Gas heating supplies now being rationed in Hannover.
At the same time as supplying all these weapons, we are actually pushing for talks to happen, right?
Gas heating supplies now being rationed in Hannover.
At the same time as supplying all these weapons, we are actually pushing for talks to happen, right?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-prisoner-swap
Ed Woodward doing the talks.
I think a not insignificant amount of people would say they would rather go cold than be warmed by Putin’s gas.Originally Posted by Yevrah
I don’t doubt it, but then reality bites and they’ll soon change their tune.
I should imagine that particular reality will strike here when it’s five grand to power a house and mortgage rates hit 4-5 %.
I'm in the "privileged" position of working with some of the poorest people in the country, and Energy prices are brought up every day. There are some willing to lump it, but attitudes are increasingly turning to "Fuck Ukrainians suffering, I'm suffering".
Putin will be bright enough to know that too.
Meanwhile 500% profit increase at Centrica.
I'm going to start wrapping tinfoil around my head soon because frankly, all of this shit stinks.
Yeah, never mind the war in Ukraine, we need to be pointing a few of those HIMARs at Centrica's (and the rest) boardroom.
The bit I don’t get as I said unthread is that there’s no conceivable endgame to this in the short term. The general public must have been caught up in all the bunting over how useless Russia were (hell some here were) and how their people wouldn’t stand for it, which bought a bit of early momentum, but in supplying weapons we’re prolonging something that will still never be won and in the meantime almost everything our societal structure is based on has caught fire.
I can only think they're trying to prolong it long enough for Putin to die of old age. An unlikely scenario.
I'm really surprised that only the lefty papers (and the Star, legends that they are) have the Centrica profits on the front page. It will bring down the government very rapidly and easily if the Tories and their clients don't start expectation-managing the energy price stuff. Truss could be in for weeks at best.
Martin Lewis keeps planting seeds with his talk about civil disobedience and refusing to pay bills. I am truly buzzing to see the next 6-9 months play out.
I don't get why everyone (including other businesses) isn't up in arms about it. How is it good for the economy if people are spending all (or at least substantially more than before) of their income on basic necessities like heating?
This winter is going to be grim.
Edit: what Taz said. I want to see riots and the House of Commons stormed in December.
Hard not to lol at all the Very Serious People who were predicting an imminent Russian collapse back in March. I thought Ukraine would have been done by now, but otherwise, armed with little more than a functioning brain, I've got so much more right than all of the official channels. If I could access a crumb of that Bellingcat CIA/MI6 money I could become a prominent 'OSINT' bluffer in no time.
'...information gleaned from Russian Faceparty accounts, I think we're looking at somewhere in the region of eleven million Russian casualities.'
*two months of Russian advances and Ukraine needing another entirely new army*
'...we found that, having cross-analysed our earlier Faceparty findings with, Grindr heatmaps...'
The government will end up nationalising the energy companies and eating the costs directly.
I know one gets laughed at for comparing incomparable countries, but look at where Sri Lanka have got to. I don't see why we would be much different in a few months' time other than in the fact that we're not as corrupt but at the same time our population is far less resilient and needs energy for more things than theirs.
'And we not only thaved the world... Thaved the energy companieth...'
I think something that people fail to realise, even when they see glimpses of it, is that how fragile the foundation everything we have is built on and it really wouldn't take much for it to collapse into a pile of shit. There's also the sheer arrogance that we're somehow peak humans and we've learnt from all of the mistakes previous generations have made, which is laughable.
One only needs to look at the absolute crazy shit that happens when an inch of PANIC hits the front pages and let that sink in to realise that if something actually serious were to happen it'd be anarchy.
I'm sure the Boomer accusations will fly, but the state of shit at the moment, which has been building for years, is so much worse than it's been since the Cold War. The internet is being used for truly horrible purposes that are breaking society, people have the memories of a goldfish, priorities are absolutely all over the shop, rich people are ripping everyone else off and we've had a succession of thoroughly useless governments and opposition parties. Something has to give.
Good. It's about time we got out of the "privatise the profits, nationalise the debt" cycle.
You're on the money there. It's obviously to keep the heat off the Tories (pun intended) but it will surely backfire. Surely shivering through December will turn people, despite what the Daily Mail tells them.
