choice would be to spend an additional say 0.5% of our gdp financially supporting countries close to Russia that have cheaper manufacturing so that they can spend 10% of their GDP. And to allow Poland to go nuclear.
If any country deserves to have nuclear weapons given its geopolitical situation and history it’s Poland.
But in the meantime the more we can all suppress Russian GDP by not buying anything from them and making life difficult for anyone who does (including the USA it seems), the more we remove the financial driver for 90% of our defence needs in Europe.
Which, of course, is similar to the Napoleonic Wars when we built continental coalitions by doing the same.
But, I don't think there's any escaping the conclusion our Armed Forces are now woefully and dangerously undersized and underprepared, our army is essentially just a performative militia now with some special forces on top, and we're going to have to cough up.
The country ought to. Starmer probably won't. Other priorities. The enormous social security budget, mostly.
That's got to change, I'm afraid.
Social security means nothing without national security.
But the voters.
Unless Trump brings enough economic pressure to bear to frighten him into compliance, he won't do it. There are no votes in defence and, as I said the other day, there won't be until the Russians have reached the Rhine and Britain and France have no cards to play save to threaten nuclear war. By which point it'll be a little late.
Russia is not going to reach the Rhine through conventional military force.
But that’s not to say that we shouldn’t look at our defence spending. I note several people here strongly support increased defence spending, so maybe there are votes in it.
Putin doesn't want go to the Rhine. He wants to absorb the Baltics, and subvert most of E Europe including Poland and poss the Scandis. He's an old man in a hurry with a war economy facing a demogrsphic cliff edge. With the US out of the picture very serious stuff could very likely happen.
Are there any examples of a state launching a war of territorial expansion, winning and then saying "splendid, that's enough for us, thanks"?
Prussia after the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) - After defeating France, Prussia annexed Alsace-Lorraine but declined to push for more French territory, focusing instead on using the victory to unify Germany. Bismarck specifically argued against taking more French land, believing it would only create a permanent enemy.
Israel after the 1967 Six-Day War - While Israel captured significant territory (Sinai, Gaza, West Bank, Golan Heights), it quickly offered to return most conquered areas in exchange for peace treaties. Israel ultimately did return the Sinai to Egypt after the 1979 peace treaty.
I see Starmer is planning to 'overrule' HMT/Reeves to get to 2.5% of GDP by the end of this Parliament, which is a tiny move up from this previously being policy but with no timetable. I also understand the SDR will be asked what can be done to better defend Britain within a 2.5% envelope.
Sadly, I fear that's still inadequate. Defence chiefs have asked for 2.65% and I think that's reasonable.
As Hunt said on his podcast the other day if the US totally withdrew from Europe all this 2.5% stuff would go away and we'd be talking about 6, 7, 8 or even 10% of GDP on defence.
Because we'd have no choice.
The value for money choice would be to spend an additional say 0.5% of our gdp financially supporting countries close to Russia that have cheaper manufacturing so that they can spend 10% of their GDP. And to allow Poland to go nuclear.
If any country deserves to have nuclear weapons given its geopolitical situation and history it’s Poland.
But in the meantime the more we can all suppress Russian GDP by not buying anything from them and making life difficult for anyone who does (including the USA it seems), the more we remove the financial driver for 90% of our defence needs in Europe.
Which, of course, is similar to the Napoleonic Wars when we built continental coalitions by doing the same.
But, I don't think there's any escaping the conclusion our Armed Forces are now woefully and dangerously undersized and underprepared, our army is essentially just a performative militia now with some special forces on top, and we're going to have to cough up.
The country ought to. Starmer probably won't. Other priorities. The enormous social security budget, mostly.
That's got to change, I'm afraid.
Social security means nothing without national security.
But the voters.
Unless Trump brings enough economic pressure to bear to frighten him into compliance, he won't do it. There are no votes in defence and, as I said the other day, there won't be until the Russians have reached the Rhine and Britain and France have no cards to play save to threaten nuclear war. By which point it'll be a little late.
All the main parties support increased defence spending though, including Reform, as does Merz, likely next German Chancellor
The Army needs to field a fully equipped warfighting division with another in reserve. So it can place a clear continental deterrent and sustain it on the central European plain for 6 months at a time.
I can't see how it does it without regular forces going back up to 105-120k men.
That's not going to be cheap and will probably take 5-7 years to achieve.
We should learn from the Ukrainians and spend any new ones on drones, lots of drones!
Now you've said that it's only a matter of time before Sunil turns up, to say: he will make an excellent drone.
I think that's extrapolated from insufficient Data.
I see Starmer is planning to 'overrule' HMT/Reeves to get to 2.5% of GDP by the end of this Parliament, which is a tiny move up from this previously being policy but with no timetable. I also understand the SDR will be asked what can be done to better defend Britain within a 2.5% envelope.
Sadly, I fear that's still inadequate. Defence chiefs have asked for 2.65% and I think that's reasonable.
As Hunt said on his podcast the other day if the US totally withdrew from Europe all this 2.5% stuff would go away and we'd be talking about 6, 7, 8 or even 10% of GDP on defence.
Because we'd have no choice.
The value for money choice would be to spend an additional say 0.5% of our gdp financially supporting countries close to Russia that have cheaper manufacturing so that they can spend 10% of their GDP. And to allow Poland to go nuclear.
If any country deserves to have nuclear weapons given its geopolitical situation and history it’s Poland.
But in the meantime the more we can all suppress Russian GDP by not buying anything from them and making life difficult for anyone who does (including the USA it seems), the more we remove the financial driver for 90% of our defence needs in Europe.
Which, of course, is similar to the Napoleonic Wars when we built continental coalitions by doing the same.
But, I don't think there's any escaping the conclusion our Armed Forces are now woefully and dangerously undersized and underprepared, our army is essentially just a performative militia now with some special forces on top, and we're going to have to cough up.
The country ought to. Starmer probably won't. Other priorities. The enormous social security budget, mostly.
That's got to change, I'm afraid.
Social security means nothing without national security.
But the voters.
Unless Trump brings enough economic pressure to bear to frighten him into compliance, he won't do it. There are no votes in defence and, as I said the other day, there won't be until the Russians have reached the Rhine and Britain and France have no cards to play save to threaten nuclear war. By which point it'll be a little late.
Russia is not going to reach the Rhine through conventional military force.
But that’s not to say that we shouldn’t look at our defence spending. I note several people here strongly support increased defence spending, so maybe there are votes in it.
Putin doesn't want go to the Rhine. He wants to absorb the Baltics, and subvert most of E Europe including Poland and poss the Scandis. He's an old man in a hurry with a war economy facing a demogrsphic cliff edge. With the US out of the picture very serious stuff could very likely happen.
Are there any examples of a state launching a war of territorial expansion, winning and then saying "splendid, that's enough for us, thanks"?
Arguably the US after the Mexican War. They got huge swathes of territory in the west and south and stopped. They never went further to take México (always wondered how amazing México would be if it had been either a British colony or taken over by the US early on). They never decided to go North after that or overseas so maybe an example.
Though the Mexican War arguably led to the US Civil War so they had bigger issues on their plate.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the motivation I confess this is another of those topics that just riles me up irrationally - let the poor buggers in hospital keep their bloody sausages.
These people are insane. How do we get rid of them?
Switching to a carnivore diet has done wonders for my health. Down 70 pounds now since I made the switch, pretty close to my goal weight now, and health is far better than it was. Get rid of plant-based crap.
I don't think one has to share your carnivore based tastes to think letting people enjoy some fried breakfasts when very ill or dying is perhaps worth the risks.
Or that its good for you.
With the fried breakfast, I think it's more the vast amounts of salt and vegetable oil sometimes used in its creation that are the primary health risks, rather than the existence of meat in there.
Indeed. Putting the meat in the air fryer is how I cook mine, no oil necessary then.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the motivation I confess this is another of those topics that just riles me up irrationally - let the poor buggers in hospital keep their bloody sausages.
These people are insane. How do we get rid of them?
Switching to a carnivore diet has done wonders for my health. Down 70 pounds now since I made the switch, pretty close to my goal weight now, and health is far better than it was. Get rid of plant-based crap.
I’m intrigued how fat you were. So you have lost 5 stone, unless you are a big big chap that’s a huge amount of weight to lose voluntarily, what weight are you now?
I peaked at 252lbs during lockdown. When I started my carnivore diet (Oct 2023) I was on 247 lbs.
I'm now 177 lbs, so 70 down since I switched diet, 75 down from my peak.
Can I ask how tall you are? Just seems like a massive weight shift. I’m guessing you aren’t looking anorexic at 12.5 stone?
5'8" so, no, not anorexic. Gone from BMI of 38 to 27.
…………… 38??????
😳
Fucking hell
But bravo on bringing that down to 27. That’s seriously impressive work, my dude
👏
Thanks. No drugs or surgery, just a diet of the five important food groups: meat, cheese, eggs, milk and coffee.
Do you know how/why your weight got so out of hand?
You are under no obligation to answer. I’ve no desire to push buttons
You should be on telly. That’s incredible weight loss, and without ozempic!
Thanks. I've long struggled with my weight, the last time I weighed what I do now was about 15 years ago. I was typically around 220 and would diet and get it close to 200 but never got it down below 200.
I was always active despite being overweight so never too concerned. Lockdown was bad for my health. Went from doing upto 20k steps a day to sub 4k. That's when my weight went up to 252 and I struggled to get it back down again before I switched my diet.
Despite it being rather American, I took a long time ago to weighing in pounds alone. Easier to keep track using that as a decimal rather than messing around with stone conversions, and easier to notice differences when dieting than dealing with kg.
But you calculate bmi with imperial units..?
Just Google a calculator and it does it for you.
I prefer metric on a philosophical basis, but know my height in an imperial one so what difference does it make. I could do the maths but it is easy enough to find a calculator online that takes weight in pounds and height in feet and inches.
