I am fed up with people calling Andrew a nonce. I have spelt out what my view of him is on here on earlier threads. It is not remotely flattering, to put it mildly.
But he has not been charged let alone convicted of anything. Nor will he be in relation to the late Ms Giuffre for obvious reasons.
And given this society's abysmal failures to deal properly or at all with actual nonces and men who have been convicted of very serious crimes - I will remind you that far too many men convicted of the possession of hundreds, thousands even of the worst category of child abuse images - each of which is evidence of a crime -avoid jail - thus leaving them entirely free to continue with their revolting harmful activities, the focus on Andrew seems to me to be displacement activity of the worst and most futile kind.
We can have lots of outrage directed at one individual while blithely ignoring our failure to do anything about the actual criminals in our midst. The inquiry about the banned subject announced several months ago will likely not even get started until next year, a year after it all kicked off and decades after many of the crimes. Many of those covered by the IICSA Reports will never receive justice and virtually all of those responsible for the crimes it covers have escaped any sort of accountability, naming or shaming. But hey shouting abuse at a stupid ex-royal - well that'll make some feel better even if it does damn all for any of the victims. And so we can feel self-righteous and good about ourselves - apparently the only metric which matters these days - while continuing to do nothing effective about the criminals or for the victims.
It's pathetic.
The media - and the populace - like a villain to hate. And it’s a simple story that they can articulate with ease.
I'm sure it won't encourage other states to do the same.
Putin and Kim are already doing so, Trump is right to do so in my view, he needs to show Russia, N Korea and China it isn't just them who can show off their nuclear warheads. Starmer and Macron could also follow suit
He’s normalising bad behaviour.
Just like his pending invasion of Venezuela is designed to normalise Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Bet you he calls it a “special military operation” as well…
Putin is behaving badly. While it’s Russia and North Korea doing stuff it’s easy to condemn.
Far harder to maintain a strong line that it is wrong when the US does it as well. That’s what “normalisation” is.
Putin doesn't give a toss about strongly worded statements at the UN saying he is wrong, he will care about tests of raw nuclear missile power by the USA
You are completely and utterly missing the point.
What Putin is going is mad, bad, and dangerous.
So far people have condemned him and the world has taken note.
Now he can just shrug and say “but America does it too”. And that’s a pretty good argument in the world geopolitics.
The world will be a less safe place. America will lose out (relatively). But Trump feels powerful. And Russia benefits.
I am fed up with people calling Andrew a nonce. I have spelt out what my view of him is on here on earlier threads. It is not remotely flattering, to put it mildly.
But he has not been charged let alone convicted of anything. Nor will he be in relation to the late Ms Giuffre for obvious reasons.
And given this society's abysmal failures to deal properly or at all with actual nonces and men who have been convicted of very serious crimes - I will remind you that far too many men convicted of the possession of hundreds, thousands even of the worst category of child abuse images - each of which is evidence of a crime -avoid jail - thus leaving them entirely free to continue with their revolting harmful activities, the focus on Andrew seems to me to be displacement activity of the worst and most futile kind.
We can have lots of outrage directed at one individual while blithely ignoring our failure to do anything about the actual criminals in our midst. The inquiry about the banned subject announced several months ago will likely not even get started until next year, a year after it all kicked off and decades after many of the crimes. Many of those covered by the IICSA Reports will never receive justice and virtually all of those responsible for the crimes it covers have escaped any sort of accountability, naming or shaming. But hey shouting abuse at a stupid ex-royal - well that'll make some feel better even if it does damn all for any of the victims. And so we can feel self-righteous and good about ourselves - apparently the only metric which matters these days - while continuing to do nothing effective about the criminals or for the victims.
It's pathetic.
To an extent I agree.
What is in the public domain is pretty convincing, and I expect the King has access to much more in depth investigation.
I would much rather see a public trial or at least enquiry into his activities with Epstein and Maxwell. I dont think we will see this, so it seems stripping him of his baubles is all we will see.
I was half asleep but I though Nandy implied they had new information (“the information we have now”) but that may just have been sloppy wording
I'm sure it won't encourage other states to do the same.
Putin and Kim are already doing so, Trump is right to do so in my view, he needs to show Russia, N Korea and China it isn't just them who can show off their nuclear warheads. Starmer and Macron could also follow suit
Naive, IMO. No one apart from N Korea has conducted weapons tests in decades.
The US has a large advantage in simulation, and would essentially be throwing that away if they normalised live bomb tests.
