Doesn’t Russia deserve Sweden as a buffer zone against NATO?
Or does that only apply to “far off countries of which you know nothing”?
Your phrasing sounds vaguely derisive, but I don't quite know what you're getting at, especially as you were replying to a thread about other issues. Sweden as an active neutral does seem to perform a useful role,..
"Kemi Badenoch says welfare spending is unchristian
Responding to Rachel Reeves’s budget, the Conservative Party leader told the Political Thinking podcast that ‘in early Christian times there was no state or welfare’" (£)
Well that's an absolutely bat-shit crazy argument that she's going to soon regret.
In early Christian times there was slavery, does that make abolishing slavery 'unchristian'?
St Paul returns a slave to his slave owner in an epistle laced with sarcasm and special pleading (Philemon). Time the Tory party demanded proper reparations for descendants of deprived slavers. And the Good Samaritan wants the two silver pence he gave to the innkeeper back with interest.
Christianity is surely economically of the progressive left (or perhaps more accurately, the progressive left has derived from Christianity). Wealth is unchristian:
"I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."
So, according to the Atlantic, Zelenskyy has confirmed that he won't give up land for peace. Putin has confirmed that he cannot do a deal with Ukraine because it does not have a legitimate government. It's all going swimmingly despite the deadline of Thanksgiving having come and gone.
The Europeans need to massively increase their support for Ukraine so it becomes possible to hold their ground and, ideally, even push the Russians back a bit. At the moment Putin thinks he can still grind Ukraine into defeat so he doesn't need a deal. There will not be one until he is disabused of that belief.
I think my idea of Eastern Ukraine as an "independent" buffer state, including all Russia's gains, and some land from Ukraine in the North, to make a long strip along Russia's border, is one of the few solutions that will work.
Russia would have its buffer state. Ukraine would be able to join the EU and NATO. Nobody gets what they want, but everyone gets what they need.
Apart from the people living in "East Ukraine" - Putin would start by demanding that a pro-Russian regime is installed. despite the evidence that isn't what the people who live there want.
It's like demanding the Czechs give up their border fortifications to mollify the street artist.
It would no doubt be a Russia-aligned regime. And contain a mostly Russian speaking population. There's no two ways about that. Whether the general population there would be against it, for me seems tricky to gauge.
I would argue it's not Ukraine giving up its defences - it is Ukraine freeing itself, both by no longer bordering Russia, and by removing its Russian-speaking population, to take the defence steps (NATO, EU, re-arming itself) that it feels it needs.
There many hundreds of thousands of people living there who don't want to be in Russia. They voted against that, repeatedly. They voted, repeatedly, to be part of Ukraine.
Just because they are "Russian speakers" doesn't make them Russian. Zelensky, for example.
It also contains a large chunk of the Ukrainian economy.
The economic viability (of both the rest of Ukraine, and the successor state) is more challenging than the political aspects. But war is a lot more challenging for economic viability.
There was never an election on whether the citizens of Donetsk and Lugansk would like to be part of an independent but Russia-aligned state. I agree that their Russian heritage doesn't automatically equate to Russian loyalties, but I think for the most part they did form the backbone of the pro-Russian parties.
No, but in the 1991 Ukrainian independence referendum, Donetsk and Luhansk both voted 84% in favour.
So, according to the Atlantic, Zelenskyy has confirmed that he won't give up land for peace. Putin has confirmed that he cannot do a deal with Ukraine because it does not have a legitimate government. It's all going swimmingly despite the deadline of Thanksgiving having come and gone.
The Europeans need to massively increase their support for Ukraine so it becomes possible to hold their ground and, ideally, even push the Russians back a bit. At the moment Putin thinks he can still grind Ukraine into defeat so he doesn't need a deal. There will not be one until he is disabused of that belief.
I think my idea of Eastern Ukraine as an "independent" buffer state, including all Russia's gains, and some land from Ukraine in the North, to make a long strip along Russia's border, is one of the few solutions that will work.
Russia would have its buffer state. Ukraine would be able to join the EU and NATO. Nobody gets what they want, but everyone gets what they need.
Apart from the people living in "East Ukraine" - Putin would start by demanding that a pro-Russian regime is installed. despite the evidence that isn't what the people who live there want.
It's like demanding the Czechs give up their border fortifications to mollify the street artist.
It would no doubt be a Russia-aligned regime. And contain a mostly Russian speaking population. There's no two ways about that. Whether the general population there would be against it, for me seems tricky to gauge.
I would argue it's not Ukraine giving up its defences - it is Ukraine freeing itself, both by no longer bordering Russia, and by removing its Russian-speaking population, to take the defence steps (NATO, EU, re-arming itself) that it feels it needs.
There many hundreds of thousands of people living there who don't want to be in Russia. They voted against that, repeatedly. They voted, repeatedly, to be part of Ukraine.
Just because they are "Russian speakers" doesn't make them Russian. Zelensky, for example.
It also contains a large chunk of the Ukrainian economy.
The economic viability (of both the rest of Ukraine, and the successor state) is more challenging than the political aspects. But war is a lot more challenging for economic viability.
There was never an election on whether the citizens of Donetsk and Lugansk would like to be part of an independent but Russia-aligned state. I agree that their Russian heritage doesn't automatically equate to Russian loyalties, but I think for the most part they did form the backbone of the pro-Russian parties.
You think wrong.
There were multiple elections in those areas, before Russia started invading (2014 etc). The Join-Russia parties never managed to get a majority in any of border regions. Even the Pro-Russia parties struggled.
The CNN poll carried out just before the invasion found a majority, in the even the parts of the border regions closest to Russia, still wanted to be Ukrainian.
According to your post, I don't think wrong. I never said 'join-Russia parties', I said pro-Russian parties. You've speciously implied something I didn't say to make your argument.
"Kemi Badenoch says welfare spending is unchristian
Responding to Rachel Reeves’s budget, the Conservative Party leader told the Political Thinking podcast that ‘in early Christian times there was no state or welfare’" (£)
"Kemi Badenoch says welfare spending is unchristian
Responding to Rachel Reeves’s budget, the Conservative Party leader told the Political Thinking podcast that ‘in early Christian times there was no state or welfare’" (£)
Well that's an absolutely bat-shit crazy argument that she's going to soon regret.
In early Christian times there was slavery, does that make abolishing slavery 'unchristian'?
St Paul returns a slave to his slave owner in an epistle laced with sarcasm and special pleading (Philemon). Time the Tory party demanded proper reparations for descendants of deprived slavers. And the Good Samaritan wants the two silver pence he gave to the innkeeper back with interest.
Well, the Tory party of 200-ish years ago made dam' sure that the Regency slave-owners got their compo when the slaves were liberated. The UKG loan to pay that was only very recently paid off.
Bit shit for the slaves, though - they didn't get any compo. Plus they had to stay on and work for their ex-owners, until enough people cottoned on to that sweetener and got it cancelled.
Edit: As\ for Ms Badenoch's argument, I've just been reading the book by Harry Sidebottom on gladiators in the Roman times (which of course very much included the Christian world in the Empire). Gifts to the poor were very much a thing, and of course the Romans in Rome had the corn dole. Plus Christians gave to the poor as part of their atheistic commie subversive stuff.
"Kemi Badenoch says welfare spending is unchristian
Responding to Rachel Reeves’s budget, the Conservative Party leader told the Political Thinking podcast that ‘in early Christian times there was no state or welfare’" (£)
Well that's an absolutely bat-shit crazy argument that she's going to soon regret.
In early Christian times there was slavery, does that make abolishing slavery 'unchristian'?
She didn't actually say that it was "unchristian". She just made what she clearly thought was a clever rhetorical point “(Paul's) first Epistle to Timothy proclaims that: ‘Anyone who does not provide for his own household… is worse than an unbeliever’ ”.
Ah. The danger in relying on a summary. I don't have access to the Times (£).
"Kemi Badenoch says welfare spending is unchristian
Responding to Rachel Reeves’s budget, the Conservative Party leader told the Political Thinking podcast that ‘in early Christian times there was no state or welfare’" (£)
What does she mean? There was a state, the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire had the alimenta, which supported poor children, so a form of welfare, and the long-running cura annonae, food supplies.
So, according to the Atlantic, Zelenskyy has confirmed that he won't give up land for peace. Putin has confirmed that he cannot do a deal with Ukraine because it does not have a legitimate government. It's all going swimmingly despite the deadline of Thanksgiving having come and gone.
The Europeans need to massively increase their support for Ukraine so it becomes possible to hold their ground and, ideally, even push the Russians back a bit. At the moment Putin thinks he can still grind Ukraine into defeat so he doesn't need a deal. There will not be one until he is disabused of that belief.
I think my idea of Eastern Ukraine as an "independent" buffer state, including all Russia's gains, and some land from Ukraine in the North, to make a long strip along Russia's border, is one of the few solutions that will work.
Russia would have its buffer state. Ukraine would be able to join the EU and NATO. Nobody gets what they want, but everyone gets what they need.
Apart from the people living in "East Ukraine" - Putin would start by demanding that a pro-Russian regime is installed. despite the evidence that isn't what the people who live there want.
It's like demanding the Czechs give up their border fortifications to mollify the street artist.
It would no doubt be a Russia-aligned regime. And contain a mostly Russian speaking population. There's no two ways about that. Whether the general population there would be against it, for me seems tricky to gauge.
I would argue it's not Ukraine giving up its defences - it is Ukraine freeing itself, both by no longer bordering Russia, and by removing its Russian-speaking population, to take the defence steps (NATO, EU, re-arming itself) that it feels it needs.
The Russian-speaking population of Ukraine extend much further west than that, and the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine largely want to stay in Ukraine.
Well they will be fine with it then. They live in Western Ukraine and nobody will be asking them to move East.
And the people who do't want to be controlled by Russia in your "buffer zone"? What about them (the majority) ?
All that is in any case irrelevant.
Russian occupied Luhansk and Donetsk are puppet states. It's pretty well inconceivable that Russia would withdraw from them unless soundly defeated - in which case their future would be up to their inhabitants (and would anyway be complete chaos without Ukrainian occupation taking the place of the Russians, since their puppet rulers would likely be hung from the nearest lampposts).
Luckyguy's "solution" is a theoretical fantasy, with no real path to coming about.
The damage to the the Soyuz pad at Baikonur is confirmed.
This is the only pad the Russians currently have to launch to ISS. This means crew rotations blocked, but more importantly (perhaps) Progress cargo craft can't be sent to the station. The ISS can only be refuelled by Progress. Which means that after a while ISS will run out of fuel for attitude control related matters (It's a bit complicated with gyroscopes and de saturation, but that's the size of it)
To fix the pad, they would need to -
1) build a new service structure under the pad 2) Take a service structure from a mothballed pad 3) Convert/reactivate another pad - would ned to include work for Progress and the Suyuz spacecraft.
1) Will take a long, long time. SpaceX they are not. Years 2) Not been done before. It's a huge piece of equipment - might well need to be cut into sections, moved, rebuilt. 3) Again, will take a long, long time. Experience with Russian space tech and other Russian stuff is that the Russian approach to "moth balling" is "leave it to rust".
So no launches to the space station for months. Possibly years.
Which means a growing problem for the ISS - and a humiliation for Putin, incoming.
Is there a way to refuel ISS from a US or European pad (eg launch Progress from there)?
I am not an expert, but a space station lacking the ability to control altitude sounds… concerning…
Only Progress can refuel the station, via the Russian segment(s).
No current spacecraft from other nations can transfer the fuel in question (hydrazine).
Launching Progress on another rocket would require years of work.
The Soyuz pad in Guiana is at the wrong inclination (location) and is being demolished at the moment.
So if the Russians can't get the pad working, it's either abandon ISS or get SpaceX* to come up with something worryingly fast.
*Some people will get upset by specifying SpaceX. They are the only company that has demonstrated the ability to build space hardware in the timescales required - months.
Isn't the ISS due to be retired and deorbited (albeit in a controlled manner) before long anyway?
I wonder what will then replace it as the single most expensive thing made by man?
Trump's ballroom
LOL!
To be replaced in due course by the Trump Mausoleum...made of the entirety of the Fort Knox gold reserves.
"Kemi Badenoch says welfare spending is unchristian
Responding to Rachel Reeves’s budget, the Conservative Party leader told the Political Thinking podcast that ‘in early Christian times there was no state or welfare’" (£)
What does she mean? There was a state, the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire had the alimenta, which supported poor children, so a form of welfare, and the long-running cura annonae, food supplies.
She didn't mean anything practical. It was a rhetorical position. What its policy implications might or might not be was left as an exercise for the listener.
So, according to the Atlantic, Zelenskyy has confirmed that he won't give up land for peace. Putin has confirmed that he cannot do a deal with Ukraine because it does not have a legitimate government. It's all going swimmingly despite the deadline of Thanksgiving having come and gone.
The Europeans need to massively increase their support for Ukraine so it becomes possible to hold their ground and, ideally, even push the Russians back a bit. At the moment Putin thinks he can still grind Ukraine into defeat so he doesn't need a deal. There will not be one until he is disabused of that belief.
I think my idea of Eastern Ukraine as an "independent" buffer state, including all Russia's gains, and some land from Ukraine in the North, to make a long strip along Russia's border, is one of the few solutions that will work.
Russia would have its buffer state. Ukraine would be able to join the EU and NATO. Nobody gets what they want, but everyone gets what they need.
Apart from the people living in "East Ukraine" - Putin would start by demanding that a pro-Russian regime is installed. despite the evidence that isn't what the people who live there want.
It's like demanding the Czechs give up their border fortifications to mollify the street artist.
It would no doubt be a Russia-aligned regime. And contain a mostly Russian speaking population. There's no two ways about that. Whether the general population there would be against it, for me seems tricky to gauge.
I would argue it's not Ukraine giving up its defences - it is Ukraine freeing itself, both by no longer bordering Russia, and by removing its Russian-speaking population, to take the defence steps (NATO, EU, re-arming itself) that it feels it needs.
There many hundreds of thousands of people living there who don't want to be in Russia. They voted against that, repeatedly. They voted, repeatedly, to be part of Ukraine.
Just because they are "Russian speakers" doesn't make them Russian. Zelensky, for example.
It also contains a large chunk of the Ukrainian economy.
The economic viability (of both the rest of Ukraine, and the successor state) is more challenging than the political aspects. But war is a lot more challenging for economic viability.
There was never an election on whether the citizens of Donetsk and Lugansk would like to be part of an independent but Russia-aligned state. I agree that their Russian heritage doesn't automatically equate to Russian loyalties, but I think for the most part they did form the backbone of the pro-Russian parties.
You think wrong.
There were multiple elections in those areas, before Russia started invading (2014 etc). The Join-Russia parties never managed to get a majority in any of border regions. Even the Pro-Russia parties struggled.
The CNN poll carried out just before the invasion found a majority, in the even the parts of the border regions closest to Russia, still wanted to be Ukrainian.
According to your post, I don't think wrong. I never said 'join-Russia parties', I said pro-Russian parties. You've speciously implied something I didn't say to make your argument.
There were (and are) many different political parties in the border region.
One grouping was (and is) "Join Russia" Another is "Don't join Russia but be really friendly with them, promote the Russian language etc etc"
There is some cross over, but they are fairly distant in the most part.
Some people try and use support for the Pro-Russia parties as an excuse for annexation by Russia. This is not what the parties in question wanted!
"Kemi Badenoch says welfare spending is unchristian
Responding to Rachel Reeves’s budget, the Conservative Party leader told the Political Thinking podcast that ‘in early Christian times there was no state or welfare’" (£)
"Kemi Badenoch says welfare spending is unchristian
Responding to Rachel Reeves’s budget, the Conservative Party leader told the Political Thinking podcast that ‘in early Christian times there was no state or welfare’" (£)
The damage to the the Soyuz pad at Baikonur is confirmed.
This is the only pad the Russians currently have to launch to ISS. This means crew rotations blocked, but more importantly (perhaps) Progress cargo craft can't be sent to the station. The ISS can only be refuelled by Progress. Which means that after a while ISS will run out of fuel for attitude control related matters (It's a bit complicated with gyroscopes and de saturation, but that's the size of it)
To fix the pad, they would need to -
1) build a new service structure under the pad 2) Take a service structure from a mothballed pad 3) Convert/reactivate another pad - would ned to include work for Progress and the Suyuz spacecraft.
1) Will take a long, long time. SpaceX they are not. Years 2) Not been done before. It's a huge piece of equipment - might well need to be cut into sections, moved, rebuilt. 3) Again, will take a long, long time. Experience with Russian space tech and other Russian stuff is that the Russian approach to "moth balling" is "leave it to rust".
So no launches to the space station for months. Possibly years.
Which means a growing problem for the ISS - and a humiliation for Putin, incoming.
Is there a way to refuel ISS from a US or European pad (eg launch Progress from there)?
I am not an expert, but a space station lacking the ability to control altitude sounds… concerning…
Only Progress can refuel the station, via the Russian segment(s).
No current spacecraft from other nations can transfer the fuel in question (hydrazine).
Launching Progress on another rocket would require years of work.
The Soyuz pad in Guiana is at the wrong inclination (location) and is being demolished at the moment.
So if the Russians can't get the pad working, it's either abandon ISS or get SpaceX* to come up with something worryingly fast.