It would be nice to have a calculator get the square of height calculating only in feet and inches
Nobody should get too hung up on BMI in any case. It is a poor measure.
Well yes, but I was interested solely in the calculation - what is the square of 5'10" ?
34 sq ft, 4 sq in
OK, now do the whole bmi ... (Carnix's squaring was neater)
Why is BMI based on a square of height anyway?
Mass proportional to volume which is length cubed. BMI should be calculated based on height cubed.
Presumably because we aren't as deep as we are tall, so our volume is not our height cubed. So squared works as a reasonable approximation, though its a flawed measure anyway.
No, the cubed rule applies to any three-dimensional object, no matter what the relative height, width and length. The fact that our volume is not our height cubed is irrelevant.
I see Starmer is planning to 'overrule' HMT/Reeves to get to 2.5% of GDP by the end of this Parliament, which is a tiny move up from this previously being policy but with no timetable. I also understand the SDR will be asked what can be done to better defend Britain within a 2.5% envelope.
Sadly, I fear that's still inadequate. Defence chiefs have asked for 2.65% and I think that's reasonable.
As Hunt said on his podcast the other day if the US totally withdrew from Europe all this 2.5% stuff would go away and we'd be talking about 6, 7, 8 or even 10% of GDP on defence.
Because we'd have no choice.
The value for money choice would be to spend an additional say 0.5% of our gdp financially supporting countries close to Russia that have cheaper manufacturing so that they can spend 10% of their GDP. And to allow Poland to go nuclear.
If any country deserves to have nuclear weapons given its geopolitical situation and history it’s Poland.
But in the meantime the more we can all suppress Russian GDP by not buying anything from them and making life difficult for anyone who does (including the USA it seems), the more we remove the financial driver for 90% of our defence needs in Europe.
Which, of course, is similar to the Napoleonic Wars when we built continental coalitions by doing the same.
But, I don't think there's any escaping the conclusion our Armed Forces are now woefully and dangerously undersized and underprepared, our army is essentially just a performative militia now with some special forces on top, and we're going to have to cough up.
The country ought to. Starmer probably won't. Other priorities. The enormous social security budget, mostly.
That's got to change, I'm afraid.
Social security means nothing without national security.
But the voters.
Unless Trump brings enough economic pressure to bear to frighten him into compliance, he won't do it. There are no votes in defence and, as I said the other day, there won't be until the Russians have reached the Rhine and Britain and France have no cards to play save to threaten nuclear war. By which point it'll be a little late.
Russia is not going to reach the Rhine through conventional military force.
But that’s not to say that we shouldn’t look at our defence spending. I note several people here strongly support increased defence spending, so maybe there are votes in it.
The problem is, there are always votes in raising spending, but precious few in raising taxes.
I am inclined to think we *may* need to spend a bit more to get A LOT more, but just keep the current system and bung a massive chunk more money at the MOD? Piss off. Tell us precisely what you want the money for.
I see Starmer is planning to 'overrule' HMT/Reeves to get to 2.5% of GDP by the end of this Parliament, which is a tiny move up from this previously being policy but with no timetable. I also understand the SDR will be asked what can be done to better defend Britain within a 2.5% envelope.
Sadly, I fear that's still inadequate. Defence chiefs have asked for 2.65% and I think that's reasonable.
As Hunt said on his podcast the other day if the US totally withdrew from Europe all this 2.5% stuff would go away and we'd be talking about 6, 7, 8 or even 10% of GDP on defence.
Because we'd have no choice.
The value for money choice would be to spend an additional say 0.5% of our gdp financially supporting countries close to Russia that have cheaper manufacturing so that they can spend 10% of their GDP. And to allow Poland to go nuclear.
If any country deserves to have nuclear weapons given its geopolitical situation and history it’s Poland.
But in the meantime the more we can all suppress Russian GDP by not buying anything from them and making life difficult for anyone who does (including the USA it seems), the more we remove the financial driver for 90% of our defence needs in Europe.
Which, of course, is similar to the Napoleonic Wars when we built continental coalitions by doing the same.
But, I don't think there's any escaping the conclusion our Armed Forces are now woefully and dangerously undersized and underprepared, our army is essentially just a performative militia now with some special forces on top, and we're going to have to cough up.
The country ought to. Starmer probably won't. Other priorities. The enormous social security budget, mostly.
That's got to change, I'm afraid.
Social security means nothing without national security.
But the voters.
Unless Trump brings enough economic pressure to bear to frighten him into compliance, he won't do it. There are no votes in defence and, as I said the other day, there won't be until the Russians have reached the Rhine and Britain and France have no cards to play save to threaten nuclear war. By which point it'll be a little late.
Russia is not going to reach the Rhine through conventional military force.
But that’s not to say that we shouldn’t look at our defence spending. I note several people here strongly support increased defence spending, so maybe there are votes in it.
Putin doesn't want go to the Rhine. He wants to absorb the Baltics, and subvert most of E Europe including Poland and poss the Scandis. He's an old man in a hurry with a war economy facing a demogrsphic cliff edge. With the US out of the picture very serious stuff could very likely happen.
Are there any examples of a state launching a war of territorial expansion, winning and then saying "splendid, that's enough for us, thanks"?
Arguably the US after the Mexican War. They got huge swathes of territory in the west and south and stopped. They never went further to take México (always wondered how amazing México would be if it had been either a British colony or taken over by the US early on). They never decided to go North after that or overseas so maybe an example.
Though the Mexican War arguably led to the US Civil War so they had bigger issues on their plate.
To an extent but 15 years gap where they didn’t know there was going to be a civil war where they could have pushed on theoretically - luckily, this being PB, there will be an expert lurker on the Mexican war to explain why the US couldn’t/didn’t push on due to wheat prices in the Russian Empire meaning that the Mexican army with their cornflour tacos were better fed than their American bread eating enemies or something.
No reason why it shouldn’t. A organisation of 35,000 with complex cutting edge procurement going on does need senior managers. Well under 100 above 1* in the navy I think.
Whenever I read news from Birmingham or see quirky videos, or hear Brummy gossip or funny chitchat, I always think “gosh, Birmingham sounds nice, I’d like to live there one day”
Perhaps there are intrepid flint knappers from other countries who include Birmingham on their visitors to alternative places.
I see Starmer is planning to 'overrule' HMT/Reeves to get to 2.5% of GDP by the end of this Parliament, which is a tiny move up from this previously being policy but with no timetable. I also understand the SDR will be asked what can be done to better defend Britain within a 2.5% envelope.
Sadly, I fear that's still inadequate. Defence chiefs have asked for 2.65% and I think that's reasonable.
As Hunt said on his podcast the other day if the US totally withdrew from Europe all this 2.5% stuff would go away and we'd be talking about 6, 7, 8 or even 10% of GDP on defence.
Because we'd have no choice.
The value for money choice would be to spend an additional say 0.5% of our gdp financially supporting countries close to Russia that have cheaper manufacturing so that they can spend 10% of their GDP. And to allow Poland to go nuclear.
If any country deserves to have nuclear weapons given its geopolitical situation and history it’s Poland.
But in the meantime the more we can all suppress Russian GDP by not buying anything from them and making life difficult for anyone who does (including the USA it seems), the more we remove the financial driver for 90% of our defence needs in Europe.
Which, of course, is similar to the Napoleonic Wars when we built continental coalitions by doing the same.
But, I don't think there's any escaping the conclusion our Armed Forces are now woefully and dangerously undersized and underprepared, our army is essentially just a performative militia now with some special forces on top, and we're going to have to cough up.
The country ought to. Starmer probably won't. Other priorities. The enormous social security budget, mostly.
That's got to change, I'm afraid.
Social security means nothing without national security.
But the voters.
Unless Trump brings enough economic pressure to bear to frighten him into compliance, he won't do it. There are no votes in defence and, as I said the other day, there won't be until the Russians have reached the Rhine and Britain and France have no cards to play save to threaten nuclear war. By which point it'll be a little late.
Russia is not going to reach the Rhine through conventional military force.
But that’s not to say that we shouldn’t look at our defence spending. I note several people here strongly support increased defence spending, so maybe there are votes in it.
Putin doesn't want go to the Rhine. He wants to absorb the Baltics, and subvert most of E Europe including Poland and poss the Scandis. He's an old man in a hurry with a war economy facing a demogrsphic cliff edge. With the US out of the picture very serious stuff could very likely happen.
Are there any examples of a state launching a war of territorial expansion, winning and then saying "splendid, that's enough for us, thanks"?
Arguably the US after the Mexican War. They got huge swathes of territory in the west and south and stopped. They never went further to take México (always wondered how amazing México would be if it had been either a British colony or taken over by the US early on). They never decided to go North after that or overseas so maybe an example.
I see Starmer is planning to 'overrule' HMT/Reeves to get to 2.5% of GDP by the end of this Parliament, which is a tiny move up from this previously being policy but with no timetable. I also understand the SDR will be asked what can be done to better defend Britain within a 2.5% envelope.
Sadly, I fear that's still inadequate. Defence chiefs have asked for 2.65% and I think that's reasonable.
As Hunt said on his podcast the other day if the US totally withdrew from Europe all this 2.5% stuff would go away and we'd be talking about 6, 7, 8 or even 10% of GDP on defence.
Because we'd have no choice.
The value for money choice would be to spend an additional say 0.5% of our gdp financially supporting countries close to Russia that have cheaper manufacturing so that they can spend 10% of their GDP. And to allow Poland to go nuclear.
If any country deserves to have nuclear weapons given its geopolitical situation and history it’s Poland.
But in the meantime the more we can all suppress Russian GDP by not buying anything from them and making life difficult for anyone who does (including the USA it seems), the more we remove the financial driver for 90% of our defence needs in Europe.
Which, of course, is similar to the Napoleonic Wars when we built continental coalitions by doing the same.
But, I don't think there's any escaping the conclusion our Armed Forces are now woefully and dangerously undersized and underprepared, our army is essentially just a performative militia now with some special forces on top, and we're going to have to cough up.