Not naive, the naivety is from left liberals who would let Putin and Kim and Xi walk all over them and do test after test of nuclear warhead capable missiles without response
Missiles are tested all the time. Remember the Trident fail?
The way this was worded suggests the actual warheads would be tested - which would be a new escalation.
Though yes, if you do a test keep it secret and only publicise it if successful.
We haven't tested even a nuclear warhead capable missile for years as far as I am aware
You are confusing a missle test with a nuclear test. Trump is talking about testing the bomb needlessly. Making the bomb go bang is easy. Making it go bang in the right place is the difficult bit. We, nor America, no longer need to test the bomb. America does need to test the missiles but they do do that anyway.
You can't keep a bomb detonation secret. It makes a rather big bang.
The US tests Trident and Minuteman missiles regularly. With a near perfect success rate.
Testing nuclear weapons was eventually stopped, decade ms ago.
It is possible to do small nuclear tests covertly. To a certain extent “tickling the dragon” - playing with near prompt critical assemblies - is nuclear testing. With yields of a few joules.
Modern warheads as pure fission devices on yield 300 tons of TNT (or so). Without fusion boosting, you could hide that. A large underground cavern with measures taken to attenuate shockwaves. Ted Taylor worked out a scheme, above ground, with a warehouse full of suspended spheres of graphite.
An all up test would be impossible to hide - it would register on earthquake detection systems world wide.
Surely though a large point of doing the testing is to ensure other parties know about it. That is very much what Trumps threats are about.
There are three reasons to test
1) testing/retesting a particular design. One question is how even small manufacturing changes over decades years have an effect. The B61 was designed in 1963… another is new ideas. 2) refining the hydrocodes. This is the term for the models of nuclear reactions used to simulate tests. Interestingly, the ones that exist are full of fiddle factors - added numbers where reality and theory don’t match. There’s a fascinating one to do with the phases of plutonium, so they say… the US and the USSRvhad different answers… 3) Willy waving.
Robert Peston @Peston · 1m PA: Harvey & Wheeler, the estate agents used by Rachel Reeves to rent out her property in south London, have apologised to her for an "oversight" after they did not apply for a licence on her behalf, having offered to do so
Whoops, that’s one hell of a way to Ratner your brand.
If they can screw up the process for a government minister…
Ministers falling foul of everyday tripwires seems to me to be pretty unhelpful in our long, and seemingly lost, quest for good government. It strikes me that the country might be well served if the cabinet had the option to have a civil-service check on their arrangements perhaps once a quarter. They could decline, and there would have to be a cost if their affairs were disorderly, but insulating them from and correcting minor matters and letting them get on with making the usual pigs ear seems perhaps a sensible idea.
Alternatively, ministers could concentrate on getting rid of these ‘everyday tripwires’ that can ruin lives and reputations of ordinary people for seemingly minor paperwork errors.
It is good that Badenoch has changed the Tory party policy to not retrospectively remove ILR.
Bad of her to pretend that was always the policy. It wasn't.
Though the report contains the facts, this headline and standfirst misreport what happened. The junior whip Katie Lam correctly stated the policy: revoking ILR retrospectively was Tory policy from May 5th to yesterday. The leader has ditched that policy.
They’re trying to get everyone to use a new Russian app called “Max”, which is basically FSB spyware, so they can clamp down on videos of oil refineries on fire and queues at petrol stations being shared internationally.
Rachel Reeves is still chancellor after making an “inadvertent mistake” in failing to apply for a licence to let her family home in south London.
A brief excitement swept through Westminster this afternoon when No 10 said emails between the chancellor’s husband and the letting agent had “come to light”. They had not been published when this newsletter went out, but the lettings agency said it had apologised to Reeves for an “oversight” in not applying for a licence.
But Angela Rayner is no longer deputy prime minister after making a “mistake” in which she “acted with integrity”, according to the adviser on ministerial interests, in failing to pay the required amount of stamp duty on a property purchase.
The amounts of money involved may be similar, in that Reeves’s error may cost her not just the £945 for a licence but a year’s rent of £38,000 as well. Rayner is repaying an estimated £40,000 in additional stamp duty.
I have commented that it is hard to see the difference in principle between the two cases – and I speculate that the real difference is that Keir Starmer was content to see Rayner go but desperate to keep Reeves, an ally who is not a threat to his position, in place.
Licenses for single family residence rentals are basically automatically granted, so -in terms of scale- it's not really comparable.