*Some people will get upset by specifying SpaceX. They are the only company that has demonstrated the ability to build space hardware in the timescales required - months.
Isn't the ISS due to be retired and deorbited (albeit in a controlled manner) before long anyway?
I wonder what will then replace it as the single most expensive thing made by man?
HS2?
Saudi Arabia's wall project is supposed to come in at around $500bn, but I would guess it will never be completed.
TSMC's planned 1.4nm chip fab is likely to cost as much as $50bn.
If you consider the web and its attached data centres as a single thing, then you will get up to several trillions.
Maybe in real terms PPP the Great Wall of China? Not that it would be easy to calculate.
Surely it depends on how you categorise something? Is 'London' a single thing?
Fair point but... the Great Wall is surely allowable as a single thing?
Nope - its not just one wall. People have the very wrong idea about it!
Fair enough, it was probably a silly suggestion on my part anyway.
Since you can't see the Great Wall of China from the ISS but you can see the ISS from the Great Wall, perhaps it makes sense that the ISS cost more. Or something.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/7f62dca86e3bc5c9 I’ve lived through the cost of losing ground. I’ve seen the bodies, the destroyed homes, and I’ve been tortured by Russia like so many others. Land is never ‘just land.’ It’s people. Families. Lives shattered. So yes, watching Trump casually bargain away territory that isn’t even his to give feels like a deep betrayal. It’s a lesson I wish none of us had to learn the hard way, and one far too many are being forced to relive again because one of our so-called allies is now suggesting we reward genocide.
"Kemi Badenoch says welfare spending is unchristian
Responding to Rachel Reeves’s budget, the Conservative Party leader told the Political Thinking podcast that ‘in early Christian times there was no state or welfare’" (£)
What does she mean? There was a state, the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire had the alimenta, which supported poor children, so a form of welfare, and the long-running cura annonae, food supplies.
Can it be said that Jesus called for state welfare though? Individal giving and organized giving perhaps. But not the state, as I recall. Also, understandably not much said about democracy.
And yet all Christian countries have both welfare and democracy. So who knows.
Brexit bonus, or EU (likely French) idiocy. Take your pick.
UK govt confirms talks with the EU on SAFE have failed
Nick Thomas Symonds says “it is disappointing that we have not been able to conclude discussions on UK participation in the first round of SAFE”
“Negotiations were carried out in good faith, but our position was always clear: we will only sign agreements that are in the national interest and provide value for money” https://x.com/alexwickham/status/1994365452152160480
So, according to the Atlantic, Zelenskyy has confirmed that he won't give up land for peace. Putin has confirmed that he cannot do a deal with Ukraine because it does not have a legitimate government. It's all going swimmingly despite the deadline of Thanksgiving having come and gone.
The Europeans need to massively increase their support for Ukraine so it becomes possible to hold their ground and, ideally, even push the Russians back a bit. At the moment Putin thinks he can still grind Ukraine into defeat so he doesn't need a deal. There will not be one until he is disabused of that belief.
I think my idea of Eastern Ukraine as an "independent" buffer state, including all Russia's gains, and some land from Ukraine in the North, to make a long strip along Russia's border, is one of the few solutions that will work.
Russia would have its buffer state. Ukraine would be able to join the EU and NATO. Nobody gets what they want, but everyone gets what they need.
Apart from the people living in "East Ukraine" - Putin would start by demanding that a pro-Russian regime is installed. despite the evidence that isn't what the people who live there want.
It's like demanding the Czechs give up their border fortifications to mollify the street artist.
It would no doubt be a Russia-aligned regime. And contain a mostly Russian speaking population. There's no two ways about that. Whether the general population there would be against it, for me seems tricky to gauge.
I would argue it's not Ukraine giving up its defences - it is Ukraine freeing itself, both by no longer bordering Russia, and by removing its Russian-speaking population, to take the defence steps (NATO, EU, re-arming itself) that it feels it needs.
There many hundreds of thousands of people living there who don't want to be in Russia. They voted against that, repeatedly. They voted, repeatedly, to be part of Ukraine.
Just because they are "Russian speakers" doesn't make them Russian. Zelensky, for example.
It also contains a large chunk of the Ukrainian economy.
The economic viability (of both the rest of Ukraine, and the successor state) is more challenging than the political aspects. But war is a lot more challenging for economic viability.
There was never an election on whether the citizens of Donetsk and Lugansk would like to be part of an independent but Russia-aligned state. I agree that their Russian heritage doesn't automatically equate to Russian loyalties, but I think for the most part they did form the backbone of the pro-Russian parties.
You think wrong.
There were multiple elections in those areas, before Russia started invading (2014 etc). The Join-Russia parties never managed to get a majority in any of border regions. Even the Pro-Russia parties struggled.
The CNN poll carried out just before the invasion found a majority, in the even the parts of the border regions closest to Russia, still wanted to be Ukrainian.
According to your post, I don't think wrong. I never said 'join-Russia parties', I said pro-Russian parties. You've speciously implied something I didn't say to make your argument.
There were (and are) many different political parties in the border region.
One grouping was (and is) "Join Russia" Another is "Don't join Russia but be really friendly with them, promote the Russian language etc etc"
There is some cross over, but they are fairly distant in the most part.
Some people try and use support for the Pro-Russia parties as an excuse for annexation by Russia. This is not what the parties in question wanted!
Indeed: it's like saying that all Liberal Democrats would support a German invasion of Britain, when at least 15% of their supporters would be a little queasy about it.
So, according to the Atlantic, Zelenskyy has confirmed that he won't give up land for peace. Putin has confirmed that he cannot do a deal with Ukraine because it does not have a legitimate government. It's all going swimmingly despite the deadline of Thanksgiving having come and gone.
The Europeans need to massively increase their support for Ukraine so it becomes possible to hold their ground and, ideally, even push the Russians back a bit. At the moment Putin thinks he can still grind Ukraine into defeat so he doesn't need a deal. There will not be one until he is disabused of that belief.
I think my idea of Eastern Ukraine as an "independent" buffer state, including all Russia's gains, and some land from Ukraine in the North, to make a long strip along Russia's border, is one of the few solutions that will work.
Russia would have its buffer state. Ukraine would be able to join the EU and NATO. Nobody gets what they want, but everyone gets what they need.
Apart from the people living in "East Ukraine" - Putin would start by demanding that a pro-Russian regime is installed. despite the evidence that isn't what the people who live there want.
It's like demanding the Czechs give up their border fortifications to mollify the street artist.
It would no doubt be a Russia-aligned regime. And contain a mostly Russian speaking population. There's no two ways about that. Whether the general population there would be against it, for me seems tricky to gauge.
I would argue it's not Ukraine giving up its defences - it is Ukraine freeing itself, both by no longer bordering Russia, and by removing its Russian-speaking population, to take the defence steps (NATO, EU, re-arming itself) that it feels it needs.
The Russian-speaking population of Ukraine extend much further west than that, and the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine largely want to stay in Ukraine.
Well they will be fine with it then. They live in Western Ukraine and nobody will be asking them to move East.
And the people who do't want to be controlled by Russia in your "buffer zone"? What about them (the majority) ?
I think you're making assertions that I don't think you can support. The state that these people would be in would be something like Yanukovich's Ukraine. We cannot say that these people would necessarily hate that, when they probably formed part of the voting coalition that voted for him.
"Kemi Badenoch says welfare spending is unchristian
Responding to Rachel Reeves’s budget, the Conservative Party leader told the Political Thinking podcast that ‘in early Christian times there was no state or welfare’" (£)
Hmm. Kemi risks undoing yesterday's good work if she starts on the JD Vance weird-theology stuff. Turning the abolition of state welfare into a literal crusade may not sit too well with the British public.
The damage to the the Soyuz pad at Baikonur is confirmed.
This is the only pad the Russians currently have to launch to ISS. This means crew rotations blocked, but more importantly (perhaps) Progress cargo craft can't be sent to the station. The ISS can only be refuelled by Progress. Which means that after a while ISS will run out of fuel for attitude control related matters (It's a bit complicated with gyroscopes and de saturation, but that's the size of it)
To fix the pad, they would need to -
1) build a new service structure under the pad 2) Take a service structure from a mothballed pad 3) Convert/reactivate another pad - would ned to include work for Progress and the Suyuz spacecraft.
1) Will take a long, long time. SpaceX they are not. Years 2) Not been done before. It's a huge piece of equipment - might well need to be cut into sections, moved, rebuilt. 3) Again, will take a long, long time. Experience with Russian space tech and other Russian stuff is that the Russian approach to "moth balling" is "leave it to rust".
So no launches to the space station for months. Possibly years.
Which means a growing problem for the ISS - and a humiliation for Putin, incoming.
Is there a way to refuel ISS from a US or European pad (eg launch Progress from there)?
I am not an expert, but a space station lacking the ability to control altitude sounds… concerning…
Only Progress can refuel the station, via the Russian segment(s).
No current spacecraft from other nations can transfer the fuel in question (hydrazine).
Launching Progress on another rocket would require years of work.
The Soyuz pad in Guiana is at the wrong inclination (location) and is being demolished at the moment.
So if the Russians can't get the pad working, it's either abandon ISS or get SpaceX* to come up with something worryingly fast.
*Some people will get upset by specifying SpaceX. They are the only company that has demonstrated the ability to build space hardware in the timescales required - months.
Isn't the ISS due to be retired and deorbited (albeit in a controlled manner) before long anyway?
I wonder what will then replace it as the single most expensive thing made by man?
HS2?
Saudi Arabia's wall project is supposed to come in at around $500bn, but I would guess it will never be completed.
TSMC's planned 1.4nm chip fab is likely to cost as much as $50bn.
If you consider the web and its attached data centres as a single thing, then you will get up to several trillions.
Maybe in real terms PPP the Great Wall of China? Not that it would be easy to calculate.
Surely it depends on how you categorise something? Is 'London' a single thing?
Fair point but... the Great Wall is surely allowable as a single thing?
Nope - its not just one wall. People have the very wrong idea about it!
Fair enough, it was probably a silly suggestion on my part anyway.
Since you can't see the Great Wall of China from the ISS but you can see the ISS from the Great Wall, perhaps it makes sense that the ISS cost more. Or something.
Can you see your new house from the ISS would be the pertinent question...
So, according to the Atlantic, Zelenskyy has confirmed that he won't give up land for peace. Putin has confirmed that he cannot do a deal with Ukraine because it does not have a legitimate government. It's all going swimmingly despite the deadline of Thanksgiving having come and gone.
The Europeans need to massively increase their support for Ukraine so it becomes possible to hold their ground and, ideally, even push the Russians back a bit. At the moment Putin thinks he can still grind Ukraine into defeat so he doesn't need a deal. There will not be one until he is disabused of that belief.
I think my idea of Eastern Ukraine as an "independent" buffer state, including all Russia's gains, and some land from Ukraine in the North, to make a long strip along Russia's border, is one of the few solutions that will work.
Russia would have its buffer state. Ukraine would be able to join the EU and NATO. Nobody gets what they want, but everyone gets what they need.
Apart from the people living in "East Ukraine" - Putin would start by demanding that a pro-Russian regime is installed. despite the evidence that isn't what the people who live there want.
It's like demanding the Czechs give up their border fortifications to mollify the street artist.
It would no doubt be a Russia-aligned regime. And contain a mostly Russian speaking population. There's no two ways about that. Whether the general population there would be against it, for me seems tricky to gauge.
I would argue it's not Ukraine giving up its defences - it is Ukraine freeing itself, both by no longer bordering Russia, and by removing its Russian-speaking population, to take the defence steps (NATO, EU, re-arming itself) that it feels it needs.
The Russian-speaking population of Ukraine extend much further west than that, and the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine largely want to stay in Ukraine.
Well they will be fine with it then. They live in Western Ukraine and nobody will be asking them to move East.
And the people who do't want to be controlled by Russia in your "buffer zone"? What about them (the majority) ?
I think you're making assertions that I don't think you can support. The state that these people would be in would be something like Yanukovich's Ukraine. We cannot say that these people would necessarily hate that, when they probably formed part of the voting coalition that voted for him.
There is plenty of evidence in the democratic history of Ukraine as a separate state.
In multiple local, regional and national elections.
You just want the reality to be different. So you can draw tidy lines on a map.
"Kemi Badenoch says welfare spending is unchristian
Responding to Rachel Reeves’s budget, the Conservative Party leader told the Political Thinking podcast that ‘in early Christian times there was no state or welfare’" (£)
Well that's an absolutely bat-shit crazy argument that she's going to soon regret.
In early Christian times there was slavery, does that make abolishing slavery 'unchristian'?
Lordy what a doofus.
In early Christian times the state was not Christian, and Christianity was an independent, persecuted network. If she wants to push it she needs to deal with the Apostles implementing their own welfare system. See Acts 4:32-35:
32 All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. 33 With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all 34 that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales 35 and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.
It's quite in order to consider that as an inspiration for the Welfare State, as incorporating similar underlying values. *
And that's leaving aside the free grain supplied to the ordinary people in Rome via taxes, which might suggest that a welfare state of sorts is simply a normal part of a human society. Julius Caesar writes about it. If she wants a "Christian State" view on that, she needs to look post-Constantine.
She needs to read "Christianity and the Social Order" by Archbishop William Temple, from 1942, which informed the basis of our welfare state.
The problem is imo that Kemi is proud to be clear and ignorant, and not to have any hinterland.
* You can equally argue a basis of wealth creation and free markets as part of the same synthesis with a smallish welfare state, as Mrs Thatcher did; that's the opposite of the Trumpvangelicals and the Dawkinsites, who often mine a bit of Bible from here or there with no wider consideration. What you can't do is reduce yourself to the status of a performing seal, honking away on a podium in a circus.
Brexit bonus, or EU (likely French) idiocy. Take your pick.
UK govt confirms talks with the EU on SAFE have failed
Nick Thomas Symonds says “it is disappointing that we have not been able to conclude discussions on UK participation in the first round of SAFE”
“Negotiations were carried out in good faith, but our position was always clear: we will only sign agreements that are in the national interest and provide value for money” https://x.com/alexwickham/status/1994365452152160480
They wanted 6bn (later 2bn), we offered 75m. I wonder what our assessment of the value was to us was? Maybe 500m?
So, according to the Atlantic, Zelenskyy has confirmed that he won't give up land for peace. Putin has confirmed that he cannot do a deal with Ukraine because it does not have a legitimate government. It's all going swimmingly despite the deadline of Thanksgiving having come and gone.
The Europeans need to massively increase their support for Ukraine so it becomes possible to hold their ground and, ideally, even push the Russians back a bit. At the moment Putin thinks he can still grind Ukraine into defeat so he doesn't need a deal. There will not be one until he is disabused of that belief.
I think my idea of Eastern Ukraine as an "independent" buffer state, including all Russia's gains, and some land from Ukraine in the North, to make a long strip along Russia's border, is one of the few solutions that will work.
Russia would have its buffer state. Ukraine would be able to join the EU and NATO. Nobody gets what they want, but everyone gets what they need.
Apart from the people living in "East Ukraine" - Putin would start by demanding that a pro-Russian regime is installed. despite the evidence that isn't what the people who live there want.
It's like demanding the Czechs give up their border fortifications to mollify the street artist.
It would no doubt be a Russia-aligned regime. And contain a mostly Russian speaking population. There's no two ways about that. Whether the general population there would be against it, for me seems tricky to gauge.
I would argue it's not Ukraine giving up its defences - it is Ukraine freeing itself, both by no longer bordering Russia, and by removing its Russian-speaking population, to take the defence steps (NATO, EU, re-arming itself) that it feels it needs.
There many hundreds of thousands of people living there who don't want to be in Russia. They voted against that, repeatedly. They voted, repeatedly, to be part of Ukraine.
Just because they are "Russian speakers" doesn't make them Russian. Zelensky, for example.
It also contains a large chunk of the Ukrainian economy.
The economic viability (of both the rest of Ukraine, and the successor state) is more challenging than the political aspects. But war is a lot more challenging for economic viability.
There was never an election on whether the citizens of Donetsk and Lugansk would like to be part of an independent but Russia-aligned state. I agree that their Russian heritage doesn't automatically equate to Russian loyalties, but I think for the most part they did form the backbone of the pro-Russian parties.
You think wrong.
There were multiple elections in those areas, before Russia started invading (2014 etc). The Join-Russia parties never managed to get a majority in any of border regions. Even the Pro-Russia parties struggled.
The CNN poll carried out just before the invasion found a majority, in the even the parts of the border regions closest to Russia, still wanted to be Ukrainian.
According to your post, I don't think wrong. I never said 'join-Russia parties', I said pro-Russian parties. You've speciously implied something I didn't say to make your argument.
There were (and are) many different political parties in the border region.
One grouping was (and is) "Join Russia" Another is "Don't join Russia but be really friendly with them, promote the Russian language etc etc"
There is some cross over, but they are fairly distant in the most part.
Some people try and use support for the Pro-Russia parties as an excuse for annexation by Russia. This is not what the parties in question wanted!
Indeed: it's like saying that all Liberal Democrats would support a German invasion of Britain, when at least 15% of their supporters would be a little queasy about it.
...but if it was Sweden, 95% of Lib Dems would line up to be Block Wardens to enforce proportional representation. And vegan sandals.
Brexit bonus, or EU (likely French) idiocy. Take your pick.
