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| Big boss: lots of phones ... |
It's also interesting to look at the body language, the delivery and the props etc.
Firstly, though he's still clearly very nervous indeed, Putin didn't look as ill as he did earlier in the year - though our own dear Queen died only two days after looking quite perky with Boris and Truss, so that doesn't betoken much.
Secondly, the way he emphasised, very earnestly and very quickly, that his new mobilisation is only 'partial', is a huge sign of weakness; as of course is "this is not a bluff" - akin to when you hear a parent shouting "stop that - and I mean it!" to a kid.
Thirdly, I laughed out loud when I saw his bank of phones, carefully in camera-shot to prove how important he is. That's truly Russian, too. You realise he'll have a full-size office-grade photocopier by his desk, too? See this old story of mine from my Moscow days ...
All very scary. We try, but we still don't really understand these people.
ND
39 comments:
"You realise he'll have a full-size office-grade photocopier by his desk, too? "
Forty years or so ago, working on site at long gone property company, Metropolitan and Empire (see what I mean...) Property Company, MEPC, on Park Lane, automating their property and accounting systems, the directors were very old school.
As soon as we had a basic system up and running, they al demanded huge terminals in their offices. And of course got them. We were soon to learn that even with training, they were utterly incapable of using them, and that they were no more than status symbols.
Happily, when first we had a demo system to show them, they were unruffled by some of the tenant records we had, belonging to such as Norma Stitz and Hugh Jarce. Lunchtime claret no doubt helped :-)
I laughed out loud when I saw his bank of phones, carefully in camera-shot to prove how important he is.............
Whats truly Roosian is that the phones almost certainly aren't connected..
Back to February and my question to myself: "What was he thinking of?"
It's still my question. The only help I've had is looking at Schama's history of the Civil War era and its aftermath. Of Charles I, Charles II, and James VII & II I ask the same question. The answer "Divine Right" is necessary but insufficient.
Are you saying that what the US, NATO, the EU and the UK have been doing in Ukraine is OK, they are right and Mr Putin is wrong?
What about the reports that the Ukrainian army had been shelling and attacking Eastern regions of Ukraine since 2014, killing many civiians. Is that not correct?
As I understand it, even official reports from the EU (I think) class Ukraine as the most corrupt country in Europe.
And I recall seeing reports in 2014 of aeroplanes leaving Ukraine apparently carrying Ukraine's gold reserves. Is that correct and where is their gold now? Wasn't Mr Biden the US Vice President at the time and had close connections with the Ukraine>
I'm reading and hearing that the Ukraine and Russia had developed a peace agreement several months ago but Tubby Johnson interfered and put a stop to it.
Also, I recall that warmonger Mrs Truss was advocating for British civilians to join with the Ukrainians in fighting against the Russians. Is that an acceptable position for our Foreign Secretary to adopt?
I have no connections with anything involving Ukraine but I do believe that we, as a country, have no business interfering in their affairs; not least because I don't think Tubby or Mrs Truss have any more understanding of the political relationship between Ukraine and Russia than I have and on that basis I'd be inclined to keep my nose out of their affairs.
Lastly, it would make a refreshing change if our government had the decency to ask us if we approve of them giving foreigners billions of our tax money (money we don't have of course, so it's piled onto the national debt mountain) and masses of materiel to fight a war that doesn't seem to have a purpose.
I'm curious as to what you think the US, NATO, the EU and the UK have been doing in Ukraine that would be OK or otherwise?
Surely the people doing stuff in UKRAINE are Russians and Ukrainians?
I have friends in some of our more specialist military units, and whilst they often go to "interesting" places where we aren't officially supposed to be, none of them have been or are going to be sent to Ukraine.
Perhaps the EU army is secretly fighting Wagner.
