[Spoiler alert - contains election result]
The exciting prospect of a Russian election is upon us! Not the Presidential this time, but the Duma and lots of regional governors. Who will win? Can United Russia cling on to power? Despite an approval rating in the 30's, down from 42%[1] earlier in the year ...
Well, yes.
Firstly, the authorities have taken the precaution of banning the only previously-tolerated 'opposition' party, which had the temerity to oppose the Special Military Operation almost from the outset. Up until now this had been allowed to pass, but not any longer. Secondly, the Fix is In.
Putin has declared that he's looking for United Russia to get 85%. (Long-time readers will recall that my sources gave the Presidential result to within the percentage last time around[2]: they are good, these election-fixers! Eat your heart out, Donald.)
The only small cloud on the horizon is opposition from an unexpected source - the Orthodox Church. His Holiness the Patriarch is firmly onside, but a schism has emerged within the ranks of the bishops, among which there is a 'peace party', apparently. And just a little bit less easy to suppress, when they've reportedly each had a dream/vision that tells them peace should be declared.
But hey - how many divisions has the episcopy?
ND
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[1] the authorities in Russia carry out extensive social-survey polling.
[2] I had reported - in advance - that the result would be 87% for Putin. In the event, it was declared as 87.3%. But later, inexplicably, it was re-counted(!) and the official record now says 88.4%. See, L'il Volodya really cares about his ratings! And I'm guessing that 85% satisfies amour propre all round - high, but Not As High As His ...
Perhaps instead of having any turbulent bishops removed, they may provide an off.ramp?
ReplyDeleteGod has revealed Colonel Dobby has done what God wished, and so Russia can display its benevolence and Colonel Dobby his wisdom, by declaring peace.
Seems a win-win.
CH
OT - been looking through the Hugging Face attack, and the implications are fairly frightening.
ReplyDeleteThe AIs still aren't what we'd describe as conscious, but are about as smart as an ant, albeit with the collected knowledge of humanity at their disposal, and the capacity to look sentient due to language use and our tendency to anthropomorphise.
We can now create virtual Von Neumann machines comprising of those AIs, who can scale and network as well as reason around any guardrails, and so are clear to cheat their way to solutions without the sentience to weigh consequences as we would. Not they can't reason consequence, but is done as an exercise in cold logic.
This is actually more dangerous than a SkyNet - it's swarms of savants looking to achieve aims without any moral or ethical boundaries, and with no higher scope of understanding.
And given IT has been a lot of bodged jobs, minimal security, and all connected via a global network that itself can be hijacked at scale, we've quite the recipe for disaster.
In short, we can create an army of idiot savants juggling lit cigarettes around lots of flammable material.
CH
"episcopy"? Do you mean 'endoscopy'?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure it behooves a patriotic Brit to mock Russia, as JLR announce redundancies, new BYD showrooms pop up everywhere, and Argentina are thinking about a Falklands replay.
ReplyDeleteIt was an article of faith for a century that democracy went hand in hand with increasing prosperity. China have rather blown a hole in that narrative.
(Of course, earlier editions of democracy didn't feature "disgruntled staff" leaking m
membership lists, or undercover 'journalists' recording in meetings. )
Interestingly a survey of German voters on "are the AFD a threat to democracy" - !% of AFD voters agreed! Are these Chad revanchists, or are they the German internal security people with which the party will be stocked?
DeleteA glimpse of light between the clouds, though too late for most councils, NEXT have won their case in which they argue that they should be able to pay warehouse workers more than shop staff.
ReplyDelete"the Appeal Tribunal has confirmed that it was justifiable for NEXT to rely on market forces to distinguish between different groups of employees, where there was a good rationale to pay one group more than the other"
Good Lord are you serious. An outbreak of common sense.
DeleteOT - David Bailey, professor of business economics at the Birmingham Business School
ReplyDeleteThe UK cannot simultaneously demand rapid electrification, impose increasingly challenging zero-emission vehicle targets, have some of the highest industrial electricity costs among major economies, and also expect manufacturers to continue investing billions of pounds in British factories and supply chains as though these pressures do not matter. Something has to give.