UK govt confirms talks with the EU on SAFE have failed
Nick Thomas Symonds says “it is disappointing that we have not been able to conclude discussions on UK participation in the first round of SAFE”
“Negotiations were carried out in good faith, but our position was always clear: we will only sign agreements that are in the national interest and provide value for money” https://x.com/alexwickham/status/1994365452152160480
They wanted 6bn (later 2bn), we offered 75m. I wonder what our assessment of the value was to us was? Maybe 500m?
Shows, at least, that Labour don't fold to the EU just for remainerism if civil servants tell them not to. Good for Starmer.
So, according to the Atlantic, Zelenskyy has confirmed that he won't give up land for peace. Putin has confirmed that he cannot do a deal with Ukraine because it does not have a legitimate government. It's all going swimmingly despite the deadline of Thanksgiving having come and gone.
The Europeans need to massively increase their support for Ukraine so it becomes possible to hold their ground and, ideally, even push the Russians back a bit. At the moment Putin thinks he can still grind Ukraine into defeat so he doesn't need a deal. There will not be one until he is disabused of that belief.
I think my idea of Eastern Ukraine as an "independent" buffer state, including all Russia's gains, and some land from Ukraine in the North, to make a long strip along Russia's border, is one of the few solutions that will work.
Russia would have its buffer state. Ukraine would be able to join the EU and NATO. Nobody gets what they want, but everyone gets what they need.
Apart from the people living in "East Ukraine" - Putin would start by demanding that a pro-Russian regime is installed. despite the evidence that isn't what the people who live there want.
It's like demanding the Czechs give up their border fortifications to mollify the street artist.
It would no doubt be a Russia-aligned regime. And contain a mostly Russian speaking population. There's no two ways about that. Whether the general population there would be against it, for me seems tricky to gauge.
I would argue it's not Ukraine giving up its defences - it is Ukraine freeing itself, both by no longer bordering Russia, and by removing its Russian-speaking population, to take the defence steps (NATO, EU, re-arming itself) that it feels it needs.
There many hundreds of thousands of people living there who don't want to be in Russia. They voted against that, repeatedly. They voted, repeatedly, to be part of Ukraine.
Just because they are "Russian speakers" doesn't make them Russian. Zelensky, for example.
It also contains a large chunk of the Ukrainian economy.
The economic viability (of both the rest of Ukraine, and the successor state) is more challenging than the political aspects. But war is a lot more challenging for economic viability.
There was never an election on whether the citizens of Donetsk and Lugansk would like to be part of an independent but Russia-aligned state. I agree that their Russian heritage doesn't automatically equate to Russian loyalties, but I think for the most part they did form the backbone of the pro-Russian parties.
You think wrong.
There were multiple elections in those areas, before Russia started invading (2014 etc). The Join-Russia parties never managed to get a majority in any of border regions. Even the Pro-Russia parties struggled.
The CNN poll carried out just before the invasion found a majority, in the even the parts of the border regions closest to Russia, still wanted to be Ukrainian.
According to your post, I don't think wrong. I never said 'join-Russia parties', I said pro-Russian parties. You've speciously implied something I didn't say to make your argument.
There were (and are) many different political parties in the border region.
One grouping was (and is) "Join Russia" Another is "Don't join Russia but be really friendly with them, promote the Russian language etc etc"
There is some cross over, but they are fairly distant in the most part.
Some people try and use support for the Pro-Russia parties as an excuse for annexation by Russia. This is not what the parties in question wanted!
Indeed: it's like saying that all Liberal Democrats would support a German invasion of Britain, when at least 15% of their supporters would be a little queasy about it.
Ahem. Liberal and Labour were solid on opposing Germany back when the Tories and their media friends wanted to strike a deal (aka, surrender).
The damage to the the Soyuz pad at Baikonur is confirmed.
This is the only pad the Russians currently have to launch to ISS. This means crew rotations blocked, but more importantly (perhaps) Progress cargo craft can't be sent to the station. The ISS can only be refuelled by Progress. Which means that after a while ISS will run out of fuel for attitude control related matters (It's a bit complicated with gyroscopes and de saturation, but that's the size of it)
To fix the pad, they would need to -
1) build a new service structure under the pad 2) Take a service structure from a mothballed pad 3) Convert/reactivate another pad - would ned to include work for Progress and the Suyuz spacecraft.
1) Will take a long, long time. SpaceX they are not. Years 2) Not been done before. It's a huge piece of equipment - might well need to be cut into sections, moved, rebuilt. 3) Again, will take a long, long time. Experience with Russian space tech and other Russian stuff is that the Russian approach to "moth balling" is "leave it to rust".
So no launches to the space station for months. Possibly years.
Which means a growing problem for the ISS - and a humiliation for Putin, incoming.
Is there a way to refuel ISS from a US or European pad (eg launch Progress from there)?
I am not an expert, but a space station lacking the ability to control altitude sounds… concerning…
Only Progress can refuel the station, via the Russian segment(s).
No current spacecraft from other nations can transfer the fuel in question (hydrazine).
Launching Progress on another rocket would require years of work.
The Soyuz pad in Guiana is at the wrong inclination (location) and is being demolished at the moment.
So if the Russians can't get the pad working, it's either abandon ISS or get SpaceX* to come up with something worryingly fast.
*Some people will get upset by specifying SpaceX. They are the only company that has demonstrated the ability to build space hardware in the timescales required - months.
Isn't the ISS due to be retired and deorbited (albeit in a controlled manner) before long anyway?
I wonder what will then replace it as the single most expensive thing made by man?
HS2?
Saudi Arabia's wall project is supposed to come in at around $500bn, but I would guess it will never be completed.
TSMC's planned 1.4nm chip fab is likely to cost as much as $50bn.
If you consider the web and its attached data centres as a single thing, then you will get up to several trillions.
Maybe in real terms PPP the Great Wall of China? Not that it would be easy to calculate.
Surely it depends on how you categorise something? Is 'London' a single thing?
Fair point but... the Great Wall is surely allowable as a single thing?
Nope - its not just one wall. People have the very wrong idea about it!
Fair enough, it was probably a silly suggestion on my part anyway.
Since you can't see the Great Wall of China from the ISS but you can see the ISS from the Great Wall, perhaps it makes sense that the ISS cost more. Or something.
Can you see your new house from the ISS would be the pertinent question...
I hope not. That would mean the ISS is FAR too low!
"Kemi Badenoch says welfare spending is unchristian
Responding to Rachel Reeves’s budget, the Conservative Party leader told the Political Thinking podcast that ‘in early Christian times there was no state or welfare’" (£)
What does she mean? There was a state, the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire had the alimenta, which supported poor children, so a form of welfare, and the long-running cura annonae, food supplies.
Can it be said that Jesus called for state welfare though? Individal giving and organized giving perhaps. But not the state, as I recall. Also, understandably not much said about democracy.
And yet all Christian countries have both welfare and democracy. So who knows.
JC did however advise paying taxes without arguing, revolting, etc. Whose superscription is on this coin?, and all that.
So, according to the Atlantic, Zelenskyy has confirmed that he won't give up land for peace. Putin has confirmed that he cannot do a deal with Ukraine because it does not have a legitimate government. It's all going swimmingly despite the deadline of Thanksgiving having come and gone.
The Europeans need to massively increase their support for Ukraine so it becomes possible to hold their ground and, ideally, even push the Russians back a bit. At the moment Putin thinks he can still grind Ukraine into defeat so he doesn't need a deal. There will not be one until he is disabused of that belief.
I think my idea of Eastern Ukraine as an "independent" buffer state, including all Russia's gains, and some land from Ukraine in the North, to make a long strip along Russia's border, is one of the few solutions that will work.
Russia would have its buffer state. Ukraine would be able to join the EU and NATO. Nobody gets what they want, but everyone gets what they need.
Apart from the people living in "East Ukraine" - Putin would start by demanding that a pro-Russian regime is installed. despite the evidence that isn't what the people who live there want.
It's like demanding the Czechs give up their border fortifications to mollify the street artist.
It would no doubt be a Russia-aligned regime. And contain a mostly Russian speaking population. There's no two ways about that. Whether the general population there would be against it, for me seems tricky to gauge.
I would argue it's not Ukraine giving up its defences - it is Ukraine freeing itself, both by no longer bordering Russia, and by removing its Russian-speaking population, to take the defence steps (NATO, EU, re-arming itself) that it feels it needs.
There many hundreds of thousands of people living there who don't want to be in Russia. They voted against that, repeatedly. They voted, repeatedly, to be part of Ukraine.
Just because they are "Russian speakers" doesn't make them Russian. Zelensky, for example.
It also contains a large chunk of the Ukrainian economy.
The economic viability (of both the rest of Ukraine, and the successor state) is more challenging than the political aspects. But war is a lot more challenging for economic viability.
There was never an election on whether the citizens of Donetsk and Lugansk would like to be part of an independent but Russia-aligned state. I agree that their Russian heritage doesn't automatically equate to Russian loyalties, but I think for the most part they did form the backbone of the pro-Russian parties.
You think wrong.
There were multiple elections in those areas, before Russia started invading (2014 etc). The Join-Russia parties never managed to get a majority in any of border regions. Even the Pro-Russia parties struggled.
The CNN poll carried out just before the invasion found a majority, in the even the parts of the border regions closest to Russia, still wanted to be Ukrainian.
According to your post, I don't think wrong. I never said 'join-Russia parties', I said pro-Russian parties. You've speciously implied something I didn't say to make your argument.
There were (and are) many different political parties in the border region.
One grouping was (and is) "Join Russia" Another is "Don't join Russia but be really friendly with them, promote the Russian language etc etc"
There is some cross over, but they are fairly distant in the most part.
Some people try and use support for the Pro-Russia parties as an excuse for annexation by Russia. This is not what the parties in question wanted!
Indeed: it's like saying that all Liberal Democrats would support a German invasion of Britain, when at least 15% of their supporters would be a little queasy about it.
Ahem. Liberal and Labour were solid on opposing Germany back when the Tories and their media friends wanted to strike a deal (aka, surrender).
Ahem. A minority of the conservative benches wanted to see if a deal could be found. Note that they had constantly backed rearmament - which had been attacked by much of the Labour party.
As Orwell noted, many on the left wanted to oppose the Nazi, with nothing in their hands. In the name of Peace.
That is fundamentally unjust to men and frankly unacceptable
Prevention is better than cure
I should say I have been fortunate not to have had a problem but know many who have
There is a rational argument for that, not sure if I agree with it or whether it is medically correct, but it's basically that it's a slow cancer, treatment can be unpleasant and you'll die of something else first.
Quite. I had a chat with my GP about testing for prostrate cancer and she assured me that if I have it, I'll almost certainly die with it than of it. Quite a relief. I now don't give it a second thought.
Without being alarmist, PC did kill my Dad earlier this year. It may start off a pussy cat, but it will turn into a tiger eventually, as life expectancy has increased, so has the instance of terminal prostate cancer.
Indeed. Everybody with a prostate (I know, I know...) eventually gets prostate cancer, *but* you are far more likely to die of something else first.
That is fundamentally unjust to men and frankly unacceptable
Prevention is better than cure
I should say I have been fortunate not to have had a problem but know many who have
There is a rational argument for that, not sure if I agree with it or whether it is medically correct, but it's basically that it's a slow cancer, treatment can be unpleasant and you'll die of something else first.
Quite. I had a chat with my GP about testing for prostrate cancer and she assured me that if I have it, I'll almost certainly die with it than of it. Quite a relief. I now don't give it a second thought.
Without being alarmist, PC did kill my Dad earlier this year. It may start off a pussy cat, but it will turn into a tiger eventually, as life expectancy has increased, so has the instance of terminal prostate cancer.
Indeed. Everybody with a prostate (I know, I know...) eventually gets prostate cancer, *but* you are far more likely to die of something else first.
That's a vast oversimplification. Not everyone gets (develops) prostate cancer, but a lot of elderly men will have it to some degree.
"Kemi Badenoch says welfare spending is unchristian
Responding to Rachel Reeves’s budget, the Conservative Party leader told the Political Thinking podcast that ‘in early Christian times there was no state or welfare’" (£)
Well that's an absolutely bat-shit crazy argument that she's going to soon regret.
In early Christian times there was slavery, does that make abolishing slavery 'unchristian'?
She didn't actually say that it was "unchristian". She just made what she clearly thought was a clever rhetorical point “(Paul's) first Epistle to Timothy proclaims that: ‘Anyone who does not provide for his own household… is worse than an unbeliever’ ”.
Timothy's first epistle to Paul: "Who gave you my address?"
Paul's second Epistle to Timothy: "And lo, they do come over ere, taking our jobs, and they all have big cars from the Government, it's true, my brother-in-law works for the council, he told me."
Timothy's second Epistle to Paul: "Get. Off. The. Bloody. Internet"
So, according to the Atlantic, Zelenskyy has confirmed that he won't give up land for peace. Putin has confirmed that he cannot do a deal with Ukraine because it does not have a legitimate government. It's all going swimmingly despite the deadline of Thanksgiving having come and gone.
The Europeans need to massively increase their support for Ukraine so it becomes possible to hold their ground and, ideally, even push the Russians back a bit. At the moment Putin thinks he can still grind Ukraine into defeat so he doesn't need a deal. There will not be one until he is disabused of that belief.
I think my idea of Eastern Ukraine as an "independent" buffer state, including all Russia's gains, and some land from Ukraine in the North, to make a long strip along Russia's border, is one of the few solutions that will work.
Russia would have its buffer state. Ukraine would be able to join the EU and NATO. Nobody gets what they want, but everyone gets what they need.
Apart from the people living in "East Ukraine" - Putin would start by demanding that a pro-Russian regime is installed. despite the evidence that isn't what the people who live there want.
It's like demanding the Czechs give up their border fortifications to mollify the street artist.
It would no doubt be a Russia-aligned regime. And contain a mostly Russian speaking population. There's no two ways about that. Whether the general population there would be against it, for me seems tricky to gauge.
I would argue it's not Ukraine giving up its defences - it is Ukraine freeing itself, both by no longer bordering Russia, and by removing its Russian-speaking population, to take the defence steps (NATO, EU, re-arming itself) that it feels it needs.
The Russian-speaking population of Ukraine extend much further west than that, and the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine largely want to stay in Ukraine.
Well they will be fine with it then. They live in Western Ukraine and nobody will be asking them to move East.
And the people who do't want to be controlled by Russia in your "buffer zone"? What about them (the majority) ?
I think you're making assertions that I don't think you can support. The state that these people would be in would be something like Yanukovich's Ukraine. We cannot say that these people would necessarily hate that, when they probably formed part of the voting coalition that voted for him.
There is plenty of evidence in the democratic history of Ukraine as a separate state.
In multiple local, regional and national elections.
You just want the reality to be different. So you can draw tidy lines on a map.
Evidence of what?
Of course a certain proportion of Ukraine's population has been very much against Russian influence for a long time, but others have not - enough (obviously pre-invasion) to elect a pro-Russian Government. I think suggesting otherwise attempts to re-write history.
Given where we are now, I think my suggestion is a good one - certainly this thread hasn't yielded any significant arguments against it.
I think Russia would be more likely to be resistant to it than Ukraine, especially the loony Russian Empire ones. It involves Russia effectively giving up its territorial gains, but still having a huge reconstruction bill. But it's a judgement of Solomon solution - if Putin were serious that he just wants security for Russia with his famous buffer against NATO, he would accept. If he really just wants a greater Russia, he would decline.
"Kemi Badenoch says welfare spending is unchristian
Responding to Rachel Reeves’s budget, the Conservative Party leader told the Political Thinking podcast that ‘in early Christian times there was no state or welfare’" (£)
What does she mean? There was a state, the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire had the alimenta, which supported poor children, so a form of welfare, and the long-running cura annonae, food supplies.
Can it be said that Jesus called for state welfare though? Individal giving and organized giving perhaps. But not the state, as I recall. Also, understandably not much said about democracy.
And yet all Christian countries have both welfare and democracy. So who knows.
JC did however advise paying taxes without arguing, revolting, etc. Whose superscription is on this coin?, and all that.
No, he advised paying the *correct* taxes. If you start rendering to Ceasar what isn't Ceasar's, you're going off piste.
The damage to the the Soyuz pad at Baikonur is confirmed.
This is the only pad the Russians currently have to launch to ISS. This means crew rotations blocked, but more importantly (perhaps) Progress cargo craft can't be sent to the station. The ISS can only be refuelled by Progress. Which means that after a while ISS will run out of fuel for attitude control related matters (It's a bit complicated with gyroscopes and de saturation, but that's the size of it)
To fix the pad, they would need to -
1) build a new service structure under the pad 2) Take a service structure from a mothballed pad 3) Convert/reactivate another pad - would ned to include work for Progress and the Suyuz spacecraft.
1) Will take a long, long time. SpaceX they are not. Years 2) Not been done before. It's a huge piece of equipment - might well need to be cut into sections, moved, rebuilt. 3) Again, will take a long, long time. Experience with Russian space tech and other Russian stuff is that the Russian approach to "moth balling" is "leave it to rust".
So no launches to the space station for months. Possibly years.
Which means a growing problem for the ISS - and a humiliation for Putin, incoming.
Is there a way to refuel ISS from a US or European pad (eg launch Progress from there)?