"it would make a refreshing change if our government had the decency to ask us if we approve of them giving foreigners billions of our tax money (money we don't have of course, so it's piled onto the national debt mountain) and masses of materiel to fight a war that doesn't seem to have a purpose"
The war has the purpose of weakening Russia and weakening European industry. Now why we should think that a good thing, we can only wonder.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/sep/20/higher-energy-bills-a-price-worth-paying-for-uk-security-says-liz-truss
Asked whether she also believed the financial pain at home in the UK was worth it, Truss replied: “I think it’s right that we cannot jeopardise our security for the sake of cheap energy. That’s the mistake that the entire western world made post war. It’s becoming too dependent on authoritarian regimes"
So we will buy our oil from nice cuddly Saudi Arabia!!
If it says a lot about Putin that he has to have a load of telephones in shot to look important then what does it say about Biden that he has to have a fake White House movie set built for his media appearances?
Pictures here:
https://nypost.com/2021/10/07/president-biden-mocked-over-fake-white-house-set/
The reason:
...the White House has largely abandoned using the Oval Office for press events in part because it can’t be permanently equipped with a teleprompter; Biden aides prefer the fake White House stage built in the Old Executive Office Building next door for events, sacrificing some of the power of the historic backdrop in favor of an otherwise sterile room that was outfitted with an easily read teleprompter screen.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2022/05/06/biden-being-kept-out-of-oval-office-due-to-lack-of-teleprompter-n2606877
I recall our Chief exec, even in the millennium, when discussing the company stock system, you could hear the capital letters in his reverential tones.
“THE COMPUTER.”
No one was even allowed into the actual computer room except the Head of I.T. A jealously guarded position.
When I eventually did get to see the thing, it was not the super behemoth, magnetic tapes turning, Apollo mission control type of machine.
But an ordinary desktop PC. Running standard, if outdated, stock control and payroll programs.
I had a better spec desktop PC at home.
Putin’s phones look like they come from the same era.
Consumer items never having been something the Russia’s ever mastered.
This will be where the sanctions appear. Not just in the loss of western outlets and access. But in actual diminishing products on shelves. Replaced by Russian Federation consumer items. Of reduced price but of much inferior quality.
@ What about the reports that the Ukrainian army had been shelling and attacking Eastern regions of Ukraine since 2014, killing many civiians.
That's a VERY odd way of phrasing the situation in Donbas since Russia unilaterally occupied a large part of it in 2014
"trying unsuccessfully to take their own sovereign territory back again" would be an alternative
Back in William and Mary's time (late 17th C) an opposition MP asked why the Government was spending money resisting Louis XIV's armies in the Low Countries. The answer was, "The walls of Namur are the outer defences of London".
BQ - "Consumer items never having been something the Russia’s ever mastered. This will be where the sanctions appear. Not just in the loss of western outlets and access. But in actual diminishing products on shelves. Replaced by Russian Federation consumer items. Of reduced price but of much inferior quality"
Just so. They'll be pillaging consumer goods for their electronic components - and indeed for ball-bearings etc - to make good they sanctions-induced shortfalls, for priority military purposes
Obviously a nation that can send a man into space can't be accused of outright engineering incompetence. But, to illustrate how little of that goes into everyday items: a friend of mine had a company that printed LP sleeve covers (sic) for Russian music publishers - because they had no printing press in Russia that could fold over the cardboard to make a nice crisp narrow rectangular spine with print accurately running along it. FFS!
Bill Quango MP said...
I recall our Chief exec, even in the millennium, when discussing the company stock system, you could hear the capital letters in his reverential tones.
“THE COMPUTER.”
====================================================================
HAHAHA
We gave the board a tour of the computer room. When leaving, which involved opening a very heavy sprung door, one member of the board was taken aback by the energy needed to open the door, and the reaction was such that his head hid the emergency shut down button...