Do you still think that it was reasonable for her to not know she needed a licence, because you didn't know whether you needed one?
You weren't campaigning for selective landlord licensing in Jan 2023 were you?
Oh come on @BlancheLivermore, I was all for calling for Rayner's resignation because she dodged taxes (or at the very least took actions to remain ignorant of them). That was a serious offence: it was, I believe, an act of moral turpitude, and I have a very low tolerence for that.
In this case, she asked her agents to secure a license, and that didn't happen. Now, should she have checked? Yes. But there's no moral turpitude involved, no attempt to decieve or to obtain pecuniary advantage.
So, sure, she should have been more organized. But I wouldn't be bashing a Conservative or Reform MP for such a minor infraction, and therefore to remain consistent, I shouldn't criticize her either.
Reading between the lines, there was a bit more going on at that letting agency than they are admitting.
People don’t ‘suddenly resign’ without handover meetings unless there is something suboptimal in the background.
Under such circumstances it is very normal for such errors to occur - and people not want to talk about it.
I assume the agent in question was sacked and walked out the door immediately
It would be funny if he was fired for agreeing to arrange the licence for free
Seems unlikely, as if he had been the firm would have known to email Mr Reeves to say, ‘actually, you need to sort this out yourself.’
Oh, and those are the official figures being reported by the banks. The actual situation is likely a whole lot worse.
To put that in context, in Ireland just before the crash the Irish Central Bank and others including Deutsche Bank were saying the property crash would leave banks with bad debts of around 1% of their loan books.
Morgan Kelly thought it would be more like 40%, for which he was roundly mocked.
Not quite following the logic here, since "uninspiring technocrats" would probably be an improvement on this government and its predecessors, but the sentiment is correct.
If most Brits seriously think that inadvertently failing to obtain an obscure housing rental licence makes someone unfit to serve as Chancellor, then quite frankly we richly deserve to be governed by uninspiring technocrats. https://x.com/miriam_cates/status/1983960835899978028
Not quite following the logic here, since "uninspiring technocrats" would probably be an improvement on this government and its predecessors, but the sentiment is correct.
If most Brits seriously think that inadvertently failing to obtain an obscure housing rental licence makes someone unfit to serve as Chancellor, then quite frankly we richly deserve to be governed by uninspiring technocrats. https://x.com/miriam_cates/status/1983960835899978028
If only Rachel could reach the height of an "uninspiring technocrat"
Reeves seems to be very fortunate with the spin going forwards that the letting agent is apologising for the mistake, which seems to me to be her own damned fault.
A very different spin can be put on the exact same words.
"In an effort to be helpful our previous property manager offered to apply for a licence on these clients' behalf, as shown in the correspondence.
"That property manager suddenly resigned on the Friday before the tenancy began on the following Monday.
"Unfortunately, the lack of application was not picked up by us as we do not normally apply for licences on behalf of our clients; the onus is on them to apply. We have apologised to the owners for this oversight. Hghttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cxejy88o
Has the letting company received some baksheesh to persuade them to put out this story to exonerate Ms Reeves and her husband of a duty that was their responsibility?
Oh, and those are the official figures being reported by the banks. The actual situation is likely a whole lot worse.
To put that in context, in Ireland just before the crash the Irish Central Bank and others including Deutsche Bank were saying the property crash would leave banks with bad debts of around 1% of their loan books.
Morgan Kelly thought it would be more like 40%, for which he was roundly mocked.
And he was in fact wrong.
Turned out to be nearer 75%.
It’s not 1% of loans, it’s 1% of the value of all loans that is currently bad debt. Yes that’s going to be a much higher percentage of individual loans that represent debtors.
You end up with a position where the banks don’t actually want to foreclose bad loans if they can avoid it, because of the negative equity situation that realises the bad debt.
Fair to say there’s no demand whatsoever to buy Russian houses with interest rates so high, except for perhaps a few oligarchs hoping to pay cash at the bottom of the market, but even then they’d be better off buying war bonds at the 21%.
I know that it’s what I want to happen, and therefore have biases when it comes to the reporting, but it does look like the entire Russian economy is going to be pretty close to the edge this winter.
Oh, and those are the official figures being reported by the banks. The actual situation is likely a whole lot worse.
To put that in context, in Ireland just before the crash the Irish Central Bank and others including Deutsche Bank were saying the property crash would leave banks with bad debts of around 1% of their loan books.
Morgan Kelly thought it would be more like 40%, for which he was roundly mocked.