I am not an expert, but a space station lacking the ability to control altitude sounds… concerning…
Only Progress can refuel the station, via the Russian segment(s).
No current spacecraft from other nations can transfer the fuel in question (hydrazine).
Launching Progress on another rocket would require years of work.
The Soyuz pad in Guiana is at the wrong inclination (location) and is being demolished at the moment.
So if the Russians can't get the pad working, it's either abandon ISS or get SpaceX* to come up with something worryingly fast.
*Some people will get upset by specifying SpaceX. They are the only company that has demonstrated the ability to build space hardware in the timescales required - months.
Isn't the ISS due to be retired and deorbited (albeit in a controlled manner) before long anyway?
I wonder what will then replace it as the single most expensive thing made by man?
HS2?
Saudi Arabia's wall project is supposed to come in at around $500bn, but I would guess it will never be completed.
TSMC's planned 1.4nm chip fab is likely to cost as much as $50bn.
If you consider the web and its attached data centres as a single thing, then you will get up to several trillions.
Maybe in real terms PPP the Great Wall of China? Not that it would be easy to calculate.
Surely it depends on how you categorise something? Is 'London' a single thing?
Fair point but... the Great Wall is surely allowable as a single thing?
Nope - its not just one wall. People have the very wrong idea about it!
Fair enough, it was probably a silly suggestion on my part anyway.
Since you can't see the Great Wall of China from the ISS but you can see the ISS from the Great Wall, perhaps it makes sense that the ISS cost more. Or something.
Can you see your new house from the ISS would be the pertinent question...
I hope not. That would mean the ISS is FAR too low!
One of my regular Youtubers, Bigjobber, who basic theme is to do insurance liability commentaries on dashcam videos as he is or was a claims negotiator, uses "Bungalow" as his Youtube friendly insult.
It's another form of driver education.
As in "this one is a bit of a bungalow". TLDR: Not much upstairs.
So, according to the Atlantic, Zelenskyy has confirmed that he won't give up land for peace. Putin has confirmed that he cannot do a deal with Ukraine because it does not have a legitimate government. It's all going swimmingly despite the deadline of Thanksgiving having come and gone.
The Europeans need to massively increase their support for Ukraine so it becomes possible to hold their ground and, ideally, even push the Russians back a bit. At the moment Putin thinks he can still grind Ukraine into defeat so he doesn't need a deal. There will not be one until he is disabused of that belief.
I think my idea of Eastern Ukraine as an "independent" buffer state, including all Russia's gains, and some land from Ukraine in the North, to make a long strip along Russia's border, is one of the few solutions that will work.
Russia would have its buffer state. Ukraine would be able to join the EU and NATO. Nobody gets what they want, but everyone gets what they need.
Apart from the people living in "East Ukraine" - Putin would start by demanding that a pro-Russian regime is installed. despite the evidence that isn't what the people who live there want.
It's like demanding the Czechs give up their border fortifications to mollify the street artist.
It would no doubt be a Russia-aligned regime. And contain a mostly Russian speaking population. There's no two ways about that. Whether the general population there would be against it, for me seems tricky to gauge.
I would argue it's not Ukraine giving up its defences - it is Ukraine freeing itself, both by no longer bordering Russia, and by removing its Russian-speaking population, to take the defence steps (NATO, EU, re-arming itself) that it feels it needs.
There many hundreds of thousands of people living there who don't want to be in Russia. They voted against that, repeatedly. They voted, repeatedly, to be part of Ukraine.
Just because they are "Russian speakers" doesn't make them Russian. Zelensky, for example.
It also contains a large chunk of the Ukrainian economy.
The economic viability (of both the rest of Ukraine, and the successor state) is more challenging than the political aspects. But war is a lot more challenging for economic viability.
There was never an election on whether the citizens of Donetsk and Lugansk would like to be part of an independent but Russia-aligned state. I agree that their Russian heritage doesn't automatically equate to Russian loyalties, but I think for the most part they did form the backbone of the pro-Russian parties.
You think wrong.
There were multiple elections in those areas, before Russia started invading (2014 etc). The Join-Russia parties never managed to get a majority in any of border regions. Even the Pro-Russia parties struggled.
The CNN poll carried out just before the invasion found a majority, in the even the parts of the border regions closest to Russia, still wanted to be Ukrainian.
According to your post, I don't think wrong. I never said 'join-Russia parties', I said pro-Russian parties. You've speciously implied something I didn't say to make your argument.
There were (and are) many different political parties in the border region.
One grouping was (and is) "Join Russia" Another is "Don't join Russia but be really friendly with them, promote the Russian language etc etc"
There is some cross over, but they are fairly distant in the most part.
Some people try and use support for the Pro-Russia parties as an excuse for annexation by Russia. This is not what the parties in question wanted!
Indeed: it's like saying that all Liberal Democrats would support a German invasion of Britain, when at least 15% of their supporters would be a little queasy about it.
Ahem. Liberal and Labour were solid on opposing Germany back when the Tories and their media friends wanted to strike a deal (aka, surrender).
They were a generation of politicians who wanted to avoid war having experienced it directly.
"Kemi Badenoch says welfare spending is unchristian
Responding to Rachel Reeves’s budget, the Conservative Party leader told the Political Thinking podcast that ‘in early Christian times there was no state or welfare’" (£)
Well that's an absolutely bat-shit crazy argument that she's going to soon regret.
In early Christian times there was slavery, does that make abolishing slavery 'unchristian'?
She didn't actually say that it was "unchristian". She just made what she clearly thought was a clever rhetorical point “(Paul's) first Epistle to Timothy proclaims that: ‘Anyone who does not provide for his own household… is worse than an unbeliever’ ”.
I need to go and listen to the interview, in case I have reacted to a summary, and traduced Kemi !
That is fundamentally unjust to men and frankly unacceptable
Prevention is better than cure
I should say I have been fortunate not to have had a problem but know many who have
Some of the screening programmes have issues - you take screening that has an apparently good characteristis (for technical, high AUROC - or high true positive rate, low false positive rate) but if you apply it to rare conditions (as most are, really) then you get a lot of false positives for the true positives. The false positives lead to investigations which can themselves have negative outcomes and the cost can mount up too. Even breast cancer screening is not slam dunk:
Adjacently, my job is now in developing infrastructure that is partly to support use of genetic screening as a first step, so you target screening to those who are higher risk to start with, which greatly increases the effectiveness of screening. That's the idea, anyway - there are clearly issues with then not screening some groups and the harm/benefit balance there. But mostly it will be about supporting currently not done screening to happen for higher risk people.
The NHS is running multiple large scale trials. There's the one to genetically sample 100k newborns, and follow them long term; the 1million plus "Our Future Health" volunteers who gave blood samples for a similar purpose; the 100k plus Galleri trial for cancer screening... and specifically for prostate cancer, this one:
First men invited to take part in TRANSFORM screening trial - the most ambitious prostate cancer trial in decades https://www.imperial.nhs.uk/about-us/news/transform-trial-launches-nov-25 20 Nov 2025 Today, the first men will begin receiving letters from their GPs to join the ambitious £42 million TRANSFORM screening trial - the biggest prostate cancer screening study in a generation.
Led by researchers at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and Imperial College London alongside co-investigators at UCL, Queen Mary University of London and the Institute of Cancer Research, the landmark trial aims to find a way to make diagnosis earlier, safer, and more effective.
Up to 300,000 men will be recruited to the trial, which will work out the best way to diagnose prostate cancer. It will test the most promising screening techniques available, including PSA blood tests, genetic spit tests and fast MRI scans, combined in ways that have never been tested before in a large-scale screening trial.
Our Trust is the first site to open, with patients from north west London being the first to be invited to participate. We are one of only a few centres who offer the full breadth of treatment options for men, ranging from active surveillance through to focal therapy using the latest state of the art technologies, as well as robotic prostatectomy and radiotherapy. This ensures that the right treatment is given for the right patient at the right time - something that is critical for screening to be successful.
More sites will open soon across the UK.
The trial will be delivered in partnership with the NHS through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), which has committed £16 million. The charity Prostate Cancer UK has committed £26 million to the trial..
Our Future Health is up to about 2.5 million now (signed up - only about 600k with the genetics work done so far, I think).
As with any of these things, what we call a single name can have many different types, causes and prognoses. I learned this week that there are a few different mechanisms underlying 'glaucoma', and the treatments for each could be different.
Kemi Badenoch now favourite to be Conservative Leader at next GE.
Kemi 2.5 / 3.5 Jenrick 3.2 / 3.65
Illiquid market - big gaps between Back and Lay.
This is a big change of sentiment in a short time even though not that much of substance has happened. It's instructive, I think, when considering statements such as "Labour have already lost the next election". There are good betting opportunities imo in opposing these type of currents. Sell the flow, buy the ebb.
So, according to the Atlantic, Zelenskyy has confirmed that he won't give up land for peace. Putin has confirmed that he cannot do a deal with Ukraine because it does not have a legitimate government. It's all going swimmingly despite the deadline of Thanksgiving having come and gone.
The Europeans need to massively increase their support for Ukraine so it becomes possible to hold their ground and, ideally, even push the Russians back a bit. At the moment Putin thinks he can still grind Ukraine into defeat so he doesn't need a deal. There will not be one until he is disabused of that belief.
I think my idea of Eastern Ukraine as an "independent" buffer state, including all Russia's gains, and some land from Ukraine in the North, to make a long strip along Russia's border, is one of the few solutions that will work.
Russia would have its buffer state. Ukraine would be able to join the EU and NATO. Nobody gets what they want, but everyone gets what they need.
Apart from the people living in "East Ukraine" - Putin would start by demanding that a pro-Russian regime is installed. despite the evidence that isn't what the people who live there want.
It's like demanding the Czechs give up their border fortifications to mollify the street artist.
It would no doubt be a Russia-aligned regime. And contain a mostly Russian speaking population. There's no two ways about that. Whether the general population there would be against it, for me seems tricky to gauge.
I would argue it's not Ukraine giving up its defences - it is Ukraine freeing itself, both by no longer bordering Russia, and by removing its Russian-speaking population, to take the defence steps (NATO, EU, re-arming itself) that it feels it needs.
The Russian-speaking population of Ukraine extend much further west than that, and the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine largely want to stay in Ukraine.
Well they will be fine with it then. They live in Western Ukraine and nobody will be asking them to move East.
And the people who do't want to be controlled by Russia in your "buffer zone"? What about them (the majority) ?
I think you're making assertions that I don't think you can support. The state that these people would be in would be something like Yanukovich's Ukraine. We cannot say that these people would necessarily hate that, when they probably formed part of the voting coalition that voted for him.
There is plenty of evidence in the democratic history of Ukraine as a separate state.
In multiple local, regional and national elections.
You just want the reality to be different. So you can draw tidy lines on a map.
Evidence of what?
Of course a certain proportion of Ukraine's population has been very much against Russian influence for a long time, but others have not - enough (obviously pre-invasion) to elect a pro-Russian Government. I think suggesting otherwise attempts to re-write history.
Given where we are now, I think my suggestion is a good one - certainly this thread hasn't yielded any significant arguments against it.
I think Russia would be more likely to be resistant to it than Ukraine, especially the loony Russian Empire ones. It involves Russia effectively giving up its territorial gains, but still having a huge reconstruction bill. But it's a judgement of Solomon solution - if Putin were serious that he just wants security for Russia with his famous buffer against NATO, he would accept. If he really just wants a greater Russia, he would decline.
You realise you have just ignored the facts again? The people of the areas in question voted multiple times *against* the "Join Russia" parties.
And you want to bundle them up in a "buffer state" to be run by Russia....
So, according to the Atlantic, Zelenskyy has confirmed that he won't give up land for peace. Putin has confirmed that he cannot do a deal with Ukraine because it does not have a legitimate government. It's all going swimmingly despite the deadline of Thanksgiving having come and gone.
The Europeans need to massively increase their support for Ukraine so it becomes possible to hold their ground and, ideally, even push the Russians back a bit. At the moment Putin thinks he can still grind Ukraine into defeat so he doesn't need a deal. There will not be one until he is disabused of that belief.
I think my idea of Eastern Ukraine as an "independent" buffer state, including all Russia's gains, and some land from Ukraine in the North, to make a long strip along Russia's border, is one of the few solutions that will work.
Russia would have its buffer state. Ukraine would be able to join the EU and NATO. Nobody gets what they want, but everyone gets what they need.
Apart from the people living in "East Ukraine" - Putin would start by demanding that a pro-Russian regime is installed. despite the evidence that isn't what the people who live there want.
It's like demanding the Czechs give up their border fortifications to mollify the street artist.
It would no doubt be a Russia-aligned regime. And contain a mostly Russian speaking population. There's no two ways about that. Whether the general population there would be against it, for me seems tricky to gauge.
I would argue it's not Ukraine giving up its defences - it is Ukraine freeing itself, both by no longer bordering Russia, and by removing its Russian-speaking population, to take the defence steps (NATO, EU, re-arming itself) that it feels it needs.
The Russian-speaking population of Ukraine extend much further west than that, and the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine largely want to stay in Ukraine.
Well they will be fine with it then. They live in Western Ukraine and nobody will be asking them to move East.
And the people who do't want to be controlled by Russia in your "buffer zone"? What about them (the majority) ?
I think you're making assertions that I don't think you can support. The state that these people would be in would be something like Yanukovich's Ukraine. We cannot say that these people would necessarily hate that, when they probably formed part of the voting coalition that voted for him.
There is plenty of evidence in the democratic history of Ukraine as a separate state.
In multiple local, regional and national elections.
You just want the reality to be different. So you can draw tidy lines on a map.
Evidence of what?
Of course a certain proportion of Ukraine's population has been very much against Russian influence for a long time, but others have not - enough (obviously pre-invasion) to elect a pro-Russian Government. I think suggesting otherwise attempts to re-write history.
Given where we are now, I think my suggestion is a good one - certainly this thread hasn't yielded any significant arguments against it.
I think Russia would be more likely to be resistant to it than Ukraine, especially the loony Russian Empire ones. It involves Russia effectively giving up its territorial gains, but still having a huge reconstruction bill. But it's a judgement of Solomon solution - if Putin were serious that he just wants security for Russia with his famous buffer against NATO, he would accept. If he really just wants a greater Russia, he would decline.
Presumably the 1991 referendum on Ukrainians independence is irrelevant, because... because....
Kemi Badenoch now favourite to be Conservative Leader at next GE.
Kemi 2.5 / 3.5 Jenrick 3.2 / 3.65
Illiquid market - big gaps between Back and Lay.
This is a big change of sentiment in a short time even though not that much of substance has happened. It's instructive, I think, when considering statements such as "Labour have already lost the next election". There are good betting opportunities imo in opposing these type of currents. Sell the flow, buy the ebb.
"Most of the time, things don't happen" has been my basic betting strategy for quite some time.
(Or at least, markets over-estimate the likelihood of things happening)
So, according to the Atlantic, Zelenskyy has confirmed that he won't give up land for peace. Putin has confirmed that he cannot do a deal with Ukraine because it does not have a legitimate government. It's all going swimmingly despite the deadline of Thanksgiving having come and gone.
The Europeans need to massively increase their support for Ukraine so it becomes possible to hold their ground and, ideally, even push the Russians back a bit. At the moment Putin thinks he can still grind Ukraine into defeat so he doesn't need a deal. There will not be one until he is disabused of that belief.
I think my idea of Eastern Ukraine as an "independent" buffer state, including all Russia's gains, and some land from Ukraine in the North, to make a long strip along Russia's border, is one of the few solutions that will work.
Russia would have its buffer state. Ukraine would be able to join the EU and NATO. Nobody gets what they want, but everyone gets what they need.
Apart from the people living in "East Ukraine" - Putin would start by demanding that a pro-Russian regime is installed. despite the evidence that isn't what the people who live there want.
It's like demanding the Czechs give up their border fortifications to mollify the street artist.
It would no doubt be a Russia-aligned regime. And contain a mostly Russian speaking population. There's no two ways about that. Whether the general population there would be against it, for me seems tricky to gauge.
I would argue it's not Ukraine giving up its defences - it is Ukraine freeing itself, both by no longer bordering Russia, and by removing its Russian-speaking population, to take the defence steps (NATO, EU, re-arming itself) that it feels it needs.
The Russian-speaking population of Ukraine extend much further west than that, and the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine largely want to stay in Ukraine.
Well they will be fine with it then. They live in Western Ukraine and nobody will be asking them to move East.
And the people who do't want to be controlled by Russia in your "buffer zone"? What about them (the majority) ?
I think you're making assertions that I don't think you can support. The state that these people would be in would be something like Yanukovich's Ukraine. We cannot say that these people would necessarily hate that, when they probably formed part of the voting coalition that voted for him.
There is plenty of evidence in the democratic history of Ukraine as a separate state.
In multiple local, regional and national elections.
You just want the reality to be different. So you can draw tidy lines on a map support the Russian dictator.
Why is @Luckyguy1983 so pro Russian tyranny? I can only assume he likes the reactionary social policy that Putin is pursuing.
That is fundamentally unjust to men and frankly unacceptable
Prevention is better than cure
I should say I have been fortunate not to have had a problem but know many who have
There is a rational argument for that, not sure if I agree with it or whether it is medically correct, but it's basically that it's a slow cancer, treatment can be unpleasant and you'll die of something else first.