(much sniggering behind backs. We were working all hours, so were allowed to go to a sandwich bar round the corner to order food. CA said it was costing too much, so 2 sandwiches was the max. Everyone ordered smoked salmon and cream cheese, costing far more :-)
ND, I'm puzzled why you say a 'partial' mobilisation is a huge sign of weakness. To me it seems a smart move. Only mobilise reserves that have somewhat recent combat (of a sort) experience, make training more practical, not disrupt the economy excessively, and limit dissent at home from a big draft. If it raises 300k front line troops as seems to be touted, it changes the troop deficit position to moderately higher than the Ukrainians.
From a quick scan of some sources (I'd welcome seeing any more accurate numbers), seems Ukraine has about 350k frontline-ish troops in the east - the Ukrainians Minister of Defence claimed ~750k total troops in July, but I guess only near half in the east. Russia seems to have about 150k troops in the field, plus about 100k from the Donbass militia, so ~250k which is why they are struggling with defence at the mo. So adding say 200k of the reservists in 4 months time takes them to ~450k, a bit above the Ukrainians, so enough to slog it out for quite a while.
Lavrov at the UN (machine translation)
The attitude of those countries that pump up Ukraine with weapons and military equipment, training the personnel of the armed forces of this country, is particularly cynical. The goal is obvious, they do not hide it and proclaim it: to prolong the hostilities as much as possible, despite the casualties and destruction, in order to separate and weaken Russia. Such a line means the direct involvement of Western countries in the Ukrainian conflict, making them a party to it. The deliberate fomenting of this conflict by the collective West also goes unpunished...
We have no illusions that today the armed forces of Russia and the militias of the DPR and LNR are opposed not only by the neo-Nazi formations of the Kiev regime, but also by the military machine of the collective West. And in real time, using planes, ships, satellites, NATO provides intelligence to the armed forces of Ukraine and encourages them to punish Russia by defeating it on the battlefield and stripping it of all sovereignty.
A fair summary.
Mr W - " I'm puzzled why you say a 'partial' mobilisation is a huge sign of weakness."
Not the decision! It's the nervous way he put it across ...
the way he emphasised, very earnestly and very quickly, that his new mobilisation is only 'partial'
he was leaning forward apologetically and saying "please, missus, please don't worry - it won't be your young son"
Well... we have to hope it is all bluff then.
Because, so far, Ukraine is in ruins, hundreds of thousands of their young men dead, our own towns soon to be pub-less, restaurant-less and our pensioners (whom we wrecked the economy saving from Covid) freezing to death of fuel rations (get yer mask on !)
Huge rises in interest rates, inflation and homeless/jobless.
Waaay to go US/Nato/EU ! They (the EU and GB) sawed and sawed away at the branch they were sitting on by poking the gas-provider bear.
The above were the issues I was really worried about when I said we shouldn't get within grappling distance of grappler/psycho Putin.
Now
If only 1% of the telephone/nuclear missile capacity works....
Why have we even taken the risk ? What was ever in it for the British working man who sees his own border invaded with the assistance of the RNLI and Border Arse.
Everyone LOVES Ukraine *heart*... this is the United Kingdom of the Republic of Ukraine and Gaydor (according to the only flags we seem to see everywhere.)
Truss has 20 months to prove she's Thatcher (good luck with that) or we become Communists in the fight against Putin not to become... er... Communists.
Anonymous 12.38pm
We know for a fact that British army specialists have been training the Ukrainian army. We also know that SF veterans have been getting their kicks out there.
You know this full well too.
"whom we wrecked the economy saving from Covid": who we failed to save by wrecking the economy while not dealing with infection control in hospitals and care homes.
Dearieme
The Nightingales were clearly for effect and not effectiveness.
Masks were clearly for effect and not for effectiveness.
Care homes clearly charge £1000 a week for spam fritters and minimum wage workers yet demand the State provide all the PPE and correct protocols.
Extended lockdown (after realising that only certain co-morbidities presented extra risk) was only for effect.
