Panto_Villan

My knowledge of this is kinda limited too, but I’ve seen a couple of theories mentioned. Attacks were at depths of about 50m so apparently plain old divers could do it. The other theory I’ve seen suggested is the Russians just pumped more and more gas until the pipe ruptured, so no actual attack needed. No idea if that is feasible though.

If you’re trying to imply the US is behind the attacks that makes no sense. They could end Nord Stream 2 with sanctions alone, whereas a military attack in the territory of their allies would be a massive diplomatic incident if it were revealed. There’s no reason for them to use military force here.

He totally has. He’s completely turned off the gas flows about a month ago and now he’s literally blown the pipelines up. Edit: and also Europe already has their storage levels at 80%+ which is more than enough to see us all through winter. If there’s a problem it’ll be next winter.

A good point was made by @magnkarl above which is worth expanding on. The only plausible scenario for Putin getting a reasonable result from the war m was an economic victory - holding Ukraine to a relative stalemate and hoping a severe winter in Europe makes the West start to pressure Ukraine into making peace. It’s not likely, but it’s not utterly far fetched either. A far right government has just taken over in Italy, and Trump might win the presidency in the US. Problem is, if people in Europe start demanding we try to make peace and get cheap gas from Russia again - well Putin has just blown up the pipelines so that’s not even an option any more. Bit of an own goal that.

Yeah, I’m not completely sure about how gas pipelines work but I know the flow was cut off some time ago. I suspect they have to keep gas in the pipeline even if nothing is flowing though, else the water pressure would crush the pipe. So that’s what we’re seeing escaping maybe?

Why? It’s two gas pipelines owned by Russia through which nothing was flowing. It’s a move that shows the potential for escalation without actually really escalating - which is what Putin has been doing this whole time. If he’d attacked one of the pipes carrying Norwegian gas to Europe then there’d be serious discussions going on about what was going to happen next.

Yeah, I agree. I’m not necessarily a FPTP supporter, just pointing out that the system does have some advantages and PR has some disadvantages that I hadn’t seen discussed. I voted against AV under the coalition when the Lib Dems had a vote on it, I think I’d vote differently today. While countries like Italy are a complete mess, moving away from FPTP seems the best way to prevent a US style polarisation of politics. An inflow of new ideas is probably necessary in the long term.

I do see where you’re coming from on this but personally I disagree. I’d much rather have two opposing political parties sending policy lurching from one side to the other every 5-10 years than the country running on autopilot and nothing new ever happening. Given most parties can’t even form complete consensus within their own ranks I think multi-party legislation is just kinda unrealistic. And the incentives are skewed - say the Tories needed Lib Dem assistance to pass a climate bill, do you think the Lib Dems would do it, even if it were of value to the county? Probably not because they’d be accused of propping up a Tory government and spend another decade in the electoral wilderness. Another example is the pension triple lock in Britain. Eventually some politician is going to have to take the very unpopular decision to deal with the endlessly rising costs this is causing, because it’s not fair for society. Building a multi-party coalition to do it? No chance. Nobody would have enough political capital under a PR system unless they win a massive plurality of the vote. I know the US system isn’t dysfunctional because of PR, but the fact a president who won both chambers can’t just pass a law to reduce emissions and make abortion legal is crazy to me. Having politicians that can’t deal with things is asking for disaster in the long term imo. We no longer have the EU to make big decisions for us, either. However at the same time I really don’t like the way with FPTP that new parties can’t emerge. When an election is Boris vs Corbyn you really see the limitations of that system too. No chance at all of a Macron figure sweeping to power, for example.

The post wasn’t criticising the wisdom of taking vaccines.

Sure, and no doubt there will be questions asked. But in general you’ll get more right than wrong if you side with the experts. However, it’s also worth qualifying exactly how much the experts “got this wrong” here too. Because lots of people were claiming that Russia wouldn’t actually attack Ukraine, or that it would be an operation with quite limited aims such as only taking control of the Donbas so it could be formally annexed (which is what the previously quoted post was talking about). Its pretty clear that the US intelligence community had a copy of the Russian invasion plan before the invasion happened, and the main variable they were trying to guess was just when Putin was going to pull the trigger. That would be considered a huge intelligence coup in most armed conflicts, right? Think about the Enigma machine, etc. Obviously the invasion plan failed disastrously - but one of the officials hauled up in front of the US Intelligence Committee pointed out that they’d penetrated the Russian military and reported back what the Russians genuinely believed their forces were capable of, as well as when and where they would attack. So while there’s always room for improvement, it seems a lot to expect that your intelligence services know the capabilities of the enemy forces better than the enemies themselves do. And it also doesn’t give them credit for everything they did get right, which is a lot.

It’s an interesting discussion. To be honest I’m not really sure where I stand on the matter but the main point in favour of FPTP that politicians don’t bring up (because it sounds self-serving) is it reliably produces governments that are capable of taking action. Theres quite a few nations with PR that go without governments for years at a time because nobody ever wins an outright majority and coalitions can be hard to agree on. I think Belgium went three years without a government recently, maybe? Brexit has basically paralysed the government since it happened - imagine that, but forever. That’s the possible potential downside of a PR system to go alongside the advantages of better representation.

