Ukraine

Its the way the Mop Flops, as you put it, if you live under a dictatorship or not.
Too much mop flopping going on in the world I reckon.

 

Hopefully sooner rather than later. What a pitiful excuse for a man. More like a petty little boy who stamps his feet and takes his tantrum out on others if he doesn't get his own way.

 

Absolutely, but he's been allowed to get away without being challenged for too long. I feel for the Russians who don't want war but then even those who do as the truth of this "mission" has been hidden from them even in the media. I wonder if they would feel the same if they knew the truth. It's sad that in Russia, there is no freedom of speech.
Even today when the Russian representative made his speech, he blamed every other country but his own. Trying to say that Russia hasn't been bombing the Ukraine and they have been bombing themselves! We are all lying as a cover up. I genuinely think that Putin wrote that speech for him!

 

I heard a story today of a woman in the UK who came to a centre to donate to refugees. She sounded Eastern European and the staff member asked if she was Ukrainian. She said no, Russian. She was so upset, embarrassed and annoyed by what is happening in Ukraine and was almost impossible to console. It is good people like her who will suffer in Russia for many years to come.

 

And that's why Putin needs to be gone by any means possible. There is good in every country but one bad seed can ruin it for the rest. So sad.

 

Sorry @JR but that just is not true.

You may believe me when I say I am no fan of Tony Blair's: I believe that he should face a war crimes tribunal and our moaning at Russia right now is severly undermined by our failure to achieve that. We look like hypocrites to many out there.

However, Blair's government changed the face of British poverty radically. The introduction of the Sure Start programme was the first time since just post WW2 that effective funding had been inserted into the poorest British communities, providing real opportunities to those who were previously considered unreachable. Huge funding with massive measured and reported impact.

Homelessness crashed with dedicated targets and funding to get people of the street, out of hotels and B&Bs. That didn't happen by accident.

Those extraordinary advances have all been reversed and some. Poverty and homeless ness in Britain have soared under successive Tory Governments, addicted to the obviously bonkers theory of unfettered trickle down economics. An economy based on hugely unregulated speculation was absolutely Blair's legacy (including the opening up of Britain to the dirtiest money in the world): but at least his government (and particularly Gordon Brown) put huge resources into addressing poverty: Sure Start, education, health. These are really important and mark a huge gulf between the last Labour government and the Conservatives.

I also do not agree that we have democratic voting choice: our voting rights continue to be curtailed with the introduction of more stringent requirements to join the electoral role. In the face of direct opposition from the Electoral Commission, David Cameron introduced legislation requiring annual re-enrolment to counter electoral fraud. Further pushing these anti-democracy moves, Johnson is now trialling voter ID, again a huge cost and solution to a non-existent problem. But it will massively reduce participation in the democratic processes - particularly, surprise surpise, among those who would never vote for him.

These are really chasing the kind of (deeply effective) voter suppression moves we might obhor in the US: a huge change to counter a non-existent problem with very well predicted outcomes. 800k people - many of whome were students - but also other vulnerable and marginalised groups, left the electoral role in the year Cameron introduced his new measures. Since then a further 1.2m people have gone - no longer part of the UK's democratic processes because we made it harder for them to participate - for utterly bogus reasons. Voter ID will have further massive impacts reducing participation in the electoral processes. This is the opposite of democracy.

The Conservatives are not the same as other political parties here: they have entirely abandoned any semblance of commitment to true democracy. They same to think that politicians get to choose their voters, rather than the other way round.

And then we have their absolute refusal to be accountable: this is new. And it is profoundly anti-democratic.

You can have Putin...though my Serb mate warned me (as I would warn against the same sentiment towards Donald Trump): Putin is a figure head for the wider KGB. It's not that he's irrelevant or doesn't have real power. He does. But it is far from the case that he is some stand alone crazy leader. Apparently this is the Russian authorities wall to wall - and he is the leader we see for a huge KGB led establishment. I find that even more terrifying TBH

 

Sadly - the people organising this will probably be fine. They have spent 7 years organising an alternative economy exactly for this scenario. Those at the top are a bit untouchable. Sure it will be uncomfortable that they won't be able to go on their holidays or send the kids to British public schools (let's actually see those sanctions kick in before we applaud too hard though...). but they are wealthy in Russia and will protect themselves.

We face the dilemma I imagine that we had in N Korea of sanctions not touching the elite, with the UN then having to step in to save the population from starvation.

 

It's a really good and important point: Putin's popularity has been waning, but that was from a height which any western european or American leader would give their right arm for. Genuine, on the streets, massive popularity. It will be interesting to see what this war does to that: presumably fairly polarising?

 

TBH I voted for Blair 3 times on the bounce. I couldn't seriously vote for Corbyn though with his 'everything for free' manifesto. Add a potential Diane Abbot home secretary to the mix and it was a no thank you from me. So like many others I voted Boris as the least worst of options given me. He's done a good job in the last two years so I'm not regretting it.
However I choose my future governments at each election with what's on offer at that particular time. BTW I've always voted for the winner so I can't be too far away from general public opinion.
Labour aren't looking too attractive just now, but I'll never say never!

 

What an impressive European Union president I've just watched on the news.. Roberta Metsola.
However a proposed EU army and joint defence program isn't likely to be music to Autocrat Putins ears.

 

I voted for TB once and then realised he was really not at all what he pretended. There was absolutely zero representation of the working people in Britain. The fact that he was able to be best mates with Bush was also pretty telling. And the lying and war mongering...

We might just have to agree to disagree about Boris: I consider him to have damaged the UK more than any politician I can think of. Brexit is an absolute catastrophe in real terms (ie away from 'we got our sovereignty back'). The environment worse. Poverty a total disaster. And the criminality, lying and corruption - the stench is overwhleming. I'd swap our Conservatives for some immigrants every day.

I'm not a massive Corbyn fan (he was a very good constituency MP when I lived in London under him) but I supported him because of the huge lies propagated about him. I found that appalling. His manifesto seemed eminently reasonable - but no one read it, and it was spectacularly misrepresented in the press...

I am almost never aligned to public opinion, but then I don't know if that's such an important measure really. And yes - I agree that Labour are not that attractive right now. I can see almost no policy gap between them and Boris.

Right now, I'd probably vote for anyone who spoke about the 14m people living in poverty in the UK and the need to do something about it.