So where are the NBC suits and nuclear shelters... for effect for the 1% risk of a Putin bomb going off in London ? (A risk which is 10X higher than the average Londoner dying of Covid)
Why are - for example - anti frackers allowed to complain about the risks of earth tremors whilst ignoring the risk of dying of electricity black-out ?
Deja vu
They did exactly the same one-sided risk analysis for Covid.
Now Dr John Campbell has the sheer effrontery to complain about excess deaths after all the demands he made for vaccines and lockdowns.
I need to question.
Did we fail he or did we fail him ?
(Whom who)
Not being tricky. Just grappling with our language.
And PPS...
Both Covid reactions and our defence of Ukraine have resulted in a fall in living standards as never seen before.
War and poverty as I predicted. The race war in these shores has already kicked off - I didn't predict that but the crime war is all one and the same... to call it a religious one is to glorify it.
"Both Covid reactions and our defence of Ukraine have resulted in a fall in living standards as never seen before."
The roads around here, in what is said to be a poor part of the country, are solid with new cars. There's a local shop that sells nothing but wheel trims. There's a lot of fat on the economy, I think.
But I agree that allowing millions of colonists of various tribes to settle here is asking for trouble. The problem is that we managed to make our country better than theirs, after centuries of struggle. Who, living miserably in Somaliland, would not want to move to Britain or the USA ?
Don
EK - "I need to question. Did we fail he or did we fail him ? (Whom who)"
Ah, at last, I can help you. Him. Accusative, following transitive verb.
"There's a local shop that sells nothing but wheel trims."
I'm not sure the retail drug sales economy should be a part of our economic planning, apart from allocating prison space and social workers.
Heard a horror story from a medic the other day re those little silver pods you see in verges, sold for "whipping cream".
23 year old guy, in hospital flat on his back with spinal cord damage from inhaling too much N2O. Don't think the spinal cord repairs itself, repair is still experimental and very very expensive as only a few surgeons in the world can attempt it.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/aug/30/doctors-warn-of-rise-in-nerve-damage-linked-to-nitrous-oxide
>It's the nervous way he put it across.
Projecting your own wishes there, I think.
The video of Putin's press conference at the SCO last week is worth a look. Half an hour on his feet, no lectern, no notes, detailed answers. Clearly a man in full control. Also worth looking at the video of Putin's speech two days ago, marking 1160 years of Russian statehood. One can quibble with the history, but he clearly believes he has something worth defending and although it's hard to judge, Putin's view seems broadly popular in Russia.
So if we do plan on defeating the Russian army and pushing the Russian navy out of their Black Sea base in Crimea, we'd better be prepared for a long, difficult and expensive fight. Let's see how many blue and yellow flags are flying in Britain this time next year, and how many cries of "slava ukraini" are heard.
"Who, living miserably in Somaliland, would not want to move to Britain or the USA ?"
There's a reason why people live miserably in Somaliland. And if enough Somalis come to the UK, we'll have Somaliland plus rain. Demography is destiny, as we're finding out in Leicester and Smethwick now, and as we've already found out in large areas of our formerly great cities.
Our "conservative" government is taking back control with a million UK residence visas a year, while rattling on about a "labour shortage". What they mean, of course, is a "cheap labour shortage".
There is one thing possibly worse than inviting a low-IQ, low-cohesion people into a country - it's inviting a high-IQ, high-internal cohesion people, where the internal cohesion is for the good of the tribe, not the natives.
We've seen that happen once, it might happen again with the HK Chinese. The last people you want in high places, academia, business, government are high-IQ scoundrels - or maybe not scoundrels, just devoted to "their" people - who aren't us.
> Heard a horror story from a medic the other day...
What a waste of a life. I'm reminded of the article in the current Spectator, analyzing the falling life expectancy in Scotland --- mainly due to drug deaths, it seems.
There have always been people who can't cope with life and seek a way out. The difference (here and in the USA) now seems to be the numbers, and the means (drugs). I suppose, at least, those religious mobs battling it out in Leicester believe in something they think worth fighting for. For people like the 23 year old in the story, there seems to be nothing.
