Panto_Villan

Not unduly worried by what was announced last night. Won’t meaningfully help Russian win the war, and the nuclear threats have been bluster since the start of the war. Using a tactical nuke just guarantees NATO annihilates any Russian military force outside of Russia and Ukraine wins the war. Even China would be against Russia at that point. Using a strategic nuke guarantees that Putin ends up dead. He’s got a family and is a wealthy man, and could possibly even survive in power after losing the war if he claimed it was NATO that swung it (which they already are). And there’s big question marks about whether the Russian nukes work at all, and whether the military would be willing to fire them and die in a nuclear fireball rather than just take Putin out back and shoot him in the head. Nothing has really changed in the last 48 hours overall.

I reckon he’s just going to push Shoigu out of a window live on TV.

So one of the views I've seen being mentioned by people who know more about the war than I is that this mobilisation decree doesn't necessarily equal actual mobilisation. It allows the option of mobilisation if Putin chooses to go for it, but it doesn't mean that's coming. There's a lot of soldiers who are legally allowed to refuse to fight at the moment, and this bill would stop them doing that. It's also a sop to the ultranationalists that have been turning on Putin lately. So I think it's possibly a bit premature to assume Russia is stepping the war up a notch based on the text of the bill alone. EDIT: oh, and it'll allow Russia to press-gang locals from currently occupied Ukrainian territories into the army as conscripts.

Interestingly, twitter was actually saying that her and her husband were back in Russia as of a few months ago.

I guess I explained myself badly. News arriving within a couple of minutes vs a couple of hours really doesn’t make that much difference in a lot of scenarios. We were talking about watching Jean Paul II’s funeral specifically there - i.e. I can’t imagine anyone missed his funeral because they didn’t know he had died, so I don’t think there’s many people who wanted to watch it who were unable to because they only had “slow” TV rather than internet.

Yeah, we missed a trick by not skipping Charles really. William or Harry would definitely be better in a cage fight. You raise an interesting point about internet penetration over the past twenty years, but I don't necessarily think major news travels much faster today than it did back then, because TV was always pretty good at transmitting news. I'm actually trying to find figures about what TV penetration was in 2000 relative to today, because my hunch is that most of the people that have gained internet since 2005 probably already had access to a TV back then. Hard to know without some figures though!

Do you have any evidence to support your claim? All the viewing estimates I've seen suggest the Queen's funeral was significantly more widely watched than the last Pope's funeral was - the most I've seen estimated is 2bn, vs 4bn for the Queen. And John Paul II was an unusually popular Pope, no? Sure, the world has increased from 6.5bn to 7.7bn since 2005 but it seems a bit of a stretch to definitively claim that the Pope is more popular than the Queen. And deciding the Queen is unpopular because VT doesn't like her much seems a weird choice; I can't imagine VT has much nice to say about the Pope either. No, I think it's people who actually watched some of it (not necessarily live). Something like 80% of the world has access to a TV so I guess it's just anyone who sees a snippet of the coverage at any point.

Yeah, none of those people would / did have the same reach as the Queen. I think you massively underestimate how famous she was. Nelson Mandela, perhaps. If a US president was assassinated JFK-style then maybe they'd be up there. But if Joe Biden had a heart attack and died of natural causes he probably wouldn't even get half of Americans watching his funeral, let alone (apparently) half the world.

This is one of the interesting things about the "abolish the monarchy" debate - what would the Windsors be left with if they abolished the monarchy? They were rich and powerful before they ascended the throne - I mean, you don't get to be king / queen unless you're already one of the top dogs. There's plenty of other rich aristocratic families with hereditary wealth floating around, so nobody seriously expects the royals to be left with nothing if we abolished the institution (well, outside VillaTalk). I imagine the arrangement probably would be that the Crown Estate (worth about £15bn) becomes formal property of the UK government while the privately held assets (duchy of lancaster / cornwall worth ~£1.5bn) remain the property of the Windsors. So I don't think it's necessarily fair to say that the royals are simply in it for the money. They were rich and privileged before they became royals and they'd be rich and privileged as billionaire private individuals if the country voted to get rid of them. If you gave me the choice of being the King or just being a plain old billionaire, I'd definitely choose being a standard billionaire. To be honest I'm pretty sure I wouldn't even pick being King over my own life right now. The appeal of being a billionaire to me is the fact I could live a life of freedom, with minimal obligations - which is the exact opposite of being a royal.

I'm sure it's a huge event but I find those figures a bit suspect. I reckon they must include anyone that sees indirect coverage of it too - like people who see a few shots of it as part of their daily news coverage, etc. But even then it seems to stretch credulity a little. I also saw the figure of 2.5 billion quoted which I find a bit more believable personally. That's only 1/3 of the entire human population.

OK, well what you meant is clearer now. I'm not saying you shouldn't give your opinions, just that it seemed a bit odd to claim you've been keeping your opinions to yourself while also repeatedly claiming the funeral was a waste of money.