Quite. I had a chat with my GP about testing for prostrate cancer and she assured me that if I have it, I'll almost certainly die with it than of it. Quite a relief. I now don't give it a second thought.
Without being alarmist, PC did kill my Dad earlier this year. It may start off a pussy cat, but it will turn into a tiger eventually, as life expectancy has increased, so has the instance of terminal prostate cancer.
Indeed. Everybody with a prostate (I know, I know...) eventually gets prostate cancer, *but* you are far more likely to die of something else first.
That's a vast oversimplification. Not everyone gets (develops) prostate cancer, but a lot of elderly men will have it to some degree.
Well, no, it's more complicated than that. If you take an 80-year old man who has died of some other cause and has not been diagnosed with cancer, and you do an autopsy, remove his prostate and very carefully slice it up, you will probably find some cancerous cells. (Please get permission before doing this.) That's what is meant by every man eventually gets prostate cancer. What we now know, but didn't when I was born, is how long small numbers of cancerous cells can be growing very slowly in the body, long before they cause any symptoms, and how common that is in the elderly body.
The damage to the the Soyuz pad at Baikonur is confirmed.
This is the only pad the Russians currently have to launch to ISS. This means crew rotations blocked, but more importantly (perhaps) Progress cargo craft can't be sent to the station. The ISS can only be refuelled by Progress. Which means that after a while ISS will run out of fuel for attitude control related matters (It's a bit complicated with gyroscopes and de saturation, but that's the size of it)
To fix the pad, they would need to -
1) build a new service structure under the pad 2) Take a service structure from a mothballed pad 3) Convert/reactivate another pad - would ned to include work for Progress and the Suyuz spacecraft.
1) Will take a long, long time. SpaceX they are not. Years 2) Not been done before. It's a huge piece of equipment - might well need to be cut into sections, moved, rebuilt. 3) Again, will take a long, long time. Experience with Russian space tech and other Russian stuff is that the Russian approach to "moth balling" is "leave it to rust".
So no launches to the space station for months. Possibly years.
Which means a growing problem for the ISS - and a humiliation for Putin, incoming.
Is there a way to refuel ISS from a US or European pad (eg launch Progress from there)?
I am not an expert, but a space station lacking the ability to control altitude sounds… concerning…
Only Progress can refuel the station, via the Russian segment(s).
No current spacecraft from other nations can transfer the fuel in question (hydrazine).
Launching Progress on another rocket would require years of work.
The Soyuz pad in Guiana is at the wrong inclination (location) and is being demolished at the moment.
So if the Russians can't get the pad working, it's either abandon ISS or get SpaceX* to come up with something worryingly fast.
*Some people will get upset by specifying SpaceX. They are the only company that has demonstrated the ability to build space hardware in the timescales required - months.
Isn't the ISS due to be retired and deorbited (albeit in a controlled manner) before long anyway?
I wonder what will then replace it as the single most expensive thing made by man?
HS2?
Saudi Arabia's wall project is supposed to come in at around $500bn, but I would guess it will never be completed.
TSMC's planned 1.4nm chip fab is likely to cost as much as $50bn.
If you consider the web and its attached data centres as a single thing, then you will get up to several trillions.
Maybe in real terms PPP the Great Wall of China? Not that it would be easy to calculate.
Surely it depends on how you categorise something? Is 'London' a single thing?
Fair point but... the Great Wall is surely allowable as a single thing?
Nope - its not just one wall. People have the very wrong idea about it!
Fair enough, it was probably a silly suggestion on my part anyway.
Since you can't see the Great Wall of China from the ISS but you can see the ISS from the Great Wall, perhaps it makes sense that the ISS cost more. Or something.
Can you see your new house from the ISS would be the pertinent question...
I hope not. That would mean the ISS is FAR too low!
One of my regular Youtubers, Bigjobber, who basic theme is to do insurance liability commentaries on dashcam videos as he is or was a claims negotiator, uses "Bungalow" as his Youtube friendly insult.
It's another form of driver education.
As in "this one is a bit of a bungalow". TLDR: Not much upstairs.
As in Bungalow Bill, one of Joan Collins old flames.
So, according to the Atlantic, Zelenskyy has confirmed that he won't give up land for peace. Putin has confirmed that he cannot do a deal with Ukraine because it does not have a legitimate government. It's all going swimmingly despite the deadline of Thanksgiving having come and gone.
The Europeans need to massively increase their support for Ukraine so it becomes possible to hold their ground and, ideally, even push the Russians back a bit. At the moment Putin thinks he can still grind Ukraine into defeat so he doesn't need a deal. There will not be one until he is disabused of that belief.
I think my idea of Eastern Ukraine as an "independent" buffer state, including all Russia's gains, and some land from Ukraine in the North, to make a long strip along Russia's border, is one of the few solutions that will work.
Russia would have its buffer state. Ukraine would be able to join the EU and NATO. Nobody gets what they want, but everyone gets what they need.
Apart from the people living in "East Ukraine" - Putin would start by demanding that a pro-Russian regime is installed. despite the evidence that isn't what the people who live there want.
It's like demanding the Czechs give up their border fortifications to mollify the street artist.
It would no doubt be a Russia-aligned regime. And contain a mostly Russian speaking population. There's no two ways about that. Whether the general population there would be against it, for me seems tricky to gauge.
I would argue it's not Ukraine giving up its defences - it is Ukraine freeing itself, both by no longer bordering Russia, and by removing its Russian-speaking population, to take the defence steps (NATO, EU, re-arming itself) that it feels it needs.
IIUC, the four oblasts that Putin lays claim to - Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and_Zaporizhzhia - arent going to be buffer state(s), in Russian legal theory they're incorporated into the Russian Federation and are now simply part of Russia. I assume people are referring to a putative buffer zone along the new border on the Ukranian side, like North and South Korea, and with a similarly large number of mines.
Out this morning - the Guardian on the latest YP chaos:
‘We had six MPs and four factions’: inside Your Party’s toxic power struggles
At an early meeting to set the path for what would become Your Party, participants quickly agreed on one thing: given the cliches about leftwingers forever falling out, at all costs they must avoid a descent into factionalism.
Six months on and the Liverpool venue hosting this weekend’s inaugural Your Party conference has been warned to expect potential disruption, including stage invasions by disgruntled members representing particular wings. Extra security guards have been hired.
Even by the standards of fringe parties (see also, all those Re- parties on the right), Your Party is shaping up to be a corker of a fiasco. Any theories as to why it's so bad?
(Mine, apart from hating SKS not being a solid foundation for any party, is that tech makes it too easy to arrange the surface features of a movement when there's nothing underneath.)
I suspect it is some combination of divisions over small policy differences that often fixate the far left, the fundamental contradiction between a socially progressive party and a muslim party (note the reference in the article to trans issues already being a flashpoint), and the characters of Corbyn and Sultana being diametrically opposite personalities in almost every respect?
As a brand new outfit, there is 'everything to fight for' in terms of both its platform and who gets what job and hence where the organisational power lies. And it isn't being formed because of a strong, single imperative (for example the SDP originated from counter-reaction to Labour's opposition to Europe), so they don't have much to unite around other than Gaza.
The headline contradicts the more nuanced article. The sober reality is that there's a gap on the left which Your Party may or may not fill. Labour has quite deliberately moved to the centre (arguably centre-right), the LibDems still can't decide on a firm direction, and the Greens have opted to go left but are mainly known as an environmental movement. There is considerable support for a left-wing party, ideally with a working relationship with the Greens, and Your Party can potentially harvest that if they manage to avoid further splits, have a reasonable conference and build a lasting leadership. Corbyn's speech on Wednesday included the useful insight that British politics traditionally mloves in a narrow spectrum of "acceptable" policies, disguised by cod drama of five-yearly showdowns, and anything seriously left-wing runs into credibility issues magnified by the very limited press. One difficulty that they have is the way media works in Britain - the concept of a party with anonymous collective leadership is completely alien to British media tradition, so they fall back on occasionally giving Zarah an airing as the youngest recognisable semi-leader - contrast with the success of Reform, who seem willing to have Farage make up policy and reverse it at will.
People like me who think Labour has moved too far to the right but aren't very interested in ecology have a choice - do we try to help move Labour leftwards again, give Your Party a try, have a go with the Greens, or do nothing and hope that a way forward becomes obvious. The weekend may cast some light. I wouldn't rely on the media to give the answer, but Your Party badly needs an identifiable leadership.
For me the idea of the left and a shift leftwards (leaving aside environmentalism and climate for a moment) raises interesting alternatives about what it is, how it goes about things, and what it is for.
My start point is this: from 1945 to today the dominant and only forms of government have been versions of incrementally improving (and sometimes standing still and sometimes going a little backwards) social democracy. This is both a narrow window, but also built into 80 years (arguably much longer) of the political order in the UK.
If the Corbyn style left exists as a nice club or a secular non conformist society to be in and argue about, plus some single issue campaigning, that's fine. But if it plans to govern it has to be clear where it stands in relation to who owns what, and the UK and global capitalist order, and our sets of historic alliances.
The left, from a starting point of 8 year olds hauling trucks down mines in 1840, makes perfect sense. The left, after 80 years of quite successful social democracy, less so unless it can explain itself in relation to theory, policy and actual implementation comprehensible to a reader of the Daily Mirror or Mail. Is it able to do so?
Yes, very fair comment. But I'd argue that Sweden, with its high-tax high-welfare model, offers a successful alternative to our current cringe in the face of tiny increases in tax.
In general, parties campaigning on the basis that they might shortly be expected to share power are thin on the ground. Labour and the Tories and Nationalists, sure. LibDems not sure. Greens and Reform no. A new party has a slim potential to become a contender for power-sharing - one of the more substantial criticisms of Farage's "this week's policy is..." approach is that he's not taken that on board at all.
Sweden, I suggest, is a good example of a social democracy, not of a left alternative. We should be more like it. My contention is that all UK governments since 1945 have been social democrat ones, varying only in emphasis, degree of competence, rhetoric, and the situation with which they happened to be faced. The challenge is how any left (not only left but any other) world view is going to set out a programme for government, and actually govern.
As a practical example it is obvious that if Reform get to govern, they will govern as social democrats (high spend, high tax, welfare state, NHS, regulated capitalism) + populist nationalists. I think it will be a disaster, but it will be social democrat disaster.
So I would still like to know what a left, non centrist non social democratic, programme for government could plausibly look like set out in a way comprehensible to a trade union member, or reader of the Mirror or Mail.
Things argued for by the left (and by liberals), like state-supported healthcare, have become part of a post-war consensus, but it seems simplistic to then cast every post-war government as being more or less the same. There are very real differences between the polices of Wilson, Thatcher, Blair and Truss.
The Overton window has shifted and your presumption that Reform UK will stay within the Overton window of 1945-2019 is untested and possibly optimistic.
I am only asserting that they are all the same in respect of being social democrat - welfare state, NHS, big state, regulated capitalism, NATO, rule of law, incremental progress etc as a basic frame. These are big samenesses. Yes they vary in emphasis, degree and proportion. That my theory of Reform in government is untested is constrained by the one directional nature of time.
The western social democrat practice is under stress, of course. A clear alternative has yet to emerge, even in the most primeval form.
The differences you mention - Wilson, Thatcher, Blair, Truss are all well within the constraints of social democracy as described. If I am being simplistic, I am happy for detailed correction to put me right.
I think the situation in the War on Ukraine is becoming more amenable to a "just poison Putin" strategy, as the reason for continuing tips more towards his personal preservation rather than any justifiable "for Russia" reasons.
"Kemi Badenoch says welfare spending is unchristian
Responding to Rachel Reeves’s budget, the Conservative Party leader told the Political Thinking podcast that ‘in early Christian times there was no state or welfare’" (£)
Well that's an absolutely bat-shit crazy argument that she's going to soon regret.
In early Christian times there was slavery, does that make abolishing slavery 'unchristian'?
She didn't actually say that it was "unchristian". She just made what she clearly thought was a clever rhetorical point “(Paul's) first Epistle to Timothy proclaims that: ‘Anyone who does not provide for his own household… is worse than an unbeliever’ ”.
Also from I Timothy:
'I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence'
The damage to the the Soyuz pad at Baikonur is confirmed.
This is the only pad the Russians currently have to launch to ISS. This means crew rotations blocked, but more importantly (perhaps) Progress cargo craft can't be sent to the station. The ISS can only be refuelled by Progress. Which means that after a while ISS will run out of fuel for attitude control related matters (It's a bit complicated with gyroscopes and de saturation, but that's the size of it)
To fix the pad, they would need to -
1) build a new service structure under the pad 2) Take a service structure from a mothballed pad 3) Convert/reactivate another pad - would ned to include work for Progress and the Suyuz spacecraft.
1) Will take a long, long time. SpaceX they are not. Years 2) Not been done before. It's a huge piece of equipment - might well need to be cut into sections, moved, rebuilt. 3) Again, will take a long, long time. Experience with Russian space tech and other Russian stuff is that the Russian approach to "moth balling" is "leave it to rust".
So no launches to the space station for months. Possibly years.
Which means a growing problem for the ISS - and a humiliation for Putin, incoming.
Is there a way to refuel ISS from a US or European pad (eg launch Progress from there)?
I am not an expert, but a space station lacking the ability to control altitude sounds… concerning…
Only Progress can refuel the station, via the Russian segment(s).
No current spacecraft from other nations can transfer the fuel in question (hydrazine).
Launching Progress on another rocket would require years of work.
The Soyuz pad in Guiana is at the wrong inclination (location) and is being demolished at the moment.
So if the Russians can't get the pad working, it's either abandon ISS or get SpaceX* to come up with something worryingly fast.
*Some people will get upset by specifying SpaceX. They are the only company that has demonstrated the ability to build space hardware in the timescales required - months.
Isn't the ISS due to be retired and deorbited (albeit in a controlled manner) before long anyway?
I wonder what will then replace it as the single most expensive thing made by man?
HS2?
Saudi Arabia's wall project is supposed to come in at around $500bn, but I would guess it will never be completed.
TSMC's planned 1.4nm chip fab is likely to cost as much as $50bn.
If you consider the web and its attached data centres as a single thing, then you will get up to several trillions.
Maybe in real terms PPP the Great Wall of China? Not that it would be easy to calculate.
Surely it depends on how you categorise something? Is 'London' a single thing?
Fair point but... the Great Wall is surely allowable as a single thing?
Nope - its not just one wall. People have the very wrong idea about it!
Fair enough, it was probably a silly suggestion on my part anyway.
Since you can't see the Great Wall of China from the ISS but you can see the ISS from the Great Wall, perhaps it makes sense that the ISS cost more. Or something.
Can you see your new house from the ISS would be the pertinent question...
I hope not. That would mean the ISS is FAR too low!
One of my regular Youtubers, Bigjobber, who basic theme is to do insurance liability commentaries on dashcam videos as he is or was a claims negotiator, uses "Bungalow" as his Youtube friendly insult.
It's another form of driver education.
As in "this one is a bit of a bungalow". TLDR: Not much upstairs.
Ours is not a bungalow; it's a single-storey dwelling. ;-)
So, according to the Atlantic, Zelenskyy has confirmed that he won't give up land for peace. Putin has confirmed that he cannot do a deal with Ukraine because it does not have a legitimate government. It's all going swimmingly despite the deadline of Thanksgiving having come and gone.
The Europeans need to massively increase their support for Ukraine so it becomes possible to hold their ground and, ideally, even push the Russians back a bit. At the moment Putin thinks he can still grind Ukraine into defeat so he doesn't need a deal. There will not be one until he is disabused of that belief.
I think my idea of Eastern Ukraine as an "independent" buffer state, including all Russia's gains, and some land from Ukraine in the North, to make a long strip along Russia's border, is one of the few solutions that will work.
Russia would have its buffer state. Ukraine would be able to join the EU and NATO. Nobody gets what they want, but everyone gets what they need.
Apart from the people living in "East Ukraine" - Putin would start by demanding that a pro-Russian regime is installed. despite the evidence that isn't what the people who live there want.
It's like demanding the Czechs give up their border fortifications to mollify the street artist.
It would no doubt be a Russia-aligned regime. And contain a mostly Russian speaking population. There's no two ways about that. Whether the general population there would be against it, for me seems tricky to gauge.
I would argue it's not Ukraine giving up its defences - it is Ukraine freeing itself, both by no longer bordering Russia, and by removing its Russian-speaking population, to take the defence steps (NATO, EU, re-arming itself) that it feels it needs.
The Russian-speaking population of Ukraine extend much further west than that, and the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine largely want to stay in Ukraine.
Well they will be fine with it then. They live in Western Ukraine and nobody will be asking them to move East.
And the people who do't want to be controlled by Russia in your "buffer zone"? What about them (the majority) ?
I think you're making assertions that I don't think you can support. The state that these people would be in would be something like Yanukovich's Ukraine. We cannot say that these people would necessarily hate that, when they probably formed part of the voting coalition that voted for him.
There is plenty of evidence in the democratic history of Ukraine as a separate state.
In multiple local, regional and national elections.
You just want the reality to be different. So you can draw tidy lines on a map.
Evidence of what?
Of course a certain proportion of Ukraine's population has been very much against Russian influence for a long time, but others have not - enough (obviously pre-invasion) to elect a pro-Russian Government. I think suggesting otherwise attempts to re-write history.