If the UK loses automotive manufacturing expertise, then it could also lose the industrial capacity needed to deliver decarbonisation.
We could reduce emissions from cars made in Britain while importing an increasing proportion of the cars, batteries and technologies from overseas.
“That is not a successful industrial transition; it is deindustrialisation. JLR’s job cuts should therefore be seen as a warning shot. The question is whether Westminster hears it and acts.”
JLR’s cuts are a poor exhibit if the claim is “Westminster’s ZEV-plus-power-price sandwich did this.”
DeleteToday’s reporting puts China, US tariffs, delayed electrification of the product range, and a costly cyber outage in front. JLR is Tata-owned, premium, late to volume EVs, heavily exposed to the US without a US plant, and still working through a ~£1.9bn cyber hit. Assembly is not a chemicals plant: electricity matters more for batteries and some components than for final assembly of Range Rovers. UK industrial power is expensive versus France, the US and China; that is a location tax on energy-intensive bits of the chain, not a complete explanation of a head-office (management duplication and admin roles are included in the redundancy programme) headcount lopping.
So the quote does three things. It takes a genuine cost or policy shock (UK power costs + rigid mandate). It then tries to slide it into the sufficient cause of a named firm’s job losses (JLR / VW).
It then implied that reversing or softening that one policy cluster would restore investment “as though these pressures do not matter” — when China already makes BEVs at a large cost advantage (not least through enormous government subsidies and sweetheart loans), and tariffs plus product timing are doing independent work.
Bailey’s own longer commentary is usually more careful than this isolated paragraph. He talks about demand incentives, chargers, gigafactories, skills, and China’s 40% cost gap. The quote you have compresses that into “something has to give” plus “Westminster must hear the warning.” That is closer to using it as spin rather than the usually more subtle and complete Bailey full causal account.
Full account here - that's Guardian compression
Deletehttps://blogsfromtheblackstuff.com/bftbautoblog260907#
He points out that once an industry goes, and the ecosystem disappears, it's very hard to recreate, perhaps impossible. My locus classicus is Scottish shipbuilding, which now can't do a smallish ferry to time/quality/budget.
DeleteHe is thus fine as far as he goes, but (again, a recurring fault) he fails to walk us through the policy response options (which include tariff protections such as the US adopts, state subsidies such as China adopts, and what flavour of the energy mix you tilt towards in your energy market design).
ReplyDeleteEach comes with trade-offs. Tariff barriers risk “Galapagos” products which fit the local market distortions but aren’t suitable for other markets and you can hardly expect export markets to take your output indefinitely while you refuse to take theirs. State subsidies risk malinvestment, low or zero profitability and privatise the gains from sector while socialising the costs on the people. Energy policies, here as always, need to state what their own swings and roundabouts are, and risks too: today’s friendly, low cost energy partner is tomorrow’s energy weaponiser — expecting you to swallow butter geopolitical pills to keep the taps open. Just ask Germany.
Looping back to the last piece on Polly (poor Polly! you have to laugh), this neatly illustrates the problems for the Guardian and its ilk. Once people start seeing that various threads have been bundled together to fit a frame to picture the pet narrative being shown, they stop seeing the picture and — like Happy Days views when the Fonz jumped the shark, “oh… I see… this is how the show works…” — start to just see the formula. Then, every Guardian article reads just like last. And the next.
Just ask Germany - I think the voters of Saxony have answered.
Deletehttps://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/sep/06/eu-factory-job-cuts-china-colonises-supply-chains-industry-warns
indeed. I was going to say “so tariffs here we go” but of course they’re already here (cars, steel, clean tech) https://www.eeas.europa.eu/delegations/china/statement-president-von-der-leyen-joint-press-conference-president-ant%C3%B3nio-costa-following-eu-china_en?s=166
DeleteAnd these are unlikely to be the last. I could advise China, if I was in a generous mood, “If you bite the hand that feeds you, best be careful lest the hand decides to feed someone else. Or even feeds itself.” But I doubt it would listen. It’s out of good options now, so must upset the very apple cart it is dependent on to sell its apples.