Well indeed, that’s kinda my point. This forum is very pro-vax and anti-Brexit so it’s a bit weird to call someone out for listening to experts in this case while complaining bitterly that people don’t listen to experts elsewhere.

Nothing in that quotes post was untrue though. That was what the think tanks predicted, that was the Russian goal and how they went about doing it. And nobody did know the outcome for sure. Again, if you’re trying to criticise me for reading up on what respected think tanks (and the Pentagon) thought about the matter then I’m not going to apologise; they’re the experts here even if they do get it wrong once in a while.

Ukraine making another push near Kharkiv before the conscripts start arriving. Not shown on the map is a reported Ukrainian attack a bit further north from Kupyansk.

Yeah, the headline US tax rates are a little misleading. There’s so many deductions that in practice large companies or wealthy individuals rarely pay anything close to the official tax rate, so in practice Swedish companies probably do pay more tax. But none of the rates are anywhere near high enough that a company would refuse to do business in that country because it just wasn’t worth their time. A few percentage points here or there really just affects multinationals when deciding where to put there headquarters - which is why the EU got so pissed with Ireland and their 12.5% corp tax rate, as they were basically enriching themselves at the cost of everyone else in the bloc. Anyway, I’m veering off topic now. Sunak has relatively orthodox financial views but Kwarteng and Truss seem to hold fringe views even among the right.

I guess I didn’t actually cover your point re: business in my previous rant, so just quickly - most of this stuff is aimed at individuals, not companies. Corp tax is remaining at 19% rather than going up to 20%. I run a medium-sized company and that barely registers tbh; it’s not like it’s going to generate more investment because even 20% is a relatively low tax rate. Generally it’s much better to give tax breaks or incentives for the specific behaviour you want to generate (eg investment in capital equipment, or startups, or training, etc) rather than just cutting tax. That way you know the money is being spent productively rather than just being siphoned off to investors. But more importantly, someone has to actually buy the things you’re selling. Leaving the EU has made it harder to sell overseas so absolutely crushing the domestic market by making people much poorer (see the previous post) is really bad for business even if they are also handing out a 1% tax cut in corporation tax.

The problem is that their policies are so financially reckless this will hurt more than it helps. A good friend of mine is a multimillionaire banker (I.e. the sort of person who should like this) and he’s aghast. Borrowing money to pay for tax cuts is proper hardcore free market ideology. It’s much further to the right of Cameron / Osborne who argued the country needed to spend less on public services to live within its means. I really don’t think these tax breaks are going to increase growth much at all, just decrease revenue. And as others have said - they’ve had years to do this, and they’ve chosen to do it when borrowing costs are shooting up and inflation is out of control? Truss’ policies have all been like this. People obviously need assistance on fuel bills, but giving an open ended promise to cap gas bills at a certain price for two years potentially makes this the most expensive fiscal policy in history - and then not to put a windfall tax on super profits of generators is absolute madness. Plenty of moderate Tories and business types think it’d be perfectly fair to cap profits at say 300% of normal. There’s no way that’d hurt investment. It’s going to force interest rates up too. Markets are pricing in rates of 5.5% now (apparently 2.3% was expected at the start of August). Tax breaks are inflationary. Making the pound weaker because you’re not economically credible makes imports more expensive so inflation goes up. And that means higher rates. This is hitting everyone in the pocket. Like, we went through austerity just to spunk all the money we saved on this shit?

As I said previously, I’m hardly a raging leftie. What do you see in there that is going to improve the prospects of our country? Because everything I can see in there is either misguided and outright destructive, or a good idea in principle but handled in an unbelievably cack-handed way.

My political views are nowhere near as left wing as most of the people on this forum appear to be, but this mini-budget is ****ing ludicrous.

I think it’s worth pointing out that even if an ultra-nationalist takes over, they’ll know they’re not going to win the war in Ukraine. Their only chance of staying in power is to withdraw from Ukraine, blame Putin for everything and try and get a fresh start re: sanctions etc - if they keep fighting they’ll get blamed for the inevitable defeat coming their way. Doesn’t mean they won’t start bullying say Georgia 5 years down the line, but I think if there’s a coup the war in Ukraine is effectively over.

The best film ever is Armageddon, providing you’ve got the actor commentary on. Ben Affleck is absolutely hilarious.

It’s easy to say this, but sadly the Russians have been press-ganging people off the street in the occupied regions for months now. They know how to stop them deserting or surrendering - that’s what the Chechens are for. It all falls apart if there’s a big battle but when the frontline is fairly static I don’t think it’s easy for Russians to get out even if they really don’t want to be there.

Yeah, it’s great to see the Azov defenders making it back home. We shouldn’t forget the 70+ that were murdered a couple of months ago in that staged fire at the prison camp, but frankly I didn’t think any of them would make it back. Meanwhile on the other side Russia is apparently sending those arrested at the anti-war protests straight to the mobilisation centres to get drafted. It was an easy joke to make but apparently they’re actually doing it. What a world we live in.

Do you know who the other ones are? I was only aware there were three Brits in captivity. There were other prisoners of other nationalities too - maybe they’ve been released too and are included in the figures?

Some other good news - Russia has now freed the two British prisoners in LNR / DNR captivity that had been sentenced to death. Worth remembering they tortured the third guy to death, of course.