The country ought to. Starmer probably won't. Other priorities. The enormous social security budget, mostly.
That's got to change, I'm afraid.
Social security means nothing without national security.
But the voters.
Unless Trump brings enough economic pressure to bear to frighten him into compliance, he won't do it. There are no votes in defence and, as I said the other day, there won't be until the Russians have reached the Rhine and Britain and France have no cards to play save to threaten nuclear war. By which point it'll be a little late.
Russia is not going to reach the Rhine through conventional military force.
But that’s not to say that we shouldn’t look at our defence spending. I note several people here strongly support increased defence spending, so maybe there are votes in it.
Putin doesn't want go to the Rhine. He wants to absorb the Baltics, and subvert most of E Europe including Poland and poss the Scandis. He's an old man in a hurry with a war economy facing a demogrsphic cliff edge. With the US out of the picture very serious stuff could very likely happen.
Are there any examples of a state launching a war of territorial expansion, winning and then saying "splendid, that's enough for us, thanks"?
Prussia after the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) - After defeating France, Prussia annexed Alsace-Lorraine but declined to push for more French territory, focusing instead on using the victory to unify Germany. Bismarck specifically argued against taking more French land, believing it would only create a permanent enemy.
Israel after the 1967 Six-Day War - While Israel captured significant territory (Sinai, Gaza, West Bank, Golan Heights), it quickly offered to return most conquered areas in exchange for peace treaties. Israel ultimately did return the Sinai to Egypt after the 1979 peace treaty.
Prussia taking Alsace-Lorraine alone was enough to create a permanent enemy.
Whenever you think “oh it’s reached peak cuteness” or “enough of the funny stabbing vids lolz” or “how can a place be THAT perfect with so many great mosques and fly tipping experts” then Birmingham does something even more fabulous
It’s absurd how one place can be so attractive
Yeah, Birmingham is almost as nice as London on the nice stabbing metric.
The UK has fewer homicides by stabbing than the vast majority of countries.
Reading these reports from Birmingham…. Jesus fucks
Fuck Putin, fuck Ukraine, fuck the EU, let them fight it out. We should just upgrade our nukes and subs, buy a trillion drones, defend our island, and focus on the very very broken cities of our own nation. They’ve already been Putin’d. They need help
Enough
Yeah. Looking after our own and fuck the rest of the world... easy to see where you stand. It's the slogan if the far right in so many places. You and your kind have always be wrong.
I see Starmer is planning to 'overrule' HMT/Reeves to get to 2.5% of GDP by the end of this Parliament, which is a tiny move up from this previously being policy but with no timetable. I also understand the SDR will be asked what can be done to better defend Britain within a 2.5% envelope.
Sadly, I fear that's still inadequate. Defence chiefs have asked for 2.65% and I think that's reasonable.
As Hunt said on his podcast the other day if the US totally withdrew from Europe all this 2.5% stuff would go away and we'd be talking about 6, 7, 8 or even 10% of GDP on defence.
Because we'd have no choice.
The value for money choice would be to spend an additional say 0.5% of our gdp financially supporting countries close to Russia that have cheaper manufacturing so that they can spend 10% of their GDP. And to allow Poland to go nuclear.
If any country deserves to have nuclear weapons given its geopolitical situation and history it’s Poland.
But in the meantime the more we can all suppress Russian GDP by not buying anything from them and making life difficult for anyone who does (including the USA it seems), the more we remove the financial driver for 90% of our defence needs in Europe.
Which, of course, is similar to the Napoleonic Wars when we built continental coalitions by doing the same.
But, I don't think there's any escaping the conclusion our Armed Forces are now woefully and dangerously undersized and underprepared, our army is essentially just a performative militia now with some special forces on top, and we're going to have to cough up.
The country ought to. Starmer probably won't. Other priorities. The enormous social security budget, mostly.
That's got to change, I'm afraid.
Social security means nothing without national security.
But the voters.
Unless Trump brings enough economic pressure to bear to frighten him into compliance, he won't do it. There are no votes in defence and, as I said the other day, there won't be until the Russians have reached the Rhine and Britain and France have no cards to play save to threaten nuclear war. By which point it'll be a little late.
Russia is not going to reach the Rhine through conventional military force.
But that’s not to say that we shouldn’t look at our defence spending. I note several people here strongly support increased defence spending, so maybe there are votes in it.
Putin doesn't want go to the Rhine. He wants to absorb the Baltics, and subvert most of E Europe including Poland and poss the Scandis. He's an old man in a hurry with a war economy facing a demogrsphic cliff edge. With the US out of the picture very serious stuff could very likely happen.
Are there any examples of a state launching a war of territorial expansion, winning and then saying "splendid, that's enough for us, thanks"?
Arguably the US after the Mexican War. They got huge swathes of territory in the west and south and stopped. They never went further to take México (always wondered how amazing México would be if it had been either a British colony or taken over by the US early on). They never decided to go North after that or overseas so maybe an example.
Alaska, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Philippines...
Wasn’t Alaska a purchase? Can’t be arsed to look up the others so will take your word for it - I’m sure the Philippines was something less than territorial expansion though, maybe about cornering the nursing market but not empire building?
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the motivation I confess this is another of those topics that just riles me up irrationally - let the poor buggers in hospital keep their bloody sausages.
These people are insane. How do we get rid of them?
Switching to a carnivore diet has done wonders for my health. Down 70 pounds now since I made the switch, pretty close to my goal weight now, and health is far better than it was. Get rid of plant-based crap.
I don't think one has to share your carnivore based tastes to think letting people enjoy some fried breakfasts when very ill or dying is perhaps worth the risks.
Or that its good for you.
With the fried breakfast, I think it's more the vast amounts of salt and vegetable oil sometimes used in its creation that are the primary health risks, rather than the existence of meat in there.
Indeed. Putting the meat in the air fryer is how I cook mine, no oil necessary then.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the motivation I confess this is another of those topics that just riles me up irrationally - let the poor buggers in hospital keep their bloody sausages.
These people are insane. How do we get rid of them?
Switching to a carnivore diet has done wonders for my health. Down 70 pounds now since I made the switch, pretty close to my goal weight now, and health is far better than it was. Get rid of plant-based crap.
I’m intrigued how fat you were. So you have lost 5 stone, unless you are a big big chap that’s a huge amount of weight to lose voluntarily, what weight are you now?
I peaked at 252lbs during lockdown. When I started my carnivore diet (Oct 2023) I was on 247 lbs.
I'm now 177 lbs, so 70 down since I switched diet, 75 down from my peak.
Can I ask how tall you are? Just seems like a massive weight shift. I’m guessing you aren’t looking anorexic at 12.5 stone?
5'8" so, no, not anorexic. Gone from BMI of 38 to 27.
…………… 38??????
😳
Fucking hell
But bravo on bringing that down to 27. That’s seriously impressive work, my dude
👏
Thanks. No drugs or surgery, just a diet of the five important food groups: meat, cheese, eggs, milk and coffee.
Do you know how/why your weight got so out of hand?
You are under no obligation to answer. I’ve no desire to push buttons
You should be on telly. That’s incredible weight loss, and without ozempic!
Thanks. I've long struggled with my weight, the last time I weighed what I do now was about 15 years ago. I was typically around 220 and would diet and get it close to 200 but never got it down below 200.
I was always active despite being overweight so never too concerned. Lockdown was bad for my health. Went from doing upto 20k steps a day to sub 4k. That's when my weight went up to 252 and I struggled to get it back down again before I switched my diet.
Despite it being rather American, I took a long time ago to weighing in pounds alone. Easier to keep track using that as a decimal rather than messing around with stone conversions, and easier to notice differences when dieting than dealing with kg.
But you calculate bmi with imperial units..?
Just Google a calculator and it does it for you.
I prefer metric on a philosophical basis, but know my height in an imperial one so what difference does it make. I could do the maths but it is easy enough to find a calculator online that takes weight in pounds and height in feet and inches.
It would be nice to have a calculator get the square of height calculating only in feet and inches
Nobody should get too hung up on BMI in any case. It is a poor measure.
Well yes, but I was interested solely in the calculation - what is the square of 5'10" ?
34 sq ft, 4 sq in
OK, now do the whole bmi ... (Carnix's squaring was neater)
Why is BMI based on a square of height anyway?
Mass proportional to volume which is length cubed. BMI should be calculated based on height cubed.
Presumably because we aren't as deep as we are tall, so our volume is not our height cubed. So squared works as a reasonable approximation, though its a flawed measure anyway.
No, the cubed rule applies to any three-dimensional object.
Only if all 3 dimensions increase proportionately.
If 2 dimensions stay the same but the third increases, then the cubed rule does not apply.
10 * 6 * 8 = 480
If I double the 10 but hold the other 2 dimensions the same, then 20 * 6 * 8 = 960 which is the double of 480, it has scaled linearly not squared or cubed.
Taller people aren't necessarily wider or deeper just by virtue of being taller.
I see Starmer is planning to 'overrule' HMT/Reeves to get to 2.5% of GDP by the end of this Parliament, which is a tiny move up from this previously being policy but with no timetable. I also understand the SDR will be asked what can be done to better defend Britain within a 2.5% envelope.
Sadly, I fear that's still inadequate. Defence chiefs have asked for 2.65% and I think that's reasonable.
As Hunt said on his podcast the other day if the US totally withdrew from Europe all this 2.5% stuff would go away and we'd be talking about 6, 7, 8 or even 10% of GDP on defence.
Because we'd have no choice.
The value for money choice would be to spend an additional say 0.5% of our gdp financially supporting countries close to Russia that have cheaper manufacturing so that they can spend 10% of their GDP. And to allow Poland to go nuclear.
If any country deserves to have nuclear weapons given its geopolitical situation and history it’s Poland.