I started looking for a new job last night, because the thought of doing my job this winter is pretty sickening. I hate it at the best of times, but it's going to be genuinely unbearable.
We have always had the "can't payers" who I do my best to help and the "won't payers" who get the door knock. The trouble is the "can't pay" column is filling up thick and fast and there is nowhere near enough resources to deal with it. It is absolutely fucking grim out there. Genuine poverty.
Fancy a job swap Igor, lad?
Latest weaponry delivered to Ukraine is helping them push Russian forces back and reduce the artillery dominance they were having in occupied areas. It's going to be a long war but I don't see how allowing Russian aggression is an acceptable outcome considering their acts on the battlefield.
Well, we managed it every other time.
Which time was that? Syria?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List...volving_Russia
Take your pick of any of them after 1991. My favourite is Crimea though. Which didn't matter to the same politicians less than 10 years ago.
Outside of Russia, there's also the various poor people the Saudis are killing with our supplies.
Our government don't care about the evil of Putin. Whatever is going on here, it isn't that.
Last edited by Spikey M; 29-07-2022 at 07:21 AM.
Evil is a subjective judgement. They care about expansion of our enemies / weakening of our allies in the region. Russia are our enemies and have been on a constant basis since 1922 with a short interlude 1941-45.
"Heroic gestures may be satisfying. They are not helpful."
Read Chomsky's thoughts on the war if you're still thinking pushing weaponry into Ukraine and banning Russia from Eurovision makes you the hero that will bring about peace and prosperity.
The Americans reaffirmed their commitment to not changing Taiwan's status last night. Obviously the Chinese aren't bad guys.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62338543
I'd rather energy companies didn't vastly overestimate customer usage.The money, part of the Energy Bill Support Scheme, will be paid in six instalments.
Households will see a discount of £66 applied to their energy bills in October and November, and £67 a month from December to March 2023.
But since the end of the Soviet Union we haven't really given a fuck about them. Not beyond head shaking and condemnation. The oil and blood money still poured in.
I'm not having that this government. Boris- friends with KGB members - Johnsons government, cares about Ukraine to the level that he's forcing millionaire Russians out of their poncey West End House's, forcing the sale of football clubs and reducing half the population to fuel poverty. And all of Europe suddenly gives a fuck to the same degree at the same time. Nah. Not having it.
There is something going on beyond the scenes.
Chomsky is an idiot.
It's not about giving a fuck morally, it's about strategic interests at home and abroad. If the British government, in a democracy, came out and said 'Putin is a great guy, we support u til the end x' they would be out of office within days. Similarly, Russia invading Ukraine is bad news for us and our allies on all sorts of levels, so it's in our interests to support the Ukrainians.
We are allowing it though, these weapons aren’t stopping their aggression but instead, prolonging it.
The simplicity with which this whole thing has been boiled down to is staggering. Russia = bad (as Spikey said, we’ve not really given a shit about this before), Us = good (I mean, seriously, where’s my roflcopter) and Ukraine = heroes (despite the country being levelled and thousands being led to their deaths fighting a war they can’t possibly win).
There are no good realistic outcomes in this situation, none, so surely the best thing to do would be to take the pragmatic approach and encourage talks rather than prop the whole shit show up for as long as possible.
How is it in OUR interests to support Ukraine? And if we actually wanted to support them the time to do it was years ago by letting them into the various boys clubs that would have protected them against an invasion. We didn’t, for pretty obvious reasons, yet here we are anyway.
Oh and I’m pretty sure Boris’ motivations began and ended with him trying to seize some kind of Churchill moment. It’ll be interesting to see what a serious leader does with the situation, should we ever get one.
Nobody expects him to say Putin is a good guy. The question is why the escalation from the head shaking at the Crimean invasion to a proxy war when it's the Donbas? It's the same region and the same people.
The escalation makes no real sense. Or is the Donbas just the new Poland?
Supporting Ukraine weakens Russia, I guess. Maybe a long drawn out conflict (think the Soviet Union in Afghanistan) is the aim.
We need someone who isn't interested in saving face with their war-thirsty populations to initiate it. Whoever backs down first and offers a negotiating table over a missile will be hounded out of their own office. Which is ridiculous but that's where we're at for now, although I'm sure rolling blackouts and freezing homes will shift that stance soon enough.