When you talk to a medic in a big city hospital, you realise just how much time, money and energy self-inflicted stuff costs - the addicts, the mentally ill etc. They see the same people coming in again and again.
sterling heading ever lower... should have bumped interest rates more.
They really are between a rock and a hard place. Their brilliant plan of boycotting Russian energy has caused huge damage to households and businesses, and it looks as if, after 2003, 2007/8/9/10/11, 2021, they are obliged at last to stop printing money and raise interest rates - causing even more damage to to households and businesses.
The right thing to do, but only reluctantly after they'd tried everything else.
They should have left the banks to fail in 2008 and nationalised them, instead of giving them free cash. Amazing how we can lose our industry and that's just "creative destruction", but the banks? Unthinkable!
And Krazi Kwarteng scraps the top tax rate and bankers bonus cap!
I predict riots and I may be out there too.
This lot make Boris look like Attlee!
"We try, but we still don't really understand these people."
You are talking about Conservative MPs, I assume.
This "mini" budget could be the shortest suicide note in history.
Will the BoE need an emergency session to raise interest rates again?
Anyone remember Anthony Barber?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Barber#Chancellor_of_the_Exchequer
The markets are reacting badly to the mini-budget which I see as a good thing - the financial markets are not the real economy and if it screws up the gambling with funny money then that's a good thing.
Despite my usual pessimism about politicians, I'm actually slightly encouraged by this. Yes, it's borrowing on a massive scale which will take generations to pay off. On the other hand, it has some focus on getting the economy growing to offset the future costs.
Plus, what else were they going to do? You definitely can't tax your way to prosperity and confiscating the wealth of the rich would only feed the hungry public sector for a short time anyway.
GBP down to $1.10 (or 63 rubles). Obvious advice is to spend it now, or invest abroad, while there's still some value left. Telegraph thinks that Truss and Ktwang are imitating Reagan. But Reagan could sell as many USTs as the fed could print. Don't really think there's the same demand for gilts.
Deutsche Bank
From our perspective, the UK’s immediate challenge is not low growth. It is an extremely negative external balance picture reliant on foreign funding. The large fiscal spend just announced may boost growth a little in the short-term. But the bigger question is this: who will pay for it? Given the UK’s twin deficits the answer is foreign savers. Put simply, it is American and European pensioners that will need to purchase the extra issuance of gilts.
But in an environment of such high global uncertainty, we worry that the price foreigners will ask in return for financing the new stimulus will be very high. In other words, the equilibrium value of gilts expressed in dollar and euro terms will have to come down sharply. It is extremely unusual for a developed market currency to weaken at the same time as yields are rising sharply. But, this is exactly what has happened since the new Chancellor’s announcement. We worry that investor confidence in the UK's external sustainability is being eroded fast.
There's a deal of ruin in a nation, but not an infinite amount.
Yes @Matt, I agree it's slightly encouraging.
Now they just need to take an urgent look at public sector pensions and stop the index linking. We might then get something to be spent on services in exchange for our council tax. At the moment local authorities are pension schemes with councils attached. The same goes for income taxes and the other public services eg NHS/civil service etc.
The problems are structural.
Jan - you obviously want to see Labour back in power asap, or possibly every doctor leave the UK.
Jan said...
Yes @Matt, I agree it's slightly encouraging.
Now they just need to take an urgent look at public sector pensions
The problems are structural.
12:39 pm
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Public sector pensions, not the state pension (very poor compared to other European countries) are a major problem. And I was not encouraged by whoever on the front bench was blabbering on about how the budget would fund more public sector pissing away of our money (now apparently termed "investing" given that no part of the public sector ever improves with more money. One assumes most goes to pensions.
I wonder if any high earners will leave Scotland? Top tax rate remains 45% there.
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