Given your last two posts are about how the funeral has been a massive waste of money and resources and about how people should be thinking about the reality of homelessness rather than the fake pageantry of mourning the Queen, I'd hate to see what it looks like when you do try to force your opinions about the topic on people!

I can definitely see where @villabromsgrove is coming from, tbh. I don't see anything wrong with being a republican or not wanting anything to do with the funeral (and I think the coverage is a bit excessive too), but a lot of people do want to be part of this and it's pretty disappointing to see all the people on here who actively seem to be trying to diminish the emotions that other people might be feeling today. My wife got quite emotional today because she lost her mother early last year and she felt a lot of sympathy when the Queen lost Phillip and was grieving in a public way for him. And now she's watching the royal family at the funeral service having lost their mother / grandmother and she finds it quite moving. She'd have been there today if she could. Similarly, my grandfather is almost ninety and he found today moving because she's been on the throne his entire adult life and there's precious few constants left for him. I think he'd have gone to see the coffin if he could too. I don't really think there's anything unreasonable about that. I'm not really sure all the disdain on here is warranted; I'm sure there's plenty of people across the country (and indeed probably some on VT) who have perfectly good reasons to want to mourn today.

Say what you like about Charles, but he does seem to have grasped this. Apparently his plans for a slimmed down royal family were one of the main points of conflict with Harry and Meghan - their children weren’t going to get titles. I think limiting the royals to the children of the current monarch and those in line to the throne does make sense.

The USSR was in economic competition with the capitalist West to prove which was the dominant superpower, and it lost. But it only collapsed because it stopped the repression which kept the various republics together. Many poorer and less advanced countries than the USSR have survived crippling sanctions. The trick is not to try to be a superpower, and not to let up on the repression. Look at North Korea or Iran.

Yes, but my post said “after the war”. It seems highly likely that the territories will be assigned one way or another in the final ceasefire / peace treaty. The war is going to rumble on until one side is willing to give in.

No they wouldn’t. If they’re not doing it now while their army is being ground into dust in Ukraine, they won’t do it when Ukraine starts fighting their way into Crimea. Using even tactical nukes would be suicidal, and how is mobilising going to help them? If we reach the point where Crimea is being threatened then Ukraine would have overwhelming military superiority. Even if they call up millions of men, how long would it take to train them? What artillery and tanks would they be equipped with? How long would conscripts last against the same Ukrainians that had dismantled the professional Russian army and PMCs? Once this war is over Russia will be in no shape to start a war with anyone, and if Ukraine joins NATO then there’s zero chance Russia attacks them even once they’ve replenished their forces. Russia is not exactly scared of the Estonian army, but they’ve left them alone.

Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me at all. Quick way for a middleman (i.e. probably Turkey) to make a quick buck. Sanctions cause damage but they don’t stop determined enemies, even if the relative power difference is immense. See Cuba, North Korea, Iran and now Russia for examples of this. They’ve got even less chance of working on China if it comes to it.

I’ve mentioned this before but gas is only like 10-15% of the value of their oil exports. Gas revenue could fall to zero without causing Russia too many problems in the grand scheme of things. So while Russia is running out of places to send their gas, oil is much easier to transport and China and India are both happy to buy as much oil as Russia can pump, provided its at a bit of a discount. The reason there’s no worldwide ban on Russian oil is because nobody except the West would pay any attention to it, so it won’t work. The sanctions are doing plenty of damage to Russia’s economy but they’re never going to be ruined to the level you seem to be expecting. By the way, even if the whole world moves to clean energy and electric cars, there’s still a lot of uses for oil that won’t dry up. Plastics production, etc. Oil will still have value in 50 years.

Also, I’d really not noticed how swollen Charles’ hands were before this thread. It’s crazy - surely it can’t be normal?

They’re not mutually exclusive. You don’t have to feel part of it if you don’t want to, but there’s no reason why someone can’t be both British and English (or Scottish or Welsh etc). Thats like saying English culture doesn’t exist because there’s also a distinct Cornish culture.

Rogue One was my favourite of the Disney era movies so maybe I’ll enjoy this. Think I’ll wait for reviews though. It really shouldn’t be that hard to make a good show with Star Wars stylings, should it?

So as far as I understand it, the problem is actually rain. When the ground is soft it’s hard to use armoured vehicles due to the mud, but in proper winter the ground is frozen solid and it’s viable again. So it’s probably dependent on when the rains come but most commentators are saying in the next month or two. I’m not sure you worded your post correctly because winter and rain is bad for the Ukrainians given they’re on the front foot now and Europe will be suffering with a gas crisis, but it sounds like you knew that already. The success of this offensive pretty much guarantees the Western world will stay the course now, so yeah it’s certainly a huge victory in that sense too. Not really sure where the Russians go from here tbh.

Yeah, and to be honest I think it will be. But it’s just worth remembering that even if the entire front totally collapses there’ll still be plenty of Russian-held territory in Ukraine. The war’s not over yet.

Incidentally, this guy is my favourite delusional idiot desperately trying to spin everything into a victory for Russia. It’s especially hilarious because he’s been away for a couple of months and chose today to come back. Y’know, when things have been going so well for the Russians.