Given where we are now, I think my suggestion is a good one - certainly this thread hasn't yielded any significant arguments against it.
I think Russia would be more likely to be resistant to it than Ukraine, especially the loony Russian Empire ones. It involves Russia effectively giving up its territorial gains, but still having a huge reconstruction bill. But it's a judgement of Solomon solution - if Putin were serious that he just wants security for Russia with his famous buffer against NATO, he would accept. If he really just wants a greater Russia, he would decline.
The most significant argument against it, of course, is that we should oppose the use of force to change borders, which has been the largely dominant post-WWII international order (until Trump came along).
I think the situation in the War on Ukraine is becoming more amenable to a "just poison Putin" strategy, as the reason for continuing tips more towards his personal preservation rather than any justifiable "for Russia" reasons.
"Kemi Badenoch says welfare spending is unchristian
Responding to Rachel Reeves’s budget, the Conservative Party leader told the Political Thinking podcast that ‘in early Christian times there was no state or welfare’" (£)
Well that's an absolutely bat-shit crazy argument that she's going to soon regret.
In early Christian times there was slavery, does that make abolishing slavery 'unchristian'?
She didn't actually say that it was "unchristian". She just made what she clearly thought was a clever rhetorical point “(Paul's) first Epistle to Timothy proclaims that: ‘Anyone who does not provide for his own household… is worse than an unbeliever’ ”.
Also from I Timothy:
'I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence'
I can't 'like' that one but it is mildly amusing in the context of Badenoch's alleged comments.
That is fundamentally unjust to men and frankly unacceptable
Prevention is better than cure
I should say I have been fortunate not to have had a problem but know many who have
There is a rational argument for that, not sure if I agree with it or whether it is medically correct, but it's basically that it's a slow cancer, treatment can be unpleasant and you'll die of something else first.
Quite. I had a chat with my GP about testing for prostrate cancer and she assured me that if I have it, I'll almost certainly die with it than of it. Quite a relief. I now don't give it a second thought.
Without being alarmist, PC did kill my Dad earlier this year. It may start off a pussy cat, but it will turn into a tiger eventually, as life expectancy has increased, so has the instance of terminal prostate cancer.
Indeed. Everybody with a prostate (I know, I know...) eventually gets prostate cancer, *but* you are far more likely to die of something else first.
That's a vast oversimplification. Not everyone gets (develops) prostate cancer, but a lot of elderly men will have it to some degree.
Well, no, it's more complicated than that. If you take an 80-year old man who has died of some other cause and has not been diagnosed with cancer, and you do an autopsy, remove his prostate and very carefully slice it up, you will probably find some cancerous cells. (Please get permission before doing this.) That's what is meant by every man eventually gets prostate cancer. What we now know, but didn't when I was born, is how long small numbers of cancerous cells can be growing very slowly in the body, long before they cause any symptoms, and how common that is in the elderly body.
I think that depends on whether you include benign prostatic hyperplasia as cancer? I guess we might be arguing about different things, to some extent.
"Kemi Badenoch says welfare spending is unchristian
Responding to Rachel Reeves’s budget, the Conservative Party leader told the Political Thinking podcast that ‘in early Christian times there was no state or welfare’" (£)
The damage to the the Soyuz pad at Baikonur is confirmed.
This is the only pad the Russians currently have to launch to ISS. This means crew rotations blocked, but more importantly (perhaps) Progress cargo craft can't be sent to the station. The ISS can only be refuelled by Progress. Which means that after a while ISS will run out of fuel for attitude control related matters (It's a bit complicated with gyroscopes and de saturation, but that's the size of it)
To fix the pad, they would need to -
1) build a new service structure under the pad 2) Take a service structure from a mothballed pad 3) Convert/reactivate another pad - would ned to include work for Progress and the Suyuz spacecraft.
1) Will take a long, long time. SpaceX they are not. Years 2) Not been done before. It's a huge piece of equipment - might well need to be cut into sections, moved, rebuilt. 3) Again, will take a long, long time. Experience with Russian space tech and other Russian stuff is that the Russian approach to "moth balling" is "leave it to rust".
So no launches to the space station for months. Possibly years.
Which means a growing problem for the ISS - and a humiliation for Putin, incoming.
Is there a way to refuel ISS from a US or European pad (eg launch Progress from there)?
I am not an expert, but a space station lacking the ability to control altitude sounds… concerning…
Only Progress can refuel the station, via the Russian segment(s).
No current spacecraft from other nations can transfer the fuel in question (hydrazine).
Launching Progress on another rocket would require years of work.
The Soyuz pad in Guiana is at the wrong inclination (location) and is being demolished at the moment.
So if the Russians can't get the pad working, it's either abandon ISS or get SpaceX* to come up with something worryingly fast.
*Some people will get upset by specifying SpaceX. They are the only company that has demonstrated the ability to build space hardware in the timescales required - months.
Isn't the ISS due to be retired and deorbited (albeit in a controlled manner) before long anyway?
I wonder what will then replace it as the single most expensive thing made by man?
HS2?
Saudi Arabia's wall project is supposed to come in at around $500bn, but I would guess it will never be completed.
TSMC's planned 1.4nm chip fab is likely to cost as much as $50bn.
If you consider the web and its attached data centres as a single thing, then you will get up to several trillions.
Maybe in real terms PPP the Great Wall of China? Not that it would be easy to calculate.
Surely it depends on how you categorise something? Is 'London' a single thing?
Fair point but... the Great Wall is surely allowable as a single thing?
Nope - its not just one wall. People have the very wrong idea about it!
Fair enough, it was probably a silly suggestion on my part anyway.
Since you can't see the Great Wall of China from the ISS but you can see the ISS from the Great Wall, perhaps it makes sense that the ISS cost more. Or something.
Can you see your new house from the ISS would be the pertinent question...
I hope not. That would mean the ISS is FAR too low!
One of my regular Youtubers, Bigjobber, who basic theme is to do insurance liability commentaries on dashcam videos as he is or was a claims negotiator, uses "Bungalow" as his Youtube friendly insult.
It's another form of driver education.
As in "this one is a bit of a bungalow". TLDR: Not much upstairs.
Ours is not a bungalow; it's a single-storey dwelling. ;-)
Judging by the slope of your roofs, I hope there could be some mezzanine storage, or possibly sleeping galleries for visitors, up there. Classically they would go above a bathroom or utility room, which can cope with lower ceilings.
At Turn End Peter Aldington made a beautiful balanced access ladder using a mechanism similar to a traditional sash window.
There are a number of examples over at Buildhub, including one at Graven Hill.
Out this morning - the Guardian on the latest YP chaos:
‘We had six MPs and four factions’: inside Your Party’s toxic power struggles
At an early meeting to set the path for what would become Your Party, participants quickly agreed on one thing: given the cliches about leftwingers forever falling out, at all costs they must avoid a descent into factionalism.
Six months on and the Liverpool venue hosting this weekend’s inaugural Your Party conference has been warned to expect potential disruption, including stage invasions by disgruntled members representing particular wings. Extra security guards have been hired.
Even by the standards of fringe parties (see also, all those Re- parties on the right), Your Party is shaping up to be a corker of a fiasco. Any theories as to why it's so bad?
(Mine, apart from hating SKS not being a solid foundation for any party, is that tech makes it too easy to arrange the surface features of a movement when there's nothing underneath.)
I suspect it is some combination of divisions over small policy differences that often fixate the far left, the fundamental contradiction between a socially progressive party and a muslim party (note the reference in the article to trans issues already being a flashpoint), and the characters of Corbyn and Sultana being diametrically opposite personalities in almost every respect?
As a brand new outfit, there is 'everything to fight for' in terms of both its platform and who gets what job and hence where the organisational power lies. And it isn't being formed because of a strong, single imperative (for example the SDP originated from counter-reaction to Labour's opposition to Europe), so they don't have much to unite around other than Gaza.
The headline contradicts the more nuanced article. The sober reality is that there's a gap on the left which Your Party may or may not fill. Labour has quite deliberately moved to the centre (arguably centre-right), the LibDems still can't decide on a firm direction, and the Greens have opted to go left but are mainly known as an environmental movement. There is considerable support for a left-wing party, ideally with a working relationship with the Greens, and Your Party can potentially harvest that if they manage to avoid further splits, have a reasonable conference and build a lasting leadership. Corbyn's speech on Wednesday included the useful insight that British politics traditionally mloves in a narrow spectrum of "acceptable" policies, disguised by cod drama of five-yearly showdowns, and anything seriously left-wing runs into credibility issues magnified by the very limited press. One difficulty that they have is the way media works in Britain - the concept of a party with anonymous collective leadership is completely alien to British media tradition, so they fall back on occasionally giving Zarah an airing as the youngest recognisable semi-leader - contrast with the success of Reform, who seem willing to have Farage make up policy and reverse it at will.
People like me who think Labour has moved too far to the right but aren't very interested in ecology have a choice - do we try to help move Labour leftwards again, give Your Party a try, have a go with the Greens, or do nothing and hope that a way forward becomes obvious. The weekend may cast some light. I wouldn't rely on the media to give the answer, but Your Party badly needs an identifiable leadership.
For me the idea of the left and a shift leftwards (leaving aside environmentalism and climate for a moment) raises interesting alternatives about what it is, how it goes about things, and what it is for.
My start point is this: from 1945 to today the dominant and only forms of government have been versions of incrementally improving (and sometimes standing still and sometimes going a little backwards) social democracy. This is both a narrow window, but also built into 80 years (arguably much longer) of the political order in the UK.
If the Corbyn style left exists as a nice club or a secular non conformist society to be in and argue about, plus some single issue campaigning, that's fine. But if it plans to govern it has to be clear where it stands in relation to who owns what, and the UK and global capitalist order, and our sets of historic alliances.
The left, from a starting point of 8 year olds hauling trucks down mines in 1840, makes perfect sense. The left, after 80 years of quite successful social democracy, less so unless it can explain itself in relation to theory, policy and actual implementation comprehensible to a reader of the Daily Mirror or Mail. Is it able to do so?
Yes, very fair comment. But I'd argue that Sweden, with its high-tax high-welfare model, offers a successful alternative to our current cringe in the face of tiny increases in tax.
In general, parties campaigning on the basis that they might shortly be expected to share power are thin on the ground. Labour and the Tories and Nationalists, sure. LibDems not sure. Greens and Reform no. A new party has a slim potential to become a contender for power-sharing - one of the more substantial criticisms of Farage's "this week's policy is..." approach is that he's not taken that on board at all.
Sweden, I suggest, is a good example of a social democracy, not of a left alternative. We should be more like it. My contention is that all UK governments since 1945 have been social democrat ones, varying only in emphasis, degree of competence, rhetoric, and the situation with which they happened to be faced. The challenge is how any left (not only left but any other) world view is going to set out a programme for government, and actually govern.
As a practical example it is obvious that if Reform get to govern, they will govern as social democrats (high spend, high tax, welfare state, NHS, regulated capitalism) + populist nationalists. I think it will be a disaster, but it will be social democrat disaster.
So I would still like to know what a left, non centrist non social democratic, programme for government could plausibly look like set out in a way comprehensible to a trade union member, or reader of the Mirror or Mail.
Things argued for by the left (and by liberals), like state-supported healthcare, have become part of a post-war consensus, but it seems simplistic to then cast every post-war government as being more or less the same. There are very real differences between the polices of Wilson, Thatcher, Blair and Truss.
The Overton window has shifted and your presumption that Reform UK will stay within the Overton window of 1945-2019 is untested and possibly optimistic.
I am only asserting that they are all the same in respect of being social democrat - welfare state, NHS, big state, regulated capitalism, NATO, rule of law, incremental progress etc as a basic frame. These are big samenesses. Yes they vary in emphasis, degree and proportion. That my theory of Reform in government is untested is constrained by the one directional nature of time.
The western social democrat practice is under stress, of course. A clear alternative has yet to emerge, even in the most primeval form.
The differences you mention - Wilson, Thatcher, Blair, Truss are all well within the constraints of social democracy as described. If I am being simplistic, I am happy for detailed correction to put me right.
While Thatcher and Truss did stick to some elements of the post-war framework, most people would not call Thatcher or Truss "social democrats". If you want to use words to mean something different to how other people use those words... well, that's your right, but it's a bit pointless.
As for predictions about Reform... sure, we don't know what will happen. My objection is that you keep writing as if you do know what will happen. I quote, "it is obvious that if Reform get to govern, they will govern as social democrats". Would it hurt you to be a little bit more cautious, more humble with your predictions?
That is fundamentally unjust to men and frankly unacceptable
Prevention is better than cure
I should say I have been fortunate not to have had a problem but know many who have
There is a rational argument for that, not sure if I agree with it or whether it is medically correct, but it's basically that it's a slow cancer, treatment can be unpleasant and you'll die of something else first.
Quite. I had a chat with my GP about testing for prostrate cancer and she assured me that if I have it, I'll almost certainly die with it than of it. Quite a relief. I now don't give it a second thought.
Without being alarmist, PC did kill my Dad earlier this year. It may start off a pussy cat, but it will turn into a tiger eventually, as life expectancy has increased, so has the instance of terminal prostate cancer.
Indeed. Everybody with a prostate (I know, I know...) eventually gets prostate cancer, *but* you are far more likely to die of something else first.
That's a vast oversimplification. Not everyone gets (develops) prostate cancer, but a lot of elderly men will have it to some degree.
Well, no, it's more complicated than that. If you take an 80-year old man who has died of some other cause and has not been diagnosed with cancer, and you do an autopsy, remove his prostate and very carefully slice it up, you will probably find some cancerous cells. (Please get permission before doing this.) That's what is meant by every man eventually gets prostate cancer. What we now know, but didn't when I was born, is how long small numbers of cancerous cells can be growing very slowly in the body, long before they cause any symptoms, and how common that is in the elderly body.
I think that depends on whether you include benign prostatic hyperplasia as cancer? I guess we might be arguing about different things, to some extent.
No, I'm not talking about benign prostatic hyperplasia. I'm talking about actual cancer cells, or in other words tumours... just very, very, very small ones.
That is fundamentally unjust to men and frankly unacceptable
Prevention is better than cure
I should say I have been fortunate not to have had a problem but know many who have
There is a rational argument for that, not sure if I agree with it or whether it is medically correct, but it's basically that it's a slow cancer, treatment can be unpleasant and you'll die of something else first.
Quite. I had a chat with my GP about testing for prostrate cancer and she assured me that if I have it, I'll almost certainly die with it than of it. Quite a relief. I now don't give it a second thought.
Without being alarmist, PC did kill my Dad earlier this year. It may start off a pussy cat, but it will turn into a tiger eventually, as life expectancy has increased, so has the instance of terminal prostate cancer.
Indeed. Everybody with a prostate (I know, I know...) eventually gets prostate cancer, *but* you are far more likely to die of something else first.
That's a vast oversimplification. Not everyone gets (develops) prostate cancer, but a lot of elderly men will have it to some degree.
Well, no, it's more complicated than that. If you take an 80-year old man who has died of some other cause and has not been diagnosed with cancer, and you do an autopsy, remove his prostate and very carefully slice it up, you will probably find some cancerous cells. (Please get permission before doing this.) That's what is meant by every man eventually gets prostate cancer. What we now know, but didn't when I was born, is how long small numbers of cancerous cells can be growing very slowly in the body, long before they cause any symptoms, and how common that is in the elderly body.
I think that depends on whether you include benign prostatic hyperplasia as cancer? I guess we might be arguing about different things, to some extent.
No, I'm not talking about benign prostatic hyperplasia. I'm talking about actual cancer cells, or in other words tumours... just very, very, very small ones.
"Kemi Badenoch says welfare spending is unchristian
Responding to Rachel Reeves’s budget, the Conservative Party leader told the Political Thinking podcast that ‘in early Christian times there was no state or welfare’" (£)
Well that's an absolutely bat-shit crazy argument that she's going to soon regret.
In early Christian times there was slavery, does that make abolishing slavery 'unchristian'?
St Paul returns a slave to his slave owner in an epistle laced with sarcasm and special pleading (Philemon). Time the Tory party demanded proper reparations for descendants of deprived slavers. And the Good Samaritan wants the two silver pence he gave to the innkeeper back with interest.
Christianity is surely economically of the progressive left (or perhaps more accurately, the progressive left has derived from Christianity). Wealth is unchristian:
"I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."
I go for potentially several traditions, which is my the "Christian MP" group is cross-party, as well as their being party-based groups. And there being various books with cross-party MPs explaining how their beliefs relate to their politics.
Let me mention the famous "Money is the root of all evil" misquote, which is actually "Love of money is the root of all kinds of evil".
So IMO it's about attitude and sitting light to wealth if you happen to have it, and the eye of the needle quote is about challenging the attitude of the 'rich young man'. It's (imo) particularly important in a society - Western society - where the cultural idols are perhaps money, sex, power and fame.
My current favourite example is probably Julian Richer.
That is fundamentally unjust to men and frankly unacceptable
Prevention is better than cure
I should say I have been fortunate not to have had a problem but know many who have
There is a rational argument for that, not sure if I agree with it or whether it is medically correct, but it's basically that it's a slow cancer, treatment can be unpleasant and you'll die of something else first.