But weakens them to what end? What will weakening them not allow them to do that they would have realistically done before? They’re never going to attack anyone in the boys clubs as they’d be wiped off the map if they did.
And perhaps crucially, we’re also being weakened as well and unlike Russians, we’re really not that good at dealing with it. You can bet your fucking arse no one with a Ushanka is upset about a cost of living crisis.
Last edited by Yevrah; 29-07-2022 at 08:50 AM.
Because Ukraine is a democracy that broadly embraces the same liberal/democratic/free market/post-Christian outlook that we do, and it is in our interests, both politically and for business and for everything else, for there to be as many of those as possible and as few kleptocratic authoritarian human rights cess pools as possible (also there are obvious military stakes in play, but Lewis knows a lot more about that than me). Now, obviously there are limits to how much intervention you are willing to make in order to further those interests. Tony Blair was bang up for intervening everywhere. With Ukraine, it's taken until a full-blown invasion, but that's realpolitik for you.
Eventually, I imagine it will become worth us saving western Ukraine as the above democracy and chucking eastern Ukraine to the wolves.
And from our point of view, yes, we are the good guys. If that isn't the starting point then we may as well blow ourselves up and save Vlad the trouble.
Last edited by Jimmy Floyd; 29-07-2022 at 08:56 AM.
Indeed. This makes no sense either. If it genuinely is the new Poland we should be going to actual war with Putin now, but nobody really believes it is as nobody can surely believe that if we allow him to take Ukraine he’ll keep moving West. Russia would be Nuked off the map if that ever happened.
You have to remember that Putin started this war with an abortive attempt to blitzkrieg Kiev and enact immediate regime change, it wasn't all the slow trudge in the Donbass. That's why it all changed.
This is another absolute fight of fancy. It's in Eastern Europe, it's going to be an absolute backward racist shithole. I appreciate it's a bit rich of Russia to accuse them of facism, but the idea that it's a progressive, liberal and tolerant society is convenient at best.
And this clearly isn't in our business interests, not even remotely.
Isn't that the way almost every war has been started by the West since the original Top Gun was made?
It's not a point of moral equivalence, I'm saying that's why the reaction was different to Crimea.
Honestly people need to stop thinking about morality and start thinking about strategic interests. The stronger Russia is, the worse news it is for western Europe. Obviously this escaped particularly the Germans over the last 20 years, which is why they are now in an even bigger mess than we are.
America had a decade or so as the sole superpower and got high on its own farts thinking that it could do whatever it wanted (and all of the satellites went along with it). They got backed off over Georgia, Russia wasn't overly arsed about the Baltic and Kosovo; but Ukraine they care about, so something was always going to happen. That should have seen the West back off, because they care more and will fight for it, but that would have meant getting some fresh air and deciding what really mattered, which the fart-sniffers are as pathologically incapable of doing as any religious maniac.
As to the 'who's interests are being served here?' surely it is in the interests of the US to have a prolonged proxy war with Russia which allows them to significantly degrade all aspects of their society, and if a few European countries struggle for gas why do they give a fuck? They can sell them the gas/oil if necessary. And US strategic interest = the interests of the west so everyone else is going to have to suck it up. What's the alternative?
Unwinding European reliance on Russian energy should happen anyway (or perhaps should never have happened). Maybe it'll even be good for the environment.
A strong Russia only 'threatens' the West insofar as it foils our plans to let al-Qaeda run Syria and the like, which is to say that it doesn't actually threaten us. Especially since its strength allows it to pursue its own ends, rather than simply team up with China, which is what its weakening will encourage. It's proper whack-a-mole short-termist thinking.
I don't particularly see how Russia taking bits of Ukraine (which they've already done anyway and we didn't care) makes them stronger to a point of concern. Fair enough, get their dodgy money out, but we've done that as best we can, so time to move on now.
Yeah didn't they badge up their equivalent of Britain First as police deputies a few years ago?
The Ukrainian neo-Nazis are a weird bunch. They are clearly a nasty bunch of cretins, but more common-or-garden Eastern European racists than serious Adolf Hitler appreciators. I think they just play as Nazis because they think it offends the Russians, like edgy Scottish separatists soyfacing it to IRA things, except without providing comedy reasons to get invaded.
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