And he was in fact wrong.
Turned out to be nearer 75%.
It’s not 1% of loans, it’s 1% of the value of all loans that is currently bad debt. Yes that’s going to be a much higher percentage of individual loans that represent debtors.
You end up with a position where the banks don’t actually want to foreclose bad loans if they can avoid it, because of the negative equity situation that realises the bad debt.
Fair to say there’s no demand whatsoever to buy Russian houses with interest rates so high, except for perhaps a few oligarchs hoping to pay cash at the bottom of the market, but even then they’d be better off buying war bonds at the 21%.
I know that it’s what I want to happen, and therefore have biases when it comes to the reporting, but it does look like the entire Russian economy is going to be pretty close to the edge this winter.
Russia without very heavy sales of hydrocarbons is screwed. The effect of buyers finally being scared off by sanctions when coupled with oil storage being destroyed and a third (and rising) of refining capacity offline by Ukraine is terminal. Either Putin calls in the IMF - after he has taken his troops out of ALL of Ukraine. Or he starts selling Vladivostok and environs to Xi at firesale prices. They are his options.
Oh, and those are the official figures being reported by the banks. The actual situation is likely a whole lot worse.
To put that in context, in Ireland just before the crash the Irish Central Bank and others including Deutsche Bank were saying the property crash would leave banks with bad debts of around 1% of their loan books.
Morgan Kelly thought it would be more like 40%, for which he was roundly mocked.
And he was in fact wrong.
Turned out to be nearer 75%.
And the situation in the UK? Whenever there is a dip or slowdown in house price inflation, the government always seems to find a policy (changing stamp duty, help to buy etc?) to keep the inflation going. It's almost as if there are still a lot of sh*ty loans about. And that article about the £500K mortgage indicates a bubble (again)
The problem Russia faces with the interruption to refininery capacity is that there is nowhere to send the production. The storage capacity is being hit too. That means you start closing down the ability to produce fields. Those fields close down for good once the pipeline facilities stop flowing. This is due to a combination of two things Putin cannot control: the waxy nature of Russian crude oil and the Russian winter. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many oil fields were closed down and the pipelines turned into giant canndles.
In a nutshell:
"Most of the oil fields in the Samara region (Russian Federation) are produced at the end of secondary and tertiary recovery processes. The natural reservoir drive is insufficiently high to allow effective oil production. Thus, water flooding is used to maintain reservoir pressure on the initial level and enhance oil recovery. However, the flooding operation with cold water causes the reservoir temperature to decrease significantly. Moreover, oils of these reservoirs contain large amounts of wax in composition. Exploitation of oil wells is complicated by plugging of tubing with wax. Therefore often production shutdowns are taking place to remove the deposits in the downhole equipment by hot oil flushing, solvent treatment, pigging or even steaming operations. Numerous workover operations lead to oil production losses for the operator company in the field."
Oh, and those are the official figures being reported by the banks. The actual situation is likely a whole lot worse.
To put that in context, in Ireland just before the crash the Irish Central Bank and others including Deutsche Bank were saying the property crash would leave banks with bad debts of around 1% of their loan books.
Morgan Kelly thought it would be more like 40%, for which he was roundly mocked.
And he was in fact wrong.
Turned out to be nearer 75%.
It’s not 1% of loans, it’s 1% of the value of all loans that is currently bad debt. Yes that’s going to be a much higher percentage of individual loans that represent debtors.
You end up with a position where the banks don’t actually want to foreclose bad loans if they can avoid it, because of the negative equity situation that realises the bad debt.
Fair to say there’s no demand whatsoever to buy Russian houses with interest rates so high, except for perhaps a few oligarchs hoping to pay cash at the bottom of the market, but even then they’d be better off buying war bonds at the 21%.
I know that it’s what I want to happen, and therefore have biases when it comes to the reporting, but it does look like the entire Russian economy is going to be pretty close to the edge this winter.
Russia without very heavy sales of hydrocarbons is screwed. The effect of buyers finally being scared off by sanctions when coupled with oil storage being destroyed and a third (and rising) of refining capacity offline by Ukraine is terminal. Either Putin calls in the IMF - after he has taken his troops out of ALL of Ukraine. Or he starts selling Vladivostok and environs to Xi at firesale prices. They are his options.
Oh indeed, that’s the view of the optimist in me.