Quite. I had a chat with my GP about testing for prostrate cancer and she assured me that if I have it, I'll almost certainly die with it than of it. Quite a relief. I now don't give it a second thought.
Without being alarmist, PC did kill my Dad earlier this year. It may start off a pussy cat, but it will turn into a tiger eventually, as life expectancy has increased, so has the instance of terminal prostate cancer.
Indeed. Everybody with a prostate (I know, I know...) eventually gets prostate cancer, *but* you are far more likely to die of something else first.
That's a vast oversimplification. Not everyone gets (develops) prostate cancer, but a lot of elderly men will have it to some degree.
Well, no, it's more complicated than that. If you take an 80-year old man who has died of some other cause and has not been diagnosed with cancer, and you do an autopsy, remove his prostate and very carefully slice it up, you will probably find some cancerous cells. (Please get permission before doing this.) That's what is meant by every man eventually gets prostate cancer. What we now know, but didn't when I was born, is how long small numbers of cancerous cells can be growing very slowly in the body, long before they cause any symptoms, and how common that is in the elderly body.
I think that depends on whether you include benign prostatic hyperplasia as cancer? I guess we might be arguing about different things, to some extent.
No, I'm not talking about benign prostatic hyperplasia. I'm talking about actual cancer cells, or in other words tumours... just very, very, very small ones.
So, according to the Atlantic, Zelenskyy has confirmed that he won't give up land for peace. Putin has confirmed that he cannot do a deal with Ukraine because it does not have a legitimate government. It's all going swimmingly despite the deadline of Thanksgiving having come and gone.
The Europeans need to massively increase their support for Ukraine so it becomes possible to hold their ground and, ideally, even push the Russians back a bit. At the moment Putin thinks he can still grind Ukraine into defeat so he doesn't need a deal. There will not be one until he is disabused of that belief.
I think my idea of Eastern Ukraine as an "independent" buffer state, including all Russia's gains, and some land from Ukraine in the North, to make a long strip along Russia's border, is one of the few solutions that will work.
Russia would have its buffer state. Ukraine would be able to join the EU and NATO. Nobody gets what they want, but everyone gets what they need.
Apart from the people living in "East Ukraine" - Putin would start by demanding that a pro-Russian regime is installed. despite the evidence that isn't what the people who live there want.
It's like demanding the Czechs give up their border fortifications to mollify the street artist.
It would no doubt be a Russia-aligned regime. And contain a mostly Russian speaking population. There's no two ways about that. Whether the general population there would be against it, for me seems tricky to gauge.
I would argue it's not Ukraine giving up its defences - it is Ukraine freeing itself, both by no longer bordering Russia, and by removing its Russian-speaking population, to take the defence steps (NATO, EU, re-arming itself) that it feels it needs.
The Russian-speaking population of Ukraine extend much further west than that, and the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine largely want to stay in Ukraine.
Well they will be fine with it then. They live in Western Ukraine and nobody will be asking them to move East.
And the people who do't want to be controlled by Russia in your "buffer zone"? What about them (the majority) ?
I think you're making assertions that I don't think you can support. The state that these people would be in would be something like Yanukovich's Ukraine. We cannot say that these people would necessarily hate that, when they probably formed part of the voting coalition that voted for him.
There is plenty of evidence in the democratic history of Ukraine as a separate state.
In multiple local, regional and national elections.
You just want the reality to be different. So you can draw tidy lines on a map.
Evidence of what?
Of course a certain proportion of Ukraine's population has been very much against Russian influence for a long time, but others have not - enough (obviously pre-invasion) to elect a pro-Russian Government. I think suggesting otherwise attempts to re-write history.
Given where we are now, I think my suggestion is a good one - certainly this thread hasn't yielded any significant arguments against it.
I think Russia would be more likely to be resistant to it than Ukraine, especially the loony Russian Empire ones. It involves Russia effectively giving up its territorial gains, but still having a huge reconstruction bill. But it's a judgement of Solomon solution - if Putin were serious that he just wants security for Russia with his famous buffer against NATO, he would accept. If he really just wants a greater Russia, he would decline.
You realise you have just ignored the facts again? The people of the areas in question voted multiple times *against* the "Join Russia" parties.
And you want to bundle them up in a "buffer state" to be run by Russia....
If you can't or won't see that a Russian-aligned state, which was the status quo under Yanukovich, is a very different thing to 'join Russia', I'm not sure what I can tell you. My idea is that the territories involved explicitly won't 'join Russia'.
The damage to the the Soyuz pad at Baikonur is confirmed.
This is the only pad the Russians currently have to launch to ISS. This means crew rotations blocked, but more importantly (perhaps) Progress cargo craft can't be sent to the station. The ISS can only be refuelled by Progress. Which means that after a while ISS will run out of fuel for attitude control related matters (It's a bit complicated with gyroscopes and de saturation, but that's the size of it)
To fix the pad, they would need to -
1) build a new service structure under the pad 2) Take a service structure from a mothballed pad 3) Convert/reactivate another pad - would ned to include work for Progress and the Suyuz spacecraft.
1) Will take a long, long time. SpaceX they are not. Years 2) Not been done before. It's a huge piece of equipment - might well need to be cut into sections, moved, rebuilt. 3) Again, will take a long, long time. Experience with Russian space tech and other Russian stuff is that the Russian approach to "moth balling" is "leave it to rust".
So no launches to the space station for months. Possibly years.
Which means a growing problem for the ISS - and a humiliation for Putin, incoming.
Is there a way to refuel ISS from a US or European pad (eg launch Progress from there)?
I am not an expert, but a space station lacking the ability to control altitude sounds… concerning…
Only Progress can refuel the station, via the Russian segment(s).
No current spacecraft from other nations can transfer the fuel in question (hydrazine).
Launching Progress on another rocket would require years of work.
The Soyuz pad in Guiana is at the wrong inclination (location) and is being demolished at the moment.
So if the Russians can't get the pad working, it's either abandon ISS or get SpaceX* to come up with something worryingly fast.
*Some people will get upset by specifying SpaceX. They are the only company that has demonstrated the ability to build space hardware in the timescales required - months.
Isn't the ISS due to be retired and deorbited (albeit in a controlled manner) before long anyway?
I wonder what will then replace it as the single most expensive thing made by man?
HS2?
Saudi Arabia's wall project is supposed to come in at around $500bn, but I would guess it will never be completed.
TSMC's planned 1.4nm chip fab is likely to cost as much as $50bn.
If you consider the web and its attached data centres as a single thing, then you will get up to several trillions.
Maybe in real terms PPP the Great Wall of China? Not that it would be easy to calculate.
Surely it depends on how you categorise something? Is 'London' a single thing?
Fair point but... the Great Wall is surely allowable as a single thing?
Nope - its not just one wall. People have the very wrong idea about it!
Fair enough, it was probably a silly suggestion on my part anyway.
Since you can't see the Great Wall of China from the ISS but you can see the ISS from the Great Wall, perhaps it makes sense that the ISS cost more. Or something.
Can you see your new house from the ISS would be the pertinent question...
I hope not. That would mean the ISS is FAR too low!
One of my regular Youtubers, Bigjobber, who basic theme is to do insurance liability commentaries on dashcam videos as he is or was a claims negotiator, uses "Bungalow" as his Youtube friendly insult.
It's another form of driver education.
As in "this one is a bit of a bungalow". TLDR: Not much upstairs.
Ours is not a bungalow; it's a single-storey dwelling. ;-)
Judging by the slope of your roofs, I hope there could be some mezzanine storage, or possibly sleeping galleries for visitors, up there. Classically they would go above a bathroom or utility room, which can cope with lower ceilings.
At Turn End Peter Aldington made a beautiful balanced access ladder using a mechanism similar to a traditional sash window.
There are a number of examples over at Buildhub, including one at Graven Hill.
I'm afraid our design has little of that. It is determined by pure selfishness - as a wheelchair user I abhor stairs and (whisper it softly) Mrs P. is not as young as she used to be, so climbing to a loft store is, er, unpopular. We have three bedrooms, which is ample as we'll only use one 99% of the time. We aimed to avoid attic storage* as it just gets full of stuff we either should never have bought or should have disposed of years ago.
(* As it happens we do have some loft space above some bathrooms, and the pantry - partly because they are small rooms and 4m high ceilings would be more than a bit odd, but mainly because we have used them to route and locate plumbing pipework and MVHR ducting & manifolds. There is hatch access to each but we don't intend to store anything in them.)
"Kemi Badenoch says welfare spending is unchristian
Responding to Rachel Reeves’s budget, the Conservative Party leader told the Political Thinking podcast that ‘in early Christian times there was no state or welfare’" (£)
What does she mean? There was a state, the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire had the alimenta, which supported poor children, so a form of welfare, and the long-running cura annonae, food supplies.
Can it be said that Jesus called for state welfare though? Individal giving and organized giving perhaps. But not the state, as I recall. Also, understandably not much said about democracy.
And yet all Christian countries have both welfare and democracy. So who knows.
JC did however advise paying taxes without arguing, revolting, etc. Whose superscription is on this coin?, and all that.
No, he advised paying the *correct* taxes. If you start rendering to Ceasar what isn't Ceasar's, you're going off piste.
But surely he'd be arguing if he was charged too much, and revolting if he tried to pay too little ...!
So, according to the Atlantic, Zelenskyy has confirmed that he won't give up land for peace. Putin has confirmed that he cannot do a deal with Ukraine because it does not have a legitimate government. It's all going swimmingly despite the deadline of Thanksgiving having come and gone.
The Europeans need to massively increase their support for Ukraine so it becomes possible to hold their ground and, ideally, even push the Russians back a bit. At the moment Putin thinks he can still grind Ukraine into defeat so he doesn't need a deal. There will not be one until he is disabused of that belief.
I think my idea of Eastern Ukraine as an "independent" buffer state, including all Russia's gains, and some land from Ukraine in the North, to make a long strip along Russia's border, is one of the few solutions that will work.
Russia would have its buffer state. Ukraine would be able to join the EU and NATO. Nobody gets what they want, but everyone gets what they need.
Apart from the people living in "East Ukraine" - Putin would start by demanding that a pro-Russian regime is installed. despite the evidence that isn't what the people who live there want.
It's like demanding the Czechs give up their border fortifications to mollify the street artist.
It would no doubt be a Russia-aligned regime. And contain a mostly Russian speaking population. There's no two ways about that. Whether the general population there would be against it, for me seems tricky to gauge.
I would argue it's not Ukraine giving up its defences - it is Ukraine freeing itself, both by no longer bordering Russia, and by removing its Russian-speaking population, to take the defence steps (NATO, EU, re-arming itself) that it feels it needs.
IIUC, the four oblasts that Putin lays claim to - Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and_Zaporizhzhia - arent going to be buffer state(s), in Russian legal theory they're incorporated into the Russian Federation and are now simply part of Russia. I assume people are referring to a putative buffer zone along the new border on the Ukranian side, like North and South Korea, and with a similarly large number of mines.
I don't know what you mean by 'people'. What I am discussing is these territories being part of Eastern Ukraine whatever 'Russian legal theory' (whatever that is) says.
So, according to the Atlantic, Zelenskyy has confirmed that he won't give up land for peace. Putin has confirmed that he cannot do a deal with Ukraine because it does not have a legitimate government. It's all going swimmingly despite the deadline of Thanksgiving having come and gone.
The Europeans need to massively increase their support for Ukraine so it becomes possible to hold their ground and, ideally, even push the Russians back a bit. At the moment Putin thinks he can still grind Ukraine into defeat so he doesn't need a deal. There will not be one until he is disabused of that belief.
I think my idea of Eastern Ukraine as an "independent" buffer state, including all Russia's gains, and some land from Ukraine in the North, to make a long strip along Russia's border, is one of the few solutions that will work.
Russia would have its buffer state. Ukraine would be able to join the EU and NATO. Nobody gets what they want, but everyone gets what they need.
Apart from the people living in "East Ukraine" - Putin would start by demanding that a pro-Russian regime is installed. despite the evidence that isn't what the people who live there want.
It's like demanding the Czechs give up their border fortifications to mollify the street artist.
It would no doubt be a Russia-aligned regime. And contain a mostly Russian speaking population. There's no two ways about that. Whether the general population there would be against it, for me seems tricky to gauge.
I would argue it's not Ukraine giving up its defences - it is Ukraine freeing itself, both by no longer bordering Russia, and by removing its Russian-speaking population, to take the defence steps (NATO, EU, re-arming itself) that it feels it needs.
The Russian-speaking population of Ukraine extend much further west than that, and the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine largely want to stay in Ukraine.
Well they will be fine with it then. They live in Western Ukraine and nobody will be asking them to move East.
And the people who do't want to be controlled by Russia in your "buffer zone"? What about them (the majority) ?
I think you're making assertions that I don't think you can support. The state that these people would be in would be something like Yanukovich's Ukraine. We cannot say that these people would necessarily hate that, when they probably formed part of the voting coalition that voted for him.
There is plenty of evidence in the democratic history of Ukraine as a separate state.
In multiple local, regional and national elections.
You just want the reality to be different. So you can draw tidy lines on a map.
Evidence of what?
Of course a certain proportion of Ukraine's population has been very much against Russian influence for a long time, but others have not - enough (obviously pre-invasion) to elect a pro-Russian Government. I think suggesting otherwise attempts to re-write history.
Given where we are now, I think my suggestion is a good one - certainly this thread hasn't yielded any significant arguments against it.
I think Russia would be more likely to be resistant to it than Ukraine, especially the loony Russian Empire ones. It involves Russia effectively giving up its territorial gains, but still having a huge reconstruction bill. But it's a judgement of Solomon solution - if Putin were serious that he just wants security for Russia with his famous buffer against NATO, he would accept. If he really just wants a greater Russia, he would decline.
The most significant argument against it, of course, is that we should oppose the use of force to change borders, which has been the largely dominant post-WWII international order (until Trump came along).
Yes, I agree that is the most significant argument against it. However, it would be more acceptable, or less unacceptable in that regard than a wholesale annexation of those territories currently under Russian control.
The damage to the the Soyuz pad at Baikonur is confirmed.
This is the only pad the Russians currently have to launch to ISS. This means crew rotations blocked, but more importantly (perhaps) Progress cargo craft can't be sent to the station. The ISS can only be refuelled by Progress. Which means that after a while ISS will run out of fuel for attitude control related matters (It's a bit complicated with gyroscopes and de saturation, but that's the size of it)
To fix the pad, they would need to -
1) build a new service structure under the pad 2) Take a service structure from a mothballed pad 3) Convert/reactivate another pad - would ned to include work for Progress and the Suyuz spacecraft.
1) Will take a long, long time. SpaceX they are not. Years 2) Not been done before. It's a huge piece of equipment - might well need to be cut into sections, moved, rebuilt. 3) Again, will take a long, long time. Experience with Russian space tech and other Russian stuff is that the Russian approach to "moth balling" is "leave it to rust".
So no launches to the space station for months. Possibly years.
Which means a growing problem for the ISS - and a humiliation for Putin, incoming.
Is there a way to refuel ISS from a US or European pad (eg launch Progress from there)?
I am not an expert, but a space station lacking the ability to control altitude sounds… concerning…
Only Progress can refuel the station, via the Russian segment(s).
No current spacecraft from other nations can transfer the fuel in question (hydrazine).
Launching Progress on another rocket would require years of work.
The Soyuz pad in Guiana is at the wrong inclination (location) and is being demolished at the moment.
So if the Russians can't get the pad working, it's either abandon ISS or get SpaceX* to come up with something worryingly fast.
*Some people will get upset by specifying SpaceX. They are the only company that has demonstrated the ability to build space hardware in the timescales required - months.
Isn't the ISS due to be retired and deorbited (albeit in a controlled manner) before long anyway?
2030 is the plan.
For even more fun, the deorbit capability has only recently been ordered. So there is no way to do a controlled deorbit, as yet
If abandoned, ISS will break up and reenter randomly.
They have actually used a Dragon capsule to boost the ISS orbit before as a demonstration.
Badenoch's remarks are curious - historically accurate but I'm reminded of the Parable of the Good Samaritan suggesting it might have not been State-sponsored but notions of helping out those in need existed 2000 years ago.
More recently, it was often Liberal entrepreneurs in the 19th century who instigated education and housing for their workers, not necessarily or solely for benevolent purposes but because they knew an educated and healthy workforce would be more productive. Basic literacy and numeracy was a big help.
Helping those in need existed in Victorian times but developed from the poor or workhouses and that was challenged by Asquith and the 1906 Liberal Government which moved to bring in National Insurance and Pensions so there was a mechanism for a pension to be paid to those who could no longer work.
I suppose you could argue families should take care of their own and many do given the large number of carers but it's not always possible for families to remain in geographical proximity or to have additional space to take in elderly relatives especially those with for example dementia.
I don't know why Badenoch revisits this in these terms - a discussion about how the welfare state can function in an ageing society is overdue and if she were doing that, I'd welcome it but this comment, even if taken out of context, is just mean spirited.
The damage to the the Soyuz pad at Baikonur is confirmed.
This is the only pad the Russians currently have to launch to ISS. This means crew rotations blocked, but more importantly (perhaps) Progress cargo craft can't be sent to the station. The ISS can only be refuelled by Progress. Which means that after a while ISS will run out of fuel for attitude control related matters (It's a bit complicated with gyroscopes and de saturation, but that's the size of it)
To fix the pad, they would need to -
1) build a new service structure under the pad 2) Take a service structure from a mothballed pad 3) Convert/reactivate another pad - would ned to include work for Progress and the Suyuz spacecraft.