But in the meantime the more we can all suppress Russian GDP by not buying anything from them and making life difficult for anyone who does (including the USA it seems), the more we remove the financial driver for 90% of our defence needs in Europe.
Which, of course, is similar to the Napoleonic Wars when we built continental coalitions by doing the same.
But, I don't think there's any escaping the conclusion our Armed Forces are now woefully and dangerously undersized and underprepared, our army is essentially just a performative militia now with some special forces on top, and we're going to have to cough up.
The country ought to. Starmer probably won't. Other priorities. The enormous social security budget, mostly.
That's got to change, I'm afraid.
Social security means nothing without national security.
But the voters.
Unless Trump brings enough economic pressure to bear to frighten him into compliance, he won't do it. There are no votes in defence and, as I said the other day, there won't be until the Russians have reached the Rhine and Britain and France have no cards to play save to threaten nuclear war. By which point it'll be a little late.
Russia is not going to reach the Rhine through conventional military force.
But that’s not to say that we shouldn’t look at our defence spending. I note several people here strongly support increased defence spending, so maybe there are votes in it.
Putin doesn't want go to the Rhine. He wants to absorb the Baltics, and subvert most of E Europe including Poland and poss the Scandis. He's an old man in a hurry with a war economy facing a demogrsphic cliff edge. With the US out of the picture very serious stuff could very likely happen.
Are there any examples of a state launching a war of territorial expansion, winning and then saying "splendid, that's enough for us, thanks"?
Prussia after the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) - After defeating France, Prussia annexed Alsace-Lorraine but declined to push for more French territory, focusing instead on using the victory to unify Germany. Bismarck specifically argued against taking more French land, believing it would only create a permanent enemy.
Israel after the 1967 Six-Day War - While Israel captured significant territory (Sinai, Gaza, West Bank, Golan Heights), it quickly offered to return most conquered areas in exchange for peace treaties. Israel ultimately did return the Sinai to Egypt after the 1979 peace treaty.
Poland in 1921? Although it did start expanding again in 1938.
Possibly Japan in 1905? It took Formosa and Korea and then waited 25 years before taking anywhere else.
Brazil and Argentina in 1870 settling their claims over Paraguay, perhaps.
I see Starmer is planning to 'overrule' HMT/Reeves to get to 2.5% of GDP by the end of this Parliament, which is a tiny move up from this previously being policy but with no timetable. I also understand the SDR will be asked what can be done to better defend Britain within a 2.5% envelope.
Sadly, I fear that's still inadequate. Defence chiefs have asked for 2.65% and I think that's reasonable.
As Hunt said on his podcast the other day if the US totally withdrew from Europe all this 2.5% stuff would go away and we'd be talking about 6, 7, 8 or even 10% of GDP on defence.
Because we'd have no choice.
The value for money choice would be to spend an additional say 0.5% of our gdp financially supporting countries close to Russia that have cheaper manufacturing so that they can spend 10% of their GDP. And to allow Poland to go nuclear.
If any country deserves to have nuclear weapons given its geopolitical situation and history it’s Poland.
But in the meantime the more we can all suppress Russian GDP by not buying anything from them and making life difficult for anyone who does (including the USA it seems), the more we remove the financial driver for 90% of our defence needs in Europe.
Which, of course, is similar to the Napoleonic Wars when we built continental coalitions by doing the same.
But, I don't think there's any escaping the conclusion our Armed Forces are now woefully and dangerously undersized and underprepared, our army is essentially just a performative militia now with some special forces on top, and we're going to have to cough up.
The country ought to. Starmer probably won't. Other priorities. The enormous social security budget, mostly.
That's got to change, I'm afraid.
Social security means nothing without national security.
But the voters.
Unless Trump brings enough economic pressure to bear to frighten him into compliance, he won't do it. There are no votes in defence and, as I said the other day, there won't be until the Russians have reached the Rhine and Britain and France have no cards to play save to threaten nuclear war. By which point it'll be a little late.
Russia is not going to reach the Rhine through conventional military force.
But that’s not to say that we shouldn’t look at our defence spending. I note several people here strongly support increased defence spending, so maybe there are votes in it.
Putin doesn't want go to the Rhine. He wants to absorb the Baltics, and subvert most of E Europe including Poland and poss the Scandis. He's an old man in a hurry with a war economy facing a demogrsphic cliff edge. With the US out of the picture very serious stuff could very likely happen.
He wont succeed with Poland or the Scandinavian countries, but the Baltics are so small he could easily be tempted to conquer them and dare us to do something about it. The man is obviously trying to reassemble the Soviet Union, either by annexation or the establishment of secure client regimes.
You may be right. But the Poles aren't taking any chances judging by uplift in defence spending, and neither are the Finns or the Swedes. Russia's actions in the Baltic are not friendly overtures.
I see Starmer is planning to 'overrule' HMT/Reeves to get to 2.5% of GDP by the end of this Parliament, which is a tiny move up from this previously being policy but with no timetable. I also understand the SDR will be asked what can be done to better defend Britain within a 2.5% envelope.
Sadly, I fear that's still inadequate. Defence chiefs have asked for 2.65% and I think that's reasonable.
As Hunt said on his podcast the other day if the US totally withdrew from Europe all this 2.5% stuff would go away and we'd be talking about 6, 7, 8 or even 10% of GDP on defence.
Because we'd have no choice.
The value for money choice would be to spend an additional say 0.5% of our gdp financially supporting countries close to Russia that have cheaper manufacturing so that they can spend 10% of their GDP. And to allow Poland to go nuclear.
If any country deserves to have nuclear weapons given its geopolitical situation and history it’s Poland.
But in the meantime the more we can all suppress Russian GDP by not buying anything from them and making life difficult for anyone who does (including the USA it seems), the more we remove the financial driver for 90% of our defence needs in Europe.
Which, of course, is similar to the Napoleonic Wars when we built continental coalitions by doing the same.
But, I don't think there's any escaping the conclusion our Armed Forces are now woefully and dangerously undersized and underprepared, our army is essentially just a performative militia now with some special forces on top, and we're going to have to cough up.
The country ought to. Starmer probably won't. Other priorities. The enormous social security budget, mostly.
That's got to change, I'm afraid.
Social security means nothing without national security.
But the voters.
Unless Trump brings enough economic pressure to bear to frighten him into compliance, he won't do it. There are no votes in defence and, as I said the other day, there won't be until the Russians have reached the Rhine and Britain and France have no cards to play save to threaten nuclear war. By which point it'll be a little late.
Russia is not going to reach the Rhine through conventional military force.
But that’s not to say that we shouldn’t look at our defence spending. I note several people here strongly support increased defence spending, so maybe there are votes in it.
Putin doesn't want go to the Rhine. He wants to absorb the Baltics, and subvert most of E Europe including Poland and poss the Scandis. He's an old man in a hurry with a war economy facing a demogrsphic cliff edge. With the US out of the picture very serious stuff could very likely happen.
Are there any examples of a state launching a war of territorial expansion, winning and then saying "splendid, that's enough for us, thanks"?
Arguably the US after the Mexican War. They got huge swathes of territory in the west and south and stopped. They never went further to take México (always wondered how amazing México would be if it had been either a British colony or taken over by the US early on). They never decided to go North after that or overseas so maybe an example.
Though the Mexican War arguably led to the US Civil War so they had bigger issues on their plate.
To an extent but 15 years gap where they didn’t know there was going to be a civil war where they could have pushed on theoretically - luckily, this being PB, there will be an expert lurker on the Mexican war to explain why the US couldn’t/didn’t push on due to wheat prices in the Russian Empire meaning that the Mexican army with their cornflour tacos were better fed than their American bread eating enemies or something.
Looking at it technically the US did go back for more anyway, the Gadsden Purchase (which was done fiscally but with military threat).
I see Starmer is planning to 'overrule' HMT/Reeves to get to 2.5% of GDP by the end of this Parliament, which is a tiny move up from this previously being policy but with no timetable. I also understand the SDR will be asked what can be done to better defend Britain within a 2.5% envelope.
Sadly, I fear that's still inadequate. Defence chiefs have asked for 2.65% and I think that's reasonable.
As Hunt said on his podcast the other day if the US totally withdrew from Europe all this 2.5% stuff would go away and we'd be talking about 6, 7, 8 or even 10% of GDP on defence.
Because we'd have no choice.
The value for money choice would be to spend an additional say 0.5% of our gdp financially supporting countries close to Russia that have cheaper manufacturing so that they can spend 10% of their GDP. And to allow Poland to go nuclear.
If any country deserves to have nuclear weapons given its geopolitical situation and history it’s Poland.
But in the meantime the more we can all suppress Russian GDP by not buying anything from them and making life difficult for anyone who does (including the USA it seems), the more we remove the financial driver for 90% of our defence needs in Europe.
Which, of course, is similar to the Napoleonic Wars when we built continental coalitions by doing the same.
But, I don't think there's any escaping the conclusion our Armed Forces are now woefully and dangerously undersized and underprepared, our army is essentially just a performative militia now with some special forces on top, and we're going to have to cough up.
The country ought to. Starmer probably won't. Other priorities. The enormous social security budget, mostly.
That's got to change, I'm afraid.
Social security means nothing without national security.
But the voters.
Unless Trump brings enough economic pressure to bear to frighten him into compliance, he won't do it. There are no votes in defence and, as I said the other day, there won't be until the Russians have reached the Rhine and Britain and France have no cards to play save to threaten nuclear war. By which point it'll be a little late.
Russia is not going to reach the Rhine through conventional military force.
But that’s not to say that we shouldn’t look at our defence spending. I note several people here strongly support increased defence spending, so maybe there are votes in it.
Putin doesn't want go to the Rhine. He wants to absorb the Baltics, and subvert most of E Europe including Poland and poss the Scandis. He's an old man in a hurry with a war economy facing a demogrsphic cliff edge. With the US out of the picture very serious stuff could very likely happen.
