Surprised there's nothing on here about the proposed support package re energy? I've not read into it much but I'm glad that they've changed their mind on forcing a £200 loan on people.
So much this. The NATO argument is a complete straw man, though I do accept some of Ian's points on the rest (even if I don't wholly agree with them). In situations like this, the best thing one can do, is hunt out what Max Hastings has to say - he knows more of military history and wars than all of the rest of us put together, times a hundred.
Yeah, I mean, I'm very much against starting unnecessary wars, but when the war is brought to you, you have to fight it. Capitulation in the face of an aggressor that wants to subject your citizens to brutal repression isn't peace, it's tyranny. There also isn't really any interpretation here: Putin and Lavrov and others have been very explicit that they simply do not consider Ukraine a country, but rather a wayward province that needs to be brought to heel. The "but what if it's just NATO?" thing is some eleven-dimensional chess being played by, oddly enough, sectors of the left who are so anti-war that they end up being pro-imperialist expansion, and sectors of the classical (realist) right who are pro-imperialist from the off and think that we shouldn't stand in the way of Russia subjugating its neighbours, because its neighbours' well-being is not a concern in great power politics.
It is certainly fascinating how fringes of both the left and right seems to line up on the same side of this . There can’t be many other issues where that happens?
Do you expect your country’s government to actively back one side in every war, in every corner of the globe?
I do not. Do I think that my country should intervene when one large, imperialistic power invades a friendly nation of 40 million people with the intention of abusing its populace, and said nation of 40 million people requests the intervention? Yeah, I do.
There are a few. Isolationism, both geopolitical and economic, tends to be the big one. There's a lot of Euroscepticism on both the far right and far left as an example. Similarly, elements of the unionist left (in North America, at least) tended to be as anti-immigration as the far right until recently, though for much different reasons: the right because they don't like non-white people, the left because there was a (basically debunked, if you have functional labour laws) belief that immigration would drive down wages overall.
So it’s to do with population size? Is that why Ukraine matters and Palestine, for example, apparently doesn’t?
I absolutely believe that the west should not be coddling Israel regarding its horrific treatment of Palestine. And yes, population size is going to play into it. Countries cannot intervene in every conflict, but when it involves the displacement and ethnic cleansing of up to 40 million people, you're goddamned right I think that something should be done.
Just listened to a short video from James O’Brien, in which he comes out with a fantastic phrase to describe an entitled Tory MP who, through an accident of birth, was born into a wealthy family. The phrase was “He was born at 3-0 up yet claims that he has scored a hat trick”. Said MP, worth more than £150 million, pretty much ALL traced back to the slave trade, was criticising Johnson announcing help for the poor.
The MP in question being the plebeian-sounding Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, member for South Dorset. A total of over 30,000 slaves died on Drax plantations over a period of 200 years.
They say that morale is important in an war. I'm not entirely sure whether pelvic thrusting while firing a howitzer in a video set to Blur is what they had in mind, but hey.
Says it all about the standards of British politics. Get caught out lying or breaking the rules? Change the Ministerial Code! You know, people knew Johnson was a liar before they voted him into power. What does that tell you about the standards of the people who facilitated his being elected PM? BORIS Johnson last night watered down the Ministerial Code and denied his ethics adv-iser more investigatory powers. Under the Prime Minister’s new version of the Code, ministers can break rules without resigning. Instead, they could face having to make a public apology, “remedial action” or “removal of ministerial salary for a period”. Mr Johnson’s new version of ministers’ rules comes just days after Sue Gray’s report slammed No10’s leadership over Partygate. The PM currently faces an investigation into whether he lied to the Commons – a Code breach. Previously, it was expected that any minister who broke the Code should offer their resignation. The revised Code no longer mentions the key principles of integrity, objectivity, accountability, transparency, honesty and leadership in the public interest. A rule stating ministers must “uphold the very highest standards of propriety” has also gone. And the PM denied his ethics advisor Lord Geidt the power to launch probes independently