1) Will take a long, long time. SpaceX they are not. Years 2) Not been done before. It's a huge piece of equipment - might well need to be cut into sections, moved, rebuilt. 3) Again, will take a long, long time. Experience with Russian space tech and other Russian stuff is that the Russian approach to "moth balling" is "leave it to rust".
So no launches to the space station for months. Possibly years.
Which means a growing problem for the ISS - and a humiliation for Putin, incoming.
Is there a way to refuel ISS from a US or European pad (eg launch Progress from there)?
I am not an expert, but a space station lacking the ability to control altitude sounds… concerning…
Only Progress can refuel the station, via the Russian segment(s).
No current spacecraft from other nations can transfer the fuel in question (hydrazine).
Launching Progress on another rocket would require years of work.
The Soyuz pad in Guiana is at the wrong inclination (location) and is being demolished at the moment.
So if the Russians can't get the pad working, it's either abandon ISS or get SpaceX* to come up with something worryingly fast.
*Some people will get upset by specifying SpaceX. They are the only company that has demonstrated the ability to build space hardware in the timescales required - months.
Isn't the ISS due to be retired and deorbited (albeit in a controlled manner) before long anyway?
I wonder what will then replace it as the single most expensive thing made by man?
HS2?
Saudi Arabia's wall project is supposed to come in at around $500bn, but I would guess it will never be completed.
TSMC's planned 1.4nm chip fab is likely to cost as much as $50bn.
If you consider the web and its attached data centres as a single thing, then you will get up to several trillions.
Maybe in real terms PPP the Great Wall of China? Not that it would be easy to calculate.
Surely it depends on how you categorise something? Is 'London' a single thing?
Fair point but... the Great Wall is surely allowable as a single thing?
Nope - its not just one wall. People have the very wrong idea about it!
Fair enough, it was probably a silly suggestion on my part anyway.
Since you can't see the Great Wall of China from the ISS but you can see the ISS from the Great Wall, perhaps it makes sense that the ISS cost more. Or something.
Can you see your new house from the ISS would be the pertinent question...
I hope not. That would mean the ISS is FAR too low!
One of my regular Youtubers, Bigjobber, who basic theme is to do insurance liability commentaries on dashcam videos as he is or was a claims negotiator, uses "Bungalow" as his Youtube friendly insult.
It's another form of driver education.
As in "this one is a bit of a bungalow". TLDR: Not much upstairs.
Ours is not a bungalow; it's a single-storey dwelling. ;-)
Judging by the slope of your roofs, I hope there could be some mezzanine storage, or possibly sleeping galleries for visitors, up there. Classically they would go above a bathroom or utility room, which can cope with lower ceilings.
At Turn End Peter Aldington made a beautiful balanced access ladder using a mechanism similar to a traditional sash window.
There are a number of examples over at Buildhub, including one at Graven Hill.
I'm afraid our design has little of that. It is determined by pure selfishness - as a wheelchair user I abhor stairs and (whisper it softly) Mrs P. is not as young as she used to be, so climbing to a loft store is, er, unpopular. We have three bedrooms, which is ample as we'll only use one 99% of the time. We aimed to avoid attic storage* as it just gets full of stuff we either should never have bought or should have disposed of years ago.
(* As it happens we do have some loft space above some bathrooms, and the pantry - partly because they are small rooms and 4m high ceilings would be more than a bit odd, but mainly because we have used them to route and locate plumbing pipework and MVHR ducting & manifolds. There is hatch access to each but we don't intend to store anything in them.)
Heh. I have a design for a high "bungalow" where an extra storey could be inserted with no further external works.
It was part of a project for working out how small a site could be used for a 2, 3 or 4 bedroom dwelling considering the fairly crazy amount of plot that has to be given up to onsite parking these days.
I came to a practical minimal plot for an easy to maintain dwelling that met the planning rules would be about 8mx16m as a plot.
I did an article way back in about 2016 using an example of one my dad developed from the 1970s.
Badenoch's remarks are curious - historically accurate but I'm reminded of the Parable of the Good Samaritan suggesting it might have not been State-sponsored but notions of helping out those in need existed 2000 years ago.
More recently, it was often Liberal entrepreneurs in the 19th century who instigated education and housing for their workers, not necessarily or solely for benevolent purposes but because they knew an educated and healthy workforce would be more productive. Basic literacy and numeracy was a big help.
Helping those in need existed in Victorian times but developed from the poor or workhouses and that was challenged by Asquith and the 1906 Liberal Government which moved to bring in National Insurance and Pensions so there was a mechanism for a pension to be paid to those who could no longer work.
I suppose you could argue families should take care of their own and many do given the large number of carers but it's not always possible for families to remain in geographical proximity or to have additional space to take in elderly relatives especially those with for example dementia.
I don't know why Badenoch revisits this in these terms - a discussion about how the welfare state can function in an ageing society is overdue and if she were doing that, I'd welcome it but this comment, even if taken out of context, is just mean spirited.
That was one of Mrs Thatcher's points in her "Sermon on the Mound" - the Good Samaritan was only in a position to help because he had means.
"Kemi Badenoch says welfare spending is unchristian
Responding to Rachel Reeves’s budget, the Conservative Party leader told the Political Thinking podcast that ‘in early Christian times there was no state or welfare’" (£)
Well that's an absolutely bat-shit crazy argument that she's going to soon regret.
In early Christian times there was slavery, does that make abolishing slavery 'unchristian'?
She didn't actually say that it was "unchristian". She just made what she clearly thought was a clever rhetorical point “(Paul's) first Epistle to Timothy proclaims that: ‘Anyone who does not provide for his own household… is worse than an unbeliever’ ”.
Also from I Timothy:
'I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence'
The Taliban: well if yer religion is into that, count us in!
So, according to the Atlantic, Zelenskyy has confirmed that he won't give up land for peace. Putin has confirmed that he cannot do a deal with Ukraine because it does not have a legitimate government. It's all going swimmingly despite the deadline of Thanksgiving having come and gone.
The Europeans need to massively increase their support for Ukraine so it becomes possible to hold their ground and, ideally, even push the Russians back a bit. At the moment Putin thinks he can still grind Ukraine into defeat so he doesn't need a deal. There will not be one until he is disabused of that belief.
I think my idea of Eastern Ukraine as an "independent" buffer state, including all Russia's gains, and some land from Ukraine in the North, to make a long strip along Russia's border, is one of the few solutions that will work.
Russia would have its buffer state. Ukraine would be able to join the EU and NATO. Nobody gets what they want, but everyone gets what they need.
Apart from the people living in "East Ukraine" - Putin would start by demanding that a pro-Russian regime is installed. despite the evidence that isn't what the people who live there want.
It's like demanding the Czechs give up their border fortifications to mollify the street artist.
It would no doubt be a Russia-aligned regime. And contain a mostly Russian speaking population. There's no two ways about that. Whether the general population there would be against it, for me seems tricky to gauge.
I would argue it's not Ukraine giving up its defences - it is Ukraine freeing itself, both by no longer bordering Russia, and by removing its Russian-speaking population, to take the defence steps (NATO, EU, re-arming itself) that it feels it needs.
There many hundreds of thousands of people living there who don't want to be in Russia. They voted against that, repeatedly. They voted, repeatedly, to be part of Ukraine.
Just because they are "Russian speakers" doesn't make them Russian. Zelensky, for example.
It also contains a large chunk of the Ukrainian economy.
The economic viability (of both the rest of Ukraine, and the successor state) is more challenging than the political aspects. But war is a lot more challenging for economic viability.
There was never an election on whether the citizens of Donetsk and Lugansk would like to be part of an independent but Russia-aligned state. I agree that their Russian heritage doesn't automatically equate to Russian loyalties, but I think for the most part they did form the backbone of the pro-Russian parties.
You think wrong.
There were multiple elections in those areas, before Russia started invading (2014 etc). The Join-Russia parties never managed to get a majority in any of border regions. Even the Pro-Russia parties struggled.
The CNN poll carried out just before the invasion found a majority, in the even the parts of the border regions closest to Russia, still wanted to be Ukrainian.
According to your post, I don't think wrong. I never said 'join-Russia parties', I said pro-Russian parties. You've speciously implied something I didn't say to make your argument.
There were (and are) many different political parties in the border region.
One grouping was (and is) "Join Russia" Another is "Don't join Russia but be really friendly with them, promote the Russian language etc etc"
There is some cross over, but they are fairly distant in the most part.
Some people try and use support for the Pro-Russia parties as an excuse for annexation by Russia. This is not what the parties in question wanted!
Indeed: it's like saying that all Liberal Democrats would support a German invasion of Britain, when at least 15% of their supporters would be a little queasy about it.
Ahem. Liberal and Labour were solid on opposing Germany back when the Tories and their media friends wanted to strike a deal (aka, surrender).
Ahem. A minority of the conservative benches wanted to see if a deal could be found. Note that they had constantly backed rearmament - which had been attacked by much of the Labour party.
As Orwell noted, many on the left wanted to oppose the Nazi, with nothing in their hands. In the name of Peace.
Orwell who volunteered in the Spanish Civil War to fight the fascists. Or Lord Byron who fought in the war for Greek independence. Or Lawrence or Churchill or Boris. We can’t help interfering in other peoples lives - thank goodness
Comments
Had you not noticed ?
"I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."
Bit shit for the slaves, though - they didn't get any compo. Plus they had to stay on and work for their ex-owners, until enough people cottoned on to that sweetener and got it cancelled.
Edit: As\ for Ms Badenoch's argument, I've just been reading the book by Harry Sidebottom on gladiators in the Roman times (which of course very much included the Christian world in the Empire). Gifts to the poor were very much a thing, and of course the Romans in Rome had the corn dole. Plus Christians gave to the poor as part of their atheistic commie subversive stuff.
Russian occupied Luhansk and Donetsk are puppet states. It's pretty well inconceivable that Russia would withdraw from them unless soundly defeated - in which case their future would be up to their inhabitants (and would anyway be complete chaos without Ukrainian occupation taking the place of the Russians, since their puppet rulers would likely be hung from the nearest lampposts).
Luckyguy's "solution" is a theoretical fantasy, with no real path to coming about.
Just repurpose the existing.
What its policy implications might or might not be was left as an exercise for the listener.
One grouping was (and is) "Join Russia"
Another is "Don't join Russia but be really friendly with them, promote the Russian language etc etc"
There is some cross over, but they are fairly distant in the most part.
Some people try and use support for the Pro-Russia parties as an excuse for annexation by Russia. This is not what the parties in question wanted!
Since you can't see the Great Wall of China from the ISS but you can see the ISS from the Great Wall, perhaps it makes sense that the ISS cost more. Or something.
I’ve lived through the cost of losing ground. I’ve seen the bodies, the destroyed homes, and I’ve been tortured by Russia like so many others. Land is never ‘just land.’ It’s people. Families. Lives shattered.
So yes, watching Trump casually bargain away territory that isn’t even his to give feels like a deep betrayal. It’s a lesson I wish none of us had to learn the hard way, and one far too many are being forced to relive again because one of our so-called allies is now suggesting we reward genocide.
Kemi Badenoch now favourite to be Conservative Leader at next GE.
Kemi 2.5 / 3.5
Jenrick 3.2 / 3.65
Illiquid market - big gaps between Back and Lay.
And yet all Christian countries have both welfare and democracy. So who knows.
Take your pick.
UK govt confirms talks with the EU on SAFE have failed
Nick Thomas Symonds says “it is disappointing that we have not been able to conclude discussions on UK participation in the first round of SAFE”
“Negotiations were carried out in good faith, but our position was always clear: we will only sign agreements that are in the national interest and provide value for money”
https://x.com/alexwickham/status/1994365452152160480
In multiple local, regional and national elections.
You just want the reality to be different. So you can draw tidy lines on a map.
In early Christian times the state was not Christian, and Christianity was an independent, persecuted network. If she wants to push it she needs to deal with the Apostles implementing their own welfare system. See Acts 4:32-35:
32 All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. 33 With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all 34 that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales 35 and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.
It's quite in order to consider that as an inspiration for the Welfare State, as incorporating similar underlying values. *
And that's leaving aside the free grain supplied to the ordinary people in Rome via taxes, which might suggest that a welfare state of sorts is simply a normal part of a human society. Julius Caesar writes about it. If she wants a "Christian State" view on that, she needs to look post-Constantine.
She needs to read "Christianity and the Social Order" by Archbishop William Temple, from 1942, which informed the basis of our welfare state.
The problem is imo that Kemi is proud to be clear and ignorant, and not to have any hinterland.
* You can equally argue a basis of wealth creation and free markets as part of the same synthesis with a smallish welfare state, as Mrs Thatcher did; that's the opposite of the Trumpvangelicals and the Dawkinsites, who often mine a bit of Bible from here or there with no wider consideration. What you can't do is reduce yourself to the status of a performing seal, honking away on a podium in a circus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System
As Orwell noted, many on the left wanted to oppose the Nazi, with nothing in their hands. In the name of Peace.
Of course a certain proportion of Ukraine's population has been very much against Russian influence for a long time, but others have not - enough (obviously pre-invasion) to elect a pro-Russian Government. I think suggesting otherwise attempts to re-write history.
Given where we are now, I think my suggestion is a good one - certainly this thread hasn't yielded any significant arguments against it.
I think Russia would be more likely to be resistant to it than Ukraine, especially the loony Russian Empire ones. It involves Russia effectively giving up its territorial gains, but still having a huge reconstruction bill. But it's a judgement of Solomon solution - if Putin were serious that he just wants security for Russia with his famous buffer against NATO, he would accept. If he really just wants a greater Russia, he would decline.
It's another form of driver education.
As in "this one is a bit of a bungalow". TLDR: Not much upstairs.
=More later - maybe.
As with any of these things, what we call a single name can have many different types, causes and prognoses. I learned this week that there are a few different mechanisms underlying 'glaucoma', and the treatments for each could be different.
And you want to bundle them up in a "buffer state" to be run by Russia....
(Or at least, markets over-estimate the likelihood of things happening)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_annexation_of_Donetsk,_Kherson,_Luhansk_and_Zaporizhzhia_oblasts
The western social democrat practice is under stress, of course. A clear alternative has yet to emerge, even in the most primeval form.
The differences you mention - Wilson, Thatcher, Blair, Truss are all well within the constraints of social democracy as described. If I am being simplistic, I am happy for detailed correction to put me right.
'I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence'
At Turn End Peter Aldington made a beautiful balanced access ladder using a mechanism similar to a traditional sash window.
There are a number of examples over at Buildhub, including one at Graven Hill.
As for predictions about Reform... sure, we don't know what will happen. My objection is that you keep writing as if you do know what will happen. I quote, "it is obvious that if Reform get to govern, they will govern as social democrats". Would it hurt you to be a little bit more cautious, more humble with your predictions?
Let me mention the famous "Money is the root of all evil" misquote, which is actually "Love of money is the root of all kinds of evil".
So IMO it's about attitude and sitting light to wealth if you happen to have it, and the eye of the needle quote is about challenging the attitude of the 'rich young man'. It's (imo) particularly important in a society - Western society - where the cultural idols are perhaps money, sex, power and fame.
My current favourite example is probably Julian Richer.
https://www.christie.nhs.uk/understanding-cancer/types-of-cancer/prostate-cancer
NEW THREAD
(* As it happens we do have some loft space above some bathrooms, and the pantry - partly because they are small rooms and 4m high ceilings would be more than a bit odd, but mainly because we have used them to route and locate plumbing pipework and MVHR ducting & manifolds. There is hatch access to each but we don't intend to store anything in them.)
They may well end up needing to do it again.
https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/spacestation/2024/11/08/dragon-spacecraft-boosts-station-for-first-time/
Badenoch's remarks are curious - historically accurate but I'm reminded of the Parable of the Good Samaritan suggesting it might have not been State-sponsored but notions of helping out those in need existed 2000 years ago.
More recently, it was often Liberal entrepreneurs in the 19th century who instigated education and housing for their workers, not necessarily or solely for benevolent purposes but because they knew an educated and healthy workforce would be more productive. Basic literacy and numeracy was a big help.
Helping those in need existed in Victorian times but developed from the poor or workhouses and that was challenged by Asquith and the 1906 Liberal Government which moved to bring in National Insurance and Pensions so there was a mechanism for a pension to be paid to those who could no longer work.
I suppose you could argue families should take care of their own and many do given the large number of carers but it's not always possible for families to remain in geographical proximity or to have additional space to take in elderly relatives especially those with for example dementia.
I don't know why Badenoch revisits this in these terms - a discussion about how the welfare state can function in an ageing society is overdue and if she were doing that, I'd welcome it but this comment, even if taken out of context, is just mean spirited.
It was part of a project for working out how small a site could be used for a 2, 3 or 4 bedroom dwelling considering the fairly crazy amount of plot that has to be given up to onsite parking these days.
I came to a practical minimal plot for an easy to maintain dwelling that met the planning rules would be about 8mx16m as a plot.
I did an article way back in about 2016 using an example of one my dad developed from the 1970s.
https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/blogs/entry/94-space-efficient-house-means-cash-efficient-budget/