Are there any examples of a state launching a war of territorial expansion, winning and then saying "splendid, that's enough for us, thanks"?
Arguably the US after the Mexican War. They got huge swathes of territory in the west and south and stopped. They never went further to take México (always wondered how amazing México would be if it had been either a British colony or taken over by the US early on). They never decided to go North after that or overseas so maybe an example.
Alaska, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Philippines...
Wasn’t Alaska a purchase? Can’t be arsed to look up the others so will take your word for it - I’m sure the Philippines was something less than territorial expansion though, maybe about cornering the nursing market but not empire building?
Large parts of the USA were purchased. Louisiana, the Gadsden purchase, the Black Hills. That didn't make them any the less conquered given what happened next. Will agree Alaska was slightly different but they were still 'looking to expand northward.'
Cause? Looking at a photo of Wolverhampton School of Arts
Obvs missing the heights of "British" or at least Brutalist culture.
Yes. It’s a big lump of brutalism and there’s some campaign to save it. And I can sort of see why - it’s got a bit of character. Nothing amazing, but not nothing
I do like the odd rare example of brutalism. One of my lesser architectural ambitions is to see Preston Bus Station - looks incredible in photos
I like the Barbican, esp the serrated towers
The Wolverhampton School of Arts sits nicely in its space. A much better example of Brutalism than many car paprks and bus stations.
The Economist building on St James's Street is another example of brutalism worth keeping.
1. The Economist Building is not brutalism
2. It’s crap and ugly. Peter and Alison Smithson were two of the worst architects in human history. I wish they were still alive so I could urinate all over them as they pissed all over Britain
NB I’ve checked and there is dispute here. Some people claim the Economist Building IS brutalist. But this is surely wrong
“Brutalism” comes from the French phrase "béton brut," meaning "raw concrete." This refers to the unfinished, exposed concrete that is a hallmark of the style. The National Theatre IS brutalist. You can still see the impressions of the wooden cases that enclosed the raw concrete. A deliberate choice by Denys Lasdun
The Economist Building has a concrete frame but it is clad in Portland Stone. Concrete plays little part in its expression. It is not “brutalist”. It is quite banal “international style” modernism
Any views on Jonathan Meades - an exponent of brutalism? Always enjoyed his telly shows on architecture. Apparently lives in a Le Corbusier structure in Marseilles. His latest novel - Empty Wigs - is quite a bruiser, not for the faint- hearted.
Always liked Meades. Wondered where he went!
He lives in the famous Unite d’Habitation?!
I’ve been there. It’s quite powerful with traces of noom but I’m not sure I’d want to LIVE there. Like many Corbusier buildings the living spaces are small and oppressive
Here’s a photo I took of the famous roof
You wouldn’t want it defanged though. Serendipitously this popped up on my FB this afternoon, bit sad really.
Leaders attending tomorrow’s European emergency meeting on Ukraine hosted by Macron in Paris:
🇫🇷 Macron 🇩🇪 Scholz 🇬🇧 Starmer 🇮🇹 Meloni 🇵🇱 Tusk 🇪🇸 Sánchez 🇳🇱 Schoof 🇩🇰 Frederiksen 🇪🇺 von der Leyen 🇪🇺 Costa NATO's Rutte
Can’t believe they haven’t invited the Taoiseach given the vast amounts valiant Ireland expends on defence
He’s too busy tutting at the British for being British. Also busy worrying about the fact that they’ve lost Irish Joe from the Whitehouse to hide behind so trying to find someone in Ireland willing to admit to being related to the Trumps.
I see Starmer is planning to 'overrule' HMT/Reeves to get to 2.5% of GDP by the end of this Parliament, which is a tiny move up from this previously being policy but with no timetable. I also understand the SDR will be asked what can be done to better defend Britain within a 2.5% envelope.
Sadly, I fear that's still inadequate. Defence chiefs have asked for 2.65% and I think that's reasonable.
As Hunt said on his podcast the other day if the US totally withdrew from Europe all this 2.5% stuff would go away and we'd be talking about 6, 7, 8 or even 10% of GDP on defence.
Because we'd have no choice.
The value for money choice would be to spend an additional say 0.5% of our gdp financially supporting countries close to Russia that have cheaper manufacturing so that they can spend 10% of their GDP. And to allow Poland to go nuclear.
If any country deserves to have nuclear weapons given its geopolitical situation and history it’s Poland.
But in the meantime the more we can all suppress Russian GDP by not buying anything from them and making life difficult for anyone who does (including the USA it seems), the more we remove the financial driver for 90% of our defence needs in Europe.
Which, of course, is similar to the Napoleonic Wars when we built continental coalitions by doing the same.
But, I don't think there's any escaping the conclusion our Armed Forces are now woefully and dangerously undersized and underprepared, our army is essentially just a performative militia now with some special forces on top, and we're going to have to cough up.
The country ought to. Starmer probably won't. Other priorities. The enormous social security budget, mostly.
That's got to change, I'm afraid.
Social security means nothing without national security.
But the voters.
Unless Trump brings enough economic pressure to bear to frighten him into compliance, he won't do it. There are no votes in defence and, as I said the other day, there won't be until the Russians have reached the Rhine and Britain and France have no cards to play save to threaten nuclear war. By which point it'll be a little late.
Russia is not going to reach the Rhine through conventional military force.
But that’s not to say that we shouldn’t look at our defence spending. I note several people here strongly support increased defence spending, so maybe there are votes in it.
Putin doesn't want go to the Rhine. He wants to absorb the Baltics, and subvert most of E Europe including Poland and poss the Scandis. He's an old man in a hurry with a war economy facing a demogrsphic cliff edge. With the US out of the picture very serious stuff could very likely happen.
He wont succeed with Poland or the Scandinavian countries, but the Baltics are so small he could easily be tempted to conquer them and dare us to do something about it. The man is obviously trying to reassemble the Soviet Union, either by annexation or the establishment of secure client regimes.
The Baltic has now got strategic depth with Sweden now in NATO and with the extremely capable armies of Finland and Poland on each flank. If Russia makes a move then K'grad is liberated in a few days and St Petersburg and Murmansk under immediate direct attack. A Russian attack could be defeated pretty quickly. The consequences for Putin could quite literally be fatal.
I note that a lot of the pb tories/fukkers are starting from the conclusion that there is no need for an EU force and working back from there to the conclusion that NATO minus US will be fine. This is understandable for reasons of, what Iggy Pop called, 'psychic self-defence'.
However, NATO as constituted is a finely calibrated instrument for advancing American hegemony and supporting its strategic interests. It's CinC (ironically called SACEUR) is always an American 4* and never rotates among other nations. So NATO minus US would need a lot of reconfiguration and probably new treaties and would end up looking a lot like the EU's PESCO plus some mutual defence obligations. At that point the EU will quite forcefully position PESCO as the heir to NATO with some justification.
I see Starmer is planning to 'overrule' HMT/Reeves to get to 2.5% of GDP by the end of this Parliament, which is a tiny move up from this previously being policy but with no timetable. I also understand the SDR will be asked what can be done to better defend Britain within a 2.5% envelope.
Sadly, I fear that's still inadequate. Defence chiefs have asked for 2.65% and I think that's reasonable.
As Hunt said on his podcast the other day if the US totally withdrew from Europe all this 2.5% stuff would go away and we'd be talking about 6, 7, 8 or even 10% of GDP on defence.
Because we'd have no choice.
The value for money choice would be to spend an additional say 0.5% of our gdp financially supporting countries close to Russia that have cheaper manufacturing so that they can spend 10% of their GDP. And to allow Poland to go nuclear.
If any country deserves to have nuclear weapons given its geopolitical situation and history it’s Poland.
But in the meantime the more we can all suppress Russian GDP by not buying anything from them and making life difficult for anyone who does (including the USA it seems), the more we remove the financial driver for 90% of our defence needs in Europe.
Which, of course, is similar to the Napoleonic Wars when we built continental coalitions by doing the same.
But, I don't think there's any escaping the conclusion our Armed Forces are now woefully and dangerously undersized and underprepared, our army is essentially just a performative militia now with some special forces on top, and we're going to have to cough up.
The country ought to. Starmer probably won't. Other priorities. The enormous social security budget, mostly.
That's got to change, I'm afraid.
Social security means nothing without national security.
But the voters.
Unless Trump brings enough economic pressure to bear to frighten him into compliance, he won't do it. There are no votes in defence and, as I said the other day, there won't be until the Russians have reached the Rhine and Britain and France have no cards to play save to threaten nuclear war. By which point it'll be a little late.
Russia is not going to reach the Rhine through conventional military force.
But that’s not to say that we shouldn’t look at our defence spending. I note several people here strongly support increased defence spending, so maybe there are votes in it.
Putin doesn't want go to the Rhine. He wants to absorb the Baltics, and subvert most of E Europe including Poland and poss the Scandis. He's an old man in a hurry with a war economy facing a demogrsphic cliff edge. With the US out of the picture very serious stuff could very likely happen.
Are there any examples of a state launching a war of territorial expansion, winning and then saying "splendid, that's enough for us, thanks"?
Arguably the US after the Mexican War. They got huge swathes of territory in the west and south and stopped. They never went further to take México (always wondered how amazing México would be if it had been either a British colony or taken over by the US early on). They never decided to go North after that or overseas so maybe an example.
Though the Mexican War arguably led to the US Civil War so they had bigger issues on their plate.
Quite a few people from the US saw the Mexican war as filibustering by the South, to expand slavery.
"For myself, I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation."
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the motivation I confess this is another of those topics that just riles me up irrationally - let the poor buggers in hospital keep their bloody sausages.
These people are insane. How do we get rid of them?
Switching to a carnivore diet has done wonders for my health. Down 70 pounds now since I made the switch, pretty close to my goal weight now, and health is far better than it was. Get rid of plant-based crap.
I don't think one has to share your carnivore based tastes to think letting people enjoy some fried breakfasts when very ill or dying is perhaps worth the risks.