OPEC are also looking at the possibility that Russia could be taken out once and for all as an O&G supplier. If you remember back to the pandemic, there was something of a willy-waving contest going on between Putin and MBS as to how low the oil price might go, with the Saudis clearly able to withstand a lower price than the Russians.
A couple of years of $40 oil leaves Russia unable to fund itself and starting to sell gold, and also has a positive effect on Western economies of reduced inflation. Meanwhile the Russian infrastructure isn’t being rebuilt, and wells end up having to be sealed.
I am fed up with people calling Andrew a nonce. I have spelt out what my view of him is on here on earlier threads. It is not remotely flattering, to put it mildly.
But he has not been charged let alone convicted of anything. Nor will he be in relation to the late Ms Giuffre for obvious reasons.
And given this society's abysmal failures to deal properly or at all with actual nonces and men who have been convicted of very serious crimes - I will remind you that far too many men convicted of the possession of hundreds, thousands even of the worst category of child abuse images - each of which is evidence of a crime -avoid jail - thus leaving them entirely free to continue with their revolting harmful activities, the focus on Andrew seems to me to be displacement activity of the worst and most futile kind.
We can have lots of outrage directed at one individual while blithely ignoring our failure to do anything about the actual criminals in our midst. The inquiry about the banned subject announced several months ago will likely not even get started until next year, a year after it all kicked off and decades after many of the crimes. Many of those covered by the IICSA Reports will never receive justice and virtually all of those responsible for the crimes it covers have escaped any sort of accountability, naming or shaming. But hey shouting abuse at a stupid ex-royal - well that'll make some feel better even if it does damn all for any of the victims. And so we can feel self-righteous and good about ourselves - apparently the only metric which matters these days - while continuing to do nothing effective about the criminals or for the victims.
It's pathetic.
Yes. Even the apparently stupid and/or horrible deserve justice. For the sake of justice.
Oh, and those are the official figures being reported by the banks. The actual situation is likely a whole lot worse.
To put that in context, in Ireland just before the crash the Irish Central Bank and others including Deutsche Bank were saying the property crash would leave banks with bad debts of around 1% of their loan books.
Morgan Kelly thought it would be more like 40%, for which he was roundly mocked.
And he was in fact wrong.
Turned out to be nearer 75%.
And the situation in the UK? Whenever there is a dip or slowdown in house price inflation, the government always seems to find a policy (changing stamp duty, help to buy etc?) to keep the inflation going. It's almost as if there are still a lot of sh*ty loans about. And that article about the £500K mortgage indicates a bubble (again)
Banks lending 5x joint income is totally crazy.
As one may have said before, you can have around 4-5% money terms deflation in the housing market for a couple of decades, without anyone on a repayment mortgage suffering from negative equity. This needs to be the goal of government.
But they’re totally wedded to the massive stamp duty revenues, especially from London and the SE.
I am fed up with people calling Andrew a nonce. I have spelt out what my view of him is on here on earlier threads. It is not remotely flattering, to put it mildly.
But he has not been charged let alone convicted of anything. Nor will he be in relation to the late Ms Giuffre for obvious reasons.
And given this society's abysmal failures to deal properly or at all with actual nonces and men who have been convicted of very serious crimes - I will remind you that far too many men convicted of the possession of hundreds, thousands even of the worst category of child abuse images - each of which is evidence of a crime -avoid jail - thus leaving them entirely free to continue with their revolting harmful activities, the focus on Andrew seems to me to be displacement activity of the worst and most futile kind.
We can have lots of outrage directed at one individual while blithely ignoring our failure to do anything about the actual criminals in our midst. The inquiry about the banned subject announced several months ago will likely not even get started until next year, a year after it all kicked off and decades after many of the crimes. Many of those covered by the IICSA Reports will never receive justice and virtually all of those responsible for the crimes it covers have escaped any sort of accountability, naming or shaming. But hey shouting abuse at a stupid ex-royal - well that'll make some feel better even if it does damn all for any of the victims. And so we can feel self-righteous and good about ourselves - apparently the only metric which matters these days - while continuing to do nothing effective about the criminals or for the victims.
It's pathetic.
Yes. Even the apparently stupid and/or horrible deserve justice. For the sake of justice.
Except there is no trial, and no justice for the victims of Epstein and his friends.
Reeves seems to be very fortunate with the spin going forwards that the letting agent is apologising for the mistake, which seems to me to be her own damned fault.
A very different spin can be put on the exact same words.
"In an effort to be helpful our previous property manager offered to apply for a licence on these clients' behalf, as shown in the correspondence.
