Ukraine

I am surprised that Russia has not retaliated against the EU by shutting off the gas supply.

 

I think the problem is, if you dont do the former you cant protect the latter.
I hope this gives all NATO countries a jolt and they start spending more money on defense.

 

It won't be long I guess

 

They will but they are probably waiting for the money to stop flowing in their direction first.

 

Let's hope that there is a "two people and keys" protocol, and not just a button to press at will.

 

SWIFT - Russia is about to be switched off - all countries agree. Bend over Putin.....

 

I think there is a significant age thing here. Older Russians are much more likely to have that sense of grievance which clearly fuels Putin and the KGB; younger Russians will be more exposed to international ideas perhaps?

Russian media has been obsessed with driving that sense of grievance for many years now - and it’s been pretty effective in that the Russian people have been prepared to just be resigned to the unthinkable corruption that exists there because the world is against them and there is nothing they can do… pretty sad

 

It’s so difficult though:the things I find divisive will be completely different from the things others find divisive. I find it so depressing to be honest…

 

Its not depressing its reality, and always has been.

One of the problems these days seems to be that we are dictated to about how we think and what we do, we must all be the same.

I just wish people would think for themselves, and if it didn't follow the official line they still can without being jumped upon by the secret police.

Its got to the point where we have notices saying boiling water will burn you and a packet of peanuts, may contain nuts. And if its not there its someone else's fault.

 

But Pete - that’s a perfect example. So none of that stuff bothers me and it feels as though it all gets mixed into a melange where good and bad are beaten into a story to make people grumpy. Some of the health and safety stuff is ridiculous. And some of it has saved many lives… but it - like the utterly undefinable ‘wokeness’. There’s some stupid stuff. There’s also some really important stuff

So who’s official line are we talking about here? Because I see a completely different ‘official line’ - one that I - and folks like me - are always on the wrong side of…

Still: we can agree - I really wish that all of us were better at thinking for ourselves…

 

All I'm saying is because other people look at things from a different angle or have a different opinion to you is nothing to get depressed about.
It happens.

 

Ah - it's not the different opinions that are depressing @pete. They should just be interesting. It's where the deliberate sowing of division leads us...I feel we used to be a more tolerant nation, with the big issues firmly on the agenda. As we have moved on with some of those it seems entrenched and powerful interests will do anything they can to ensure that effective measures to address poverrty say, are drowned and killed by voices who scream 'socialist' say, without it being in the slightest bit true. Difference of opinion is great. The appalling suffering and environmental catastrophe facing us (which we could address but don't for not great reasons) - that's depressing.

Versions of the Russian ultra nationalist rhetoric are absolutely there in the British and American political narrative these days for eg. So there is a lot of stirring the 'look the other way people' so a) we're all upset about 'health and safety gone mad' for eg or single sex toilets and b) we don't actually look at the fact that our country is run by a criminal gang of speculators who have loaded the dice so they never lose - but the rest of us do.

That is true in the US, the UK and Russia.

Look at where we are - a very wealth nation:

1) 14 million people in the UK living in poverty (50% of black jkids raised in poverty) - but this in the face of a constant media narraticve that somehow they deserve because they are feckless and lazy;
2) Food banks on every corner - right now, compl;etely overwhelmed by demand;
3) an NHS which is profoundly ineffective after decades of real cuts, and the implementation of the internal market. My 20 year old needed emergency intervention for 'uncontrolled blood pressure' this week and was told it was 2 months to see a GP in Bristol. he is a walking stroke right now;
4) A judiciary which is attacked by the government when it tries to hold them to account, has also seen it's funding crashed, and queues for access to justice which beggar belief (did you know how hard it is to get to court right now?).
5) Public infrastructure which is crumbling insanely;
6) A significantly privatised 'public' education sector where standards are crashing in the heart of an epidemic of teachers leaving because of the pressure, the constasnt targets - and their shocking levels of funding - while the ruling political class talk of wastage, and the need for greater efficiency. If they think you can run schools on ever less cash, then why don't they send their kids to these schools?
7) A government which has literally just pushed £billions to their mates in corrupt grants. When Andy Burnham said they needed £70m to protect the very poorest in Manchester, the government - knowing they needed to act tough to the home base - said no. And yet they can award PPE contracts via WhatsApp to the bloke who runs the local, while partying in number 10. You couldn't make it up. And I could go on.

And yet - these issuse are not looked at, they are not addressed bvecause we have a national media which is either rightly scared of government reprisals or is in their pay (or vice versa in the case of the Murdoch press and the Telegraph).

Sure. This is depressing. And it isn't the lack of military spend or exertion of new rights by trans people which depresses me.