Or that its good for you.
I don't think the kitchens in big hospitals are really set up to serve people with actually appetising food. Too many patients, and probably operating to a derisory budget per head. The meal times don't help either: when my husband was in hospital for a couple of days last year, his dinner was served at five o'clock and that was that for the night. I'm not sure of that was inspired by the eating habits of very elderly people or of nursery school infants, but regardless it was hardly helpful.
I spent nearly 5 weeks in hospital some years ago. The food was draeadful, not helped by the chemotherapy impacting my tastebuds. What I really objected too was the lunatic idea that every much must be nutritionally balanced. Why? If you are in for a short time it’s irrelevant. And if you are there longer then look at balance over a week, or a fortnight. And don’t get me started on the schedule. Breakfast at 7? It’s not like I’ve got much on for the rest of the day. Main meal at 12.30? Really? It’s 2025… and then the supper at 6… Truly a Victorian regime.
I had some two months in hospital late 2022; two hospitals, one acute, one recuperation and, theoretically, physiotherapy. Food, according to my diet wasn't too bad, and served at reasonable times. Breakfast could be very hit-and-miss, though.
When my father was in hospital, recently, the food was a waste of time. Since we trying to get him to eat, bought in home cooked as much as possible.
Likewise, my dad would have died from malnutrition a couple of decades back, when he was hospitalised. It’s not just that the food was crap: it was also that the staff didn’t really notice if older patients actually ate, or even drank anything.
I note that a lot of the pb tories/fukkers are starting from the conclusion that there is no need for an EU force and working back from there to the conclusion that NATO minus US will be fine. This is understandable for reasons of, what Iggy Pop called, 'psychic self-defence'.
However, NATO as constituted is a finely calibrated instrument for advancing American hegemony and supporting its strategic interests. It's CinC (ironically called SACEUR) is always an American 4* and never rotates among other nations. So NATO minus US would need a lot of reconfiguration and probably new treaties and would end up looking a lot like the EU's PESCO plus some mutual defence obligations. At that point the EU will quite forcefully position PESCO as the heir to NATO with some justification.
Replacing a single point of failure in Washington with a single point of failure in Brussels would be the definition of insanity.
It is well-established that Swiss Cheese defence structures work better than single points of failure and there is no reason that can not be the case with European defence either. So long as European nations actually invest, then coalitions of willing nation states is better than one single hegemon for ensuring security.
I see Starmer is planning to 'overrule' HMT/Reeves to get to 2.5% of GDP by the end of this Parliament, which is a tiny move up from this previously being policy but with no timetable. I also understand the SDR will be asked what can be done to better defend Britain within a 2.5% envelope.
Sadly, I fear that's still inadequate. Defence chiefs have asked for 2.65% and I think that's reasonable.
As Hunt said on his podcast the other day if the US totally withdrew from Europe all this 2.5% stuff would go away and we'd be talking about 6, 7, 8 or even 10% of GDP on defence.
Because we'd have no choice.
The value for money choice would be to spend an additional say 0.5% of our gdp financially supporting countries close to Russia that have cheaper manufacturing so that they can spend 10% of their GDP. And to allow Poland to go nuclear.
If any country deserves to have nuclear weapons given its geopolitical situation and history it’s Poland.
But in the meantime the more we can all suppress Russian GDP by not buying anything from them and making life difficult for anyone who does (including the USA it seems), the more we remove the financial driver for 90% of our defence needs in Europe.
Which, of course, is similar to the Napoleonic Wars when we built continental coalitions by doing the same.
But, I don't think there's any escaping the conclusion our Armed Forces are now woefully and dangerously undersized and underprepared, our army is essentially just a performative militia now with some special forces on top, and we're going to have to cough up.
The country ought to. Starmer probably won't. Other priorities. The enormous social security budget, mostly.
That's got to change, I'm afraid.
Social security means nothing without national security.
But the voters.
Unless Trump brings enough economic pressure to bear to frighten him into compliance, he won't do it. There are no votes in defence and, as I said the other day, there won't be until the Russians have reached the Rhine and Britain and France have no cards to play save to threaten nuclear war. By which point it'll be a little late.
Russia is not going to reach the Rhine through conventional military force.
But that’s not to say that we shouldn’t look at our defence spending. I note several people here strongly support increased defence spending, so maybe there are votes in it.
Putin doesn't want go to the Rhine. He wants to absorb the Baltics, and subvert most of E Europe including Poland and poss the Scandis. He's an old man in a hurry with a war economy facing a demogrsphic cliff edge. With the US out of the picture very serious stuff could very likely happen.
He wont succeed with Poland or the Scandinavian countries, but the Baltics are so small he could easily be tempted to conquer them and dare us to do something about it. The man is obviously trying to reassemble the Soviet Union, either by annexation or the establishment of secure client regimes.
The Baltic has now got strategic depth with Sweden now in NATO and with the extremely capable armies of Finland and Poland on each flank. If Russia makes a move then K'grad is liberated in a few days and St Petersburg and Murmansk under immediate direct attack. A Russian attack could be defeated pretty quickly. The consequences for Putin could quite literally be fatal.
Absolutely agree that between Finland, Sweden and Poland they would smash an attack I don’t think they would actually attack St P and Murmansk. We suffer the “decency” problem where we are trying to tell ordinary Russians we aren’t a threat and aren’t aggressors - European troops invading Russia, regardless of provocation, is counterproductive.
On top of that the logistics yet alone the military reality of attacking St P an other places are very problematic - naval invasion? Land invasion? None are remotely easy or palatable.
And if Kaliningrad is full of Russian nationals, is it really a liberation or an invasion? It’s a boil on Europe’s shoulder but what if they actually don’t want to be “liberated”?
I would of course love it if it was no longer under Russian control btw.
Leaders attending tomorrow’s European emergency meeting on Ukraine hosted by Macron in Paris:
🇫🇷 Macron 🇩🇪 Scholz 🇬🇧 Starmer 🇮🇹 Meloni 🇵🇱 Tusk 🇪🇸 Sánchez 🇳🇱 Schoof 🇩🇰 Frederiksen 🇪🇺 von der Leyen 🇪🇺 Costa NATO's Rutte
Can’t believe they haven’t invited the Taoiseach given the vast amounts valiant Ireland expends on defence
Yep. The spud-propelling trebuchet is a formidable weapon. Take that, Vlad!
I’m sure Ireland has its share of overweight old blokes being bellicose from their La-Z-Boys. Otoh I imagine they probably have a higher proportion of their population familiar with automatic weapons and high explosives.
I note that a lot of the pb tories/fukkers are starting from the conclusion that there is no need for an EU force and working back from there to the conclusion that NATO minus US will be fine. This is understandable for reasons of, what Iggy Pop called, 'psychic self-defence'.
However, NATO as constituted is a finely calibrated instrument for advancing American hegemony and supporting its strategic interests. It's CinC (ironically called SACEUR) is always an American 4* and never rotates among other nations. So NATO minus US would need a lot of reconfiguration and probably new treaties and would end up looking a lot like the EU's PESCO plus some mutual defence obligations. At that point the EU will quite forcefully position PESCO as the heir to NATO with some justification.
I agree with some of that, but NATO isn’t SHAPE, as you know. There are other infrastructures and conventions it is inefficient to reinvent and which aren’t purely American. You are better to build out from residual NATO than start again.
The Army needs to field a fully equipped warfighting division with another in reserve. So it can place a clear continental deterrent and sustain it on the central European plain for 6 months at a time.
I can't see how it does it without regular forces going back up to 105-120k men.
That's not going to be cheap and will probably take 5-7 years to achieve.
We should learn from the Ukrainians and spend any new ones on drones, lots of drones!
Now you've said that it's only a matter of time before Sunil turns up, to say: he will make an excellent drone.
I think that's extrapolated from insufficient Data.
No reason why it shouldn’t. A organisation of 35,000 with complex cutting edge procurement going on does need senior managers. Well under 100 above 1* in the navy I think.
There's no doubt that a lot of those program management jobs could be done, probably better, by MoD civvies - although it's all fucking relative. There are a couple of good reasons for creating lots of flag ranks. First, you need to give people in the middle ranks a chance of advancement to stay in. If there is almost no chance of getting your flag because there are so few admiral positions available then a lot of OF-5/6 will just leave. Second, you need a broad talent or perhaps 'talent' pool for selecting the very top ranks as the Navy can't recruit externally.
Leaders attending tomorrow’s European emergency meeting on Ukraine hosted by Macron in Paris:
🇫🇷 Macron 🇩🇪 Scholz 🇬🇧 Starmer 🇮🇹 Meloni 🇵🇱 Tusk 🇪🇸 Sánchez 🇳🇱 Schoof 🇩🇰 Frederiksen 🇪🇺 von der Leyen 🇪🇺 Costa NATO's Rutte
Can’t believe they haven’t invited the Taoiseach given the vast amounts valiant Ireland expends on defence
It is a strategic miscalculation. Without the fisheries protection cutters and the presidential band, Europe's defences against the Russian Federation could be fatally undermined.
No reason why it shouldn’t. A organisation of 35,000 with complex cutting edge procurement going on does need senior managers. Well under 100 above 1* in the navy I think.
There's no doubt that a lot of those program management jobs could be done, probably better, by MoD civvies - although it's all fucking relative. There are a couple of good reasons for creating lots of flag ranks. First, you need to give people in the middle ranks a chance of advancement to stay in. If there is almost no chance of getting your flag because there are so few admiral positions available then a lot of OF-5/6 will just leave. Second, you need a broad talent or perhaps 'talent' pool for selecting the very top ranks as the Navy can't recruit externally.
Rather like the old days, when every Captain RN got to admiral automatically if he didn't catch yellow fever in the Windies or a dodgy salmon mousse at Lady ffotherington's June Ball. Only in those days they sent most of them home on half pay and only employed the intelligent ones (or the ones with too much influence: vide: Byng).