"That property manager suddenly resigned on the Friday before the tenancy began on the following Monday.
"Unfortunately, the lack of application was not picked up by us as we do not normally apply for licences on behalf of our clients; the onus is on them to apply. We have apologised to the owners for this oversight. Hghttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cxejy88o
Has the letting company received some baksheesh to persuade them to put out this story to exonerate Ms Reeves and her husband of a duty that was their responsibility?
You get a like for ‘backsheesh’. Not heard that word in a while, and I live in the Middle East.
Comments
What Putin is going is mad, bad, and dangerous.
So far people have condemned him and the world has taken note.
Now he can just shrug and say “but America does it too”. And that’s a pretty good argument in the world geopolitics.
The world will be a less safe place. America will lose out (relatively). But Trump feels powerful. And Russia benefits.
Trump has been played.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgkz3m3re1zo
(Open goal for mushroom cloud pun.)
If they can screw up the process for a government minister…
Bad of her to pretend that was always the policy. It wasn't.
Though the report contains the facts, this headline and standfirst misreport what happened. The junior whip Katie Lam correctly stated the policy: revoking ILR retrospectively was Tory policy from May 5th to yesterday. The leader has ditched that policy.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/kemi-badenoch-chris-philp-britain-robert-jenrick-nigel-farage-b2855232.html
https://bsky.app/profile/sundersays.bsky.social/post/3m4gz5p33q22h
https://x.com/maks_nafo_fella/status/1983981541090074718
They’re trying to get everyone to use a new Russian app called “Max”, which is basically FSB spyware, so they can clamp down on videos of oil refineries on fire and queues at petrol stations being shared internationally.
21% interest rates will do that.
https://x.com/evgen1232007/status/1983986693285040399
Oh, and those are the official figures being reported by the banks. The actual situation is likely a whole lot worse.
https://x.com/nexta_tv/status/1984129561542488141
Morgan Kelly thought it would be more like 40%, for which he was roundly mocked.
And he was in fact wrong.
Turned out to be nearer 75%.
If most Brits seriously think that inadvertently failing to obtain an obscure housing rental licence makes someone unfit to serve as Chancellor, then quite frankly we richly deserve to be governed by uninspiring technocrats.
https://x.com/miriam_cates/status/1983960835899978028
You end up with a position where the banks don’t actually want to foreclose bad loans if they can avoid it, because of the negative equity situation that realises the bad debt.
Fair to say there’s no demand whatsoever to buy Russian houses with interest rates so high, except for perhaps a few oligarchs hoping to pay cash at the bottom of the market, but even then they’d be better off buying war bonds at the 21%.
I know that it’s what I want to happen, and therefore have biases when it comes to the reporting, but it does look like the entire Russian economy is going to be pretty close to the edge this winter.
In a nutshell:
"Most of the oil fields in the Samara region (Russian Federation) are produced at the end of secondary and tertiary recovery processes. The natural reservoir drive is insufficiently high to allow effective oil production. Thus, water flooding is used to maintain reservoir pressure on the initial level and enhance oil recovery. However, the flooding operation with cold water causes the reservoir temperature to decrease significantly. Moreover, oils of these reservoirs contain large amounts of wax in composition. Exploitation of oil wells is complicated by plugging of tubing with wax. Therefore often production shutdowns are taking place to remove the deposits in the downhole equipment by hot oil flushing, solvent treatment, pigging or even steaming operations. Numerous workover operations lead to oil production losses for the operator company in the field."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0920410517310458
Those operations are expensive - and need to be continuous.
The cold causes the wax to form. The wax kills the oil fields.
Dead oil fields = dead Russian economy. Which probably = dead Putin.
OPEC are also looking at the possibility that Russia could be taken out once and for all as an O&G supplier. If you remember back to the pandemic, there was something of a willy-waving contest going on between Putin and MBS as to how low the oil price might go, with the Saudis clearly able to withstand a lower price than the Russians.
A couple of years of $40 oil leaves Russia unable to fund itself and starting to sell gold, and also has a positive effect on Western economies of reduced inflation. Meanwhile the Russian infrastructure isn’t being rebuilt, and wells end up having to be sealed.
NEW THREAD
As one may have said before, you can have around 4-5% money terms deflation in the housing market for a couple of decades, without anyone on a repayment mortgage suffering from negative equity. This needs to be the goal of government.
But they’re totally wedded to the massive stamp duty revenues, especially from London and the SE.