Does anybody have a sufficient level of cognitive dissonance to explain why, if the armed forces of the Russian Federation can't even secure their own territorial integrity by kicking the Mazepists out of Kursk, they are such a conventional threat to Britain that we need to embark on a massive, ruinously expensive and socially destructive re-armament program?
What specific threat are we gunning up to counter? Amphibious invasion of Norfolk?
No reason why it shouldn’t. A organisation of 35,000 with complex cutting edge procurement going on does need senior managers. Well under 100 above 1* in the navy I think.
There's no doubt that a lot of those program management jobs could be done, probably better, by MoD civvies - although it's all fucking relative. There are a couple of good reasons for creating lots of flag ranks. First, you need to give people in the middle ranks a chance of advancement to stay in. If there is almost no chance of getting your flag because there are so few admiral positions available then a lot of OF-5/6 will just leave. Second, you need a broad talent or perhaps 'talent' pool for selecting the very top ranks as the Navy can't recruit externally.
RE: The MOD CS doing the programme roles - yes and ten years ago I’d have said “civilianise them all”, but in addition your points, as you get older you also see the value of a “rest post” and the need to get senior military some strategic skills and sense of Whitehall*.
I see Starmer is planning to 'overrule' HMT/Reeves to get to 2.5% of GDP by the end of this Parliament, which is a tiny move up from this previously being policy but with no timetable. I also understand the SDR will be asked what can be done to better defend Britain within a 2.5% envelope.
Sadly, I fear that's still inadequate. Defence chiefs have asked for 2.65% and I think that's reasonable.
As Hunt said on his podcast the other day if the US totally withdrew from Europe all this 2.5% stuff would go away and we'd be talking about 6, 7, 8 or even 10% of GDP on defence.
Because we'd have no choice.
The value for money choice would be to spend an additional say 0.5% of our gdp financially supporting countries close to Russia that have cheaper manufacturing so that they can spend 10% of their GDP. And to allow Poland to go nuclear.
If any country deserves to have nuclear weapons given its geopolitical situation and history it’s Poland.
But in the meantime the more we can all suppress Russian GDP by not buying anything from them and making life difficult for anyone who does (including the USA it seems), the more we remove the financial driver for 90% of our defence needs in Europe.
Which, of course, is similar to the Napoleonic Wars when we built continental coalitions by doing the same.
But, I don't think there's any escaping the conclusion our Armed Forces are now woefully and dangerously undersized and underprepared, our army is essentially just a performative militia now with some special forces on top, and we're going to have to cough up.
The country ought to. Starmer probably won't. Other priorities. The enormous social security budget, mostly.
That's got to change, I'm afraid.
Social security means nothing without national security.
But the voters.
Unless Trump brings enough economic pressure to bear to frighten him into compliance, he won't do it. There are no votes in defence and, as I said the other day, there won't be until the Russians have reached the Rhine and Britain and France have no cards to play save to threaten nuclear war. By which point it'll be a little late.
Russia is not going to reach the Rhine through conventional military force.
But that’s not to say that we shouldn’t look at our defence spending. I note several people here strongly support increased defence spending, so maybe there are votes in it.
Putin doesn't want go to the Rhine. He wants to absorb the Baltics, and subvert most of E Europe including Poland and poss the Scandis. He's an old man in a hurry with a war economy facing a demogrsphic cliff edge. With the US out of the picture very serious stuff could very likely happen.
He wont succeed with Poland or the Scandinavian countries, but the Baltics are so small he could easily be tempted to conquer them and dare us to do something about it. The man is obviously trying to reassemble the Soviet Union, either by annexation or the establishment of secure client regimes.
The Baltic has now got strategic depth with Sweden now in NATO and with the extremely capable armies of Finland and Poland on each flank. If Russia makes a move then K'grad is liberated in a few days and St Petersburg and Murmansk under immediate direct attack. A Russian attack could be defeated pretty quickly. The consequences for Putin could quite literally be fatal.
You could have told us you wrote a whole SONG expressing your passionate views. And produced by ex-PBer @eadric?!
No reason why it shouldn’t. A organisation of 35,000 with complex cutting edge procurement going on does need senior managers. Well under 100 above 1* in the navy I think.
There's no doubt that a lot of those program management jobs could be done, probably better, by MoD civvies - although it's all fucking relative. There are a couple of good reasons for creating lots of flag ranks. First, you need to give people in the middle ranks a chance of advancement to stay in. If there is almost no chance of getting your flag because there are so few admiral positions available then a lot of OF-5/6 will just leave. Second, you need a broad talent or perhaps 'talent' pool for selecting the very top ranks as the Navy can't recruit externally.
RE: The MOD CS doing the programme roles - yes and ten years ago I’d have said “civilianise them all”, but in addition your points, as you get older you also see the value of a “rest post” and the need to get senior military some strategic skills and sense of Whitehall*.
*This has yet to work, but we can only hope.
Funny, though, that the logic doesn't extend to e.g. training bases, or even just doing the sweeping and cooking at RN Barrack Plymouth: a useful manpower reserve in 1938-39, easily compensated for in part by reinstating/expanding the WRNS.
Does anybody have a sufficient level of cognitive dissonance to explain why, if the armed forces of the Russian Federation can't even secure their own territorial integrity by kicking the Mazepists out of Kursk, they are such a conventional threat to Britain that we need to embark on a massive, ruinously expensive and socially destructive re-armament program?
What specific threat are we gunning up to counter? Amphibious invasion of Norfolk?
Looks like our tame Saturday morning troll rocked up to PB a day late
Leaders attending tomorrow’s European emergency meeting on Ukraine hosted by Macron in Paris:
🇫🇷 Macron 🇩🇪 Scholz 🇬🇧 Starmer 🇮🇹 Meloni 🇵🇱 Tusk 🇪🇸 Sánchez 🇳🇱 Schoof 🇩🇰 Frederiksen 🇪🇺 von der Leyen 🇪🇺 Costa NATO's Rutte
Can’t believe they haven’t invited the Taoiseach given the vast amounts valiant Ireland expends on defence
It is a strategic miscalculation. Without the fisheries protection cutters and the presidential band, Europe's defences against the Russian Federation could be fatally undermined.
Ireland probably has more functioning vessels than we have
Does anybody have a sufficient level of cognitive dissonance to explain why, if the armed forces of the Russian Federation can't even secure their own territorial integrity by kicking the Mazepists out of Kursk, they are such a conventional threat to Britain that we need to embark on a massive, ruinously expensive and socially destructive re-armament program?
What specific threat are we gunning up to counter? Amphibious invasion of Norfolk?
I see Starmer is planning to 'overrule' HMT/Reeves to get to 2.5% of GDP by the end of this Parliament, which is a tiny move up from this previously being policy but with no timetable. I also understand the SDR will be asked what can be done to better defend Britain within a 2.5% envelope.
Sadly, I fear that's still inadequate. Defence chiefs have asked for 2.65% and I think that's reasonable.
As Hunt said on his podcast the other day if the US totally withdrew from Europe all this 2.5% stuff would go away and we'd be talking about 6, 7, 8 or even 10% of GDP on defence.
Because we'd have no choice.
The value for money choice would be to spend an additional say 0.5% of our gdp financially supporting countries close to Russia that have cheaper manufacturing so that they can spend 10% of their GDP. And to allow Poland to go nuclear.
If any country deserves to have nuclear weapons given its geopolitical situation and history it’s Poland.
But in the meantime the more we can all suppress Russian GDP by not buying anything from them and making life difficult for anyone who does (including the USA it seems), the more we remove the financial driver for 90% of our defence needs in Europe.
Which, of course, is similar to the Napoleonic Wars when we built continental coalitions by doing the same.
But, I don't think there's any escaping the conclusion our Armed Forces are now woefully and dangerously undersized and underprepared, our army is essentially just a performative militia now with some special forces on top, and we're going to have to cough up.
The country ought to. Starmer probably won't. Other priorities. The enormous social security budget, mostly.
That's got to change, I'm afraid.
Social security means nothing without national security.
But the voters.
Unless Trump brings enough economic pressure to bear to frighten him into compliance, he won't do it. There are no votes in defence and, as I said the other day, there won't be until the Russians have reached the Rhine and Britain and France have no cards to play save to threaten nuclear war. By which point it'll be a little late.
Russia is not going to reach the Rhine through conventional military force.
But that’s not to say that we shouldn’t look at our defence spending. I note several people here strongly support increased defence spending, so maybe there are votes in it.
Putin doesn't want go to the Rhine. He wants to absorb the Baltics, and subvert most of E Europe including Poland and poss the Scandis. He's an old man in a hurry with a war economy facing a demogrsphic cliff edge. With the US out of the picture very serious stuff could very likely happen.
He wont succeed with Poland or the Scandinavian countries, but the Baltics are so small he could easily be tempted to conquer them and dare us to do something about it. The man is obviously trying to reassemble the Soviet Union, either by annexation or the establishment of secure client regimes.
The Baltic has now got strategic depth with Sweden now in NATO and with the extremely capable armies of Finland and Poland on each flank. If Russia makes a move then K'grad is liberated in a few days and St Petersburg and Murmansk under immediate direct attack. A Russian attack could be defeated pretty quickly. The consequences for Putin could quite literally be fatal.
You could have told us you wrote a whole SONG expressing your passionate views. And produced by ex-PBer @eadric?!
Does anybody have a sufficient level of cognitive dissonance to explain why, if the armed forces of the Russian Federation can't even secure their own territorial integrity by kicking the Mazepists out of Kursk, they are such a conventional threat to Britain that we need to embark on a massive, ruinously expensive and socially destructive re-armament program?
What specific threat are we gunning up to counter? Amphibious invasion of Norfolk?
The specific threat is that France might become too powerful if they do it and we don't.
I see Starmer is planning to 'overrule' HMT/Reeves to get to 2.5% of GDP by the end of this Parliament, which is a tiny move up from this previously being policy but with no timetable. I also understand the SDR will be asked what can be done to better defend Britain within a 2.5% envelope.
Sadly, I fear that's still inadequate. Defence chiefs have asked for 2.65% and I think that's reasonable.
As Hunt said on his podcast the other day if the US totally withdrew from Europe all this 2.5% stuff would go away and we'd be talking about 6, 7, 8 or even 10% of GDP on defence.
Because we'd have no choice.
The value for money choice would be to spend an additional say 0.5% of our gdp financially supporting countries close to Russia that have cheaper manufacturing so that they can spend 10% of their GDP. And to allow Poland to go nuclear.
If any country deserves to have nuclear weapons given its geopolitical situation and history it’s Poland.
But in the meantime the more we can all suppress Russian GDP by not buying anything from them and making life difficult for anyone who does (including the USA it seems), the more we remove the financial driver for 90% of our defence needs in Europe.
Which, of course, is similar to the Napoleonic Wars when we built continental coalitions by doing the same.
But, I don't think there's any escaping the conclusion our Armed Forces are now woefully and dangerously undersized and underprepared, our army is essentially just a performative militia now with some special forces on top, and we're going to have to cough up.
The country ought to. Starmer probably won't. Other priorities. The enormous social security budget, mostly.
That's got to change, I'm afraid.
Social security means nothing without national security.
But the voters.
Unless Trump brings enough economic pressure to bear to frighten him into compliance, he won't do it. There are no votes in defence and, as I said the other day, there won't be until the Russians have reached the Rhine and Britain and France have no cards to play save to threaten nuclear war. By which point it'll be a little late.
Russia is not going to reach the Rhine through conventional military force.
But that’s not to say that we shouldn’t look at our defence spending. I note several people here strongly support increased defence spending, so maybe there are votes in it.
Putin doesn't want go to the Rhine. He wants to absorb the Baltics, and subvert most of E Europe including Poland and poss the Scandis. He's an old man in a hurry with a war economy facing a demogrsphic cliff edge. With the US out of the picture very serious stuff could very likely happen.
He wont succeed with Poland or the Scandinavian countries, but the Baltics are so small he could easily be tempted to conquer them and dare us to do something about it. The man is obviously trying to reassemble the Soviet Union, either by annexation or the establishment of secure client regimes.
The Baltic has now got strategic depth with Sweden now in NATO and with the extremely capable armies of Finland and Poland on each flank. If Russia makes a move then K'grad is liberated in a few days and St Petersburg and Murmansk under immediate direct attack. A Russian attack could be defeated pretty quickly. The consequences for Putin could quite literally be fatal.
You could have told us you wrote a whole SONG expressing your passionate views. And produced by ex-PBer @eadric?!
Comments
And we should be sending them both to Ukraine.
Remember Farage's argument is that the west provoked Russia into invading the Ukraine...
We need to decide what our military capability needs to be in the 21st century to counter all threats to the UK, and THEN and ONLY THEN think about projecting force to aid UK interests and assist allies, work backwards from there.
Her current campaign....
Not like Frankfurt - that can never sound nice.
We should invest in the capability to design drones, and build loads of them. Not necessarily to have tens of thousands going dusty in storage.
But also, invest in the countermeasures. This is somewhere, anecdotally, we are doing somewhat better.
The problem with building drones nowadays is that they'll be rapidly (in the order of months...) be outdated as the battle between drone and countermeasure progresses. Which is why the Ukrainian battlefield is increasingly being raped with fibre-optic cables.
But we should do more to support Ukraine and our NATO allies other than the US. And we should recognise the threat Russia poses, including in terms of their attempts to sow discord and magnify disinformation. And we should stand up to defend the post-1945 world order and oppose wars of aggression, ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Whenever you think “oh it’s reached peak cuteness” or “enough of the funny stabbing vids lolz” or “how can a place be THAT perfect with so many great mosques and fly tipping experts” then Birmingham does something even more fabulous
It’s absurd how one place can be so attractive
But that’s not to say that we shouldn’t look at our defence spending. I note several people here strongly support increased defence spending, so maybe there are votes in it.
1-2 Billion Euro a year gets you everything going on at Boca Chica.
In turn that gives you staring surveillance of the whole planet. Plus high bandwidth comms. Plus the ability to Fed Ex 100 tons to any point on the planet. At Mach 27.
No wonder the Chinese want one.
Mass proportional to volume which is length cubed. BMI should be calculated based on height cubed.
UK knife homicides in 2022/3: 244
USA knife homicides in 2022/3: 1,562
So the USA, where guns are the overwhelming cause of violent death (48,204 in 2023!) manages to have a higher rate of fatal stabbings per capita than the UK.
Remember that next time Musk or some random moans on about Britain’s knife crime epidemic.
Motto : oritur ad astra et per agros spargimus
All they’ll need is a fruit knife each, and off to Ukraine.
Service Guarantees Citizenship!
I’m guessing military boffins have learnt infinitely more about their own country’s weapons and other countries’ weapons in the Ukraine war than in decades of testing and trials. Myths busted, surprising upsides, are helicopters obsolete in war, have sea drones made warships too vulnerable, would tea making facilities make Russian tanks a more pleasant place to spend your last days?
My comment you responded to wasn't serious though, it was tongue very firmly in cheek mocking how the person I was responding to is always saying how great London is while chastising Birmingham for stabbings as if there's never any knife crime in his beloved London.
1. You support a legal situation that makes manufacturing in the UK cost prohibitive, and that threatens the production of virgin steel, essential for the armaments industry, which is a key industry for us and (up until now) a success story.
2. You suggest that rather than support this vital industry and its development in this country, we give half a percent of our GDP directly to countries 'that have cheaper manufacturing' - I mean why the fuck do you think they have cheap manufacturing in the first place? This actively accelerates our economical decline, and means that if somehow Russia does overrun Europe (which is presumably what you purport to be the danger, we lose those facilities altogether.
3. In the meantime, we antagonise everyone who buys stuff from Russia (which is basically everyone except continental Europe), but we do nothing to restart our own hydrocarbon industry, which would be the only *actual* thing that would make us safe from Russian energy blackmail.
I find your suggestions and thought process quite disturbing.
The BMI is expressed in kg/m2, resulting from mass in kilograms and height in metres. If pounds and inches are used, a conversion factor of 703 (kg/m2)/(lb/in2) is applied. (If pounds and feet are used, a conversion factor of 4.88 is used.)
People on here are not representative. Most folk care about their immediate living circumstances (bank balances, investments, housing) first, followed by any public services that they use, plus maybe immigration, and the constitutional argument in Scotland and NI. Everything else is niche.
The man needs to do the right thing but he's clearly also worried that Labour will go the way of the Tories at the next election if he does. No prizes for guessing what takes priority.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c05l33j7rq7o
Fuck Putin, fuck Ukraine, fuck the EU, let them fight it out. We should just upgrade our nukes and subs, buy a trillion drones, defend our island, and focus on the very very broken cities of our own nation. They’ve already been Putin’d. They need help
Enough
It's a BEF. Of the most basic kind.
Prussia after the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) - After defeating France, Prussia annexed Alsace-Lorraine but declined to push for more French territory, focusing instead on using the victory to unify Germany. Bismarck specifically argued against taking more French land, believing it would only create a permanent enemy.
Israel after the 1967 Six-Day War - While Israel captured significant territory (Sinai, Gaza, West Bank, Golan Heights), it quickly offered to return most conquered areas in exchange for peace treaties. Israel ultimately did return the Sinai to Egypt after the 1979 peace treaty.
The Navy With More Admirals Than Warships
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po9duwvipB0
https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1891210114780053587
Leaders attending tomorrow’s European emergency meeting on Ukraine hosted by Macron in Paris:
🇫🇷 Macron
🇩🇪 Scholz
🇬🇧 Starmer
🇮🇹 Meloni
🇵🇱 Tusk
🇪🇸 Sánchez
🇳🇱 Schoof
🇩🇰 Frederiksen
🇪🇺 von der Leyen
🇪🇺 Costa
NATO's Rutte
If 2 dimensions stay the same but the third increases, then the cubed rule does not apply.
10 * 6 * 8 = 480
If I double the 10 but hold the other 2 dimensions the same, then 20 * 6 * 8 = 960 which is the double of 480, it has scaled linearly not squared or cubed.
Taller people aren't necessarily wider or deeper just by virtue of being taller.
Possibly Japan in 1905? It took Formosa and Korea and then waited 25 years before taking anywhere else.
Brazil and Argentina in 1870 settling their claims over Paraguay, perhaps.
However, NATO as constituted is a finely calibrated instrument for advancing American hegemony and supporting its strategic interests. It's CinC (ironically called SACEUR) is always an American 4* and never rotates among other nations. So NATO minus US would need a lot of reconfiguration and probably new treaties and would end up looking a lot like the EU's PESCO plus some mutual defence obligations. At that point the EU will quite forcefully position PESCO as the heir to NATO with some justification.
"For myself, I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation."
It’s not just that the food was crap: it was also that the staff didn’t really notice if older patients actually ate, or even drank anything.
Our family visited him every day, with food.
It is well-established that Swiss Cheese defence structures work better than single points of failure and there is no reason that can not be the case with European defence either. So long as European nations actually invest, then coalitions of willing nation states is better than one single hegemon for ensuring security.
On top of that the logistics yet alone the military reality of attacking St P an other places are very problematic - naval invasion? Land invasion? None are remotely easy or palatable.
And if Kaliningrad is full of Russian nationals, is it really a liberation or an invasion? It’s a boil on Europe’s shoulder but what if they actually don’t want to be “liberated”?
I would of course love it if it was no longer under Russian control btw.
What specific threat are we gunning up to counter? Amphibious invasion of Norfolk?
*This has yet to work, but we can only hope.
https://www.udio.com/songs/jFyU2EzeZ9c3SSxyKVzYWG
Respect