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goddamnedtwisto posted:I know the football-related jokes will sail over the heads of many posters ITT but push through them for the second-to-last panel in this week's Squires cartoon in the Graun: I have pretty much no interest in football but absolutely love Squires.
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Mar 2, 2022 10:39
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Kin posted:So, I just took the plunge and grabbed the "loyal customer" fixed price with Octopus. Is that for both G&E? Octopus were pretty upfront about not being best for gas and I found SO Energy were better for me. Too late for you, maybe, but Martin Lewis did a quick YT on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94Uq3jbIGHg Basically, don't fix unless it's within certain percentages of the projected rises on the rate cap.
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Mar 2, 2022 10:41
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Red Oktober posted:I have pretty much no interest in football but absolutely love Squires. 
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Mar 2, 2022 10:41
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I'm worried this "no-fly-zone" talk is going to have to be taken seriously soon. Unless Zelenskyy is captured and somehow the resistance completely caves this is going to turn into Aleppo all over again. In that situation, NATO has to sit here, watching Aleppo happen in Europe with no guarantees that it stops with Kyiv. I'm not sure that "this intervention starts and stops with Ukraine" isn't a safer tact than "wait and see if the aggression starts and stops with Ukraine". Assuming a no-fly-zone doesn't go from 0-armageddon overnight, Russian artillery is forced to retreat or be destroyed from the air and Putin is unable to take Kyiv with boots on the ground. I'm also not sure what is scarier, an emboldened Putin having successfully flattened Ukrainian resistance with bombs and brutality or an embarrassed and defeated Putin.
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Mar 2, 2022 11:05
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jiggerypokery posted:I'm worried this "no-fly-zone" talk is going to have to be taken seriously soon. Imposing a no-fly zone means that NATO will be directly warring with Russia for air superiority. A hot war between the two powers is exactly what we're trying to avoid in order to prevent a live re-enactment of Threads. There's basically no scenario where anything else is the preferable option, and there are ongoing hot wars around the globe (many of them conducted considerably more brutally by considerably less formidable perpetrators) where NATO isn't even beginning to consider driving the aggressors out of the skies.
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Mar 2, 2022 11:21
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jiggerypokery posted:Assuming a no-fly-zone doesn't go from 0-armageddon overnight This is in no way a safe assumption, A no-fly zone is sending NATO planes in to blow up Russian planes. Russia will + can only fight back against that by blowing up NATO air bases. That's just a war. The idea of a no-fly zone as a precursor to war as seen in our middle eastern conflicts depends entirely on the US military being so overwhelmingly powerful in the air that they can dictate the terms of war to the defending nation.
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Mar 2, 2022 11:23
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Jaeluni Asjil posted:British coleslaw: I mean, much like here, you get both the more loose-cut stuff and the finely diced stuff (the latter especially in a supermarket or w/e). Having lived in both places there isn't really a difference. Maybe you're more likely to see mustard in the US version. US biscuits and gravy are nice, I make them at home sometimes (from scratch, not like I can pop down to Kroger and pick up a roll of Grands).
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Mar 2, 2022 11:38
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In many ways we have managed to successfully fool ourselves using our own clever euphemisms like as if a "no fly zone" is not actually a war. When "no fly zone" is obviously a 'only I fly zone', with a disagreement on who that 'only I' is. Our own neologisms are going to trick and kill us. But that somehow seems fitting for the neoliberal landscape we currently live in.
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Mar 2, 2022 11:39
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Biggus Dickus posted:Is that for both G&E? Octopus were pretty upfront about not being best for gas and I found SO Energy were better for me. This is why I've actually stayed with octopus. As far as energy companies go they make an attempt to be honest and they invest in green energy heavily. They also do a nice carbon offset tier (which yes I know carbon offsets are questionable but it goes directly to a charity that helps bring energy to developing countries)
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Mar 2, 2022 11:49
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A no-fly-zone is a limited war. I mean it in the sense of "These are the rules we NATO will engage with. Only Airpower, only within the borders of Ukraine. We won't hit anything outside of Ukraine, including Russian air bases. Withdraw your poo poo or we will have a hot war under these terms" It doesn't have to escalate beyond that. I'm being a little devil's advocate here. I'm saying that the writing is on the wall and I think we are going to see this option being taken more and more seriously. I am not saying anything about what I think NATO should and shouldn't do.
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Mar 2, 2022 11:52
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Desiderata posted:In many ways we have managed to successfully fool ourselves using our own clever euphemisms like as if a "no fly zone" is not actually a war. When "no fly zone" is obviously a 'only I fly zone', with a disagreement on who that 'only I' is. all the zones have names like that in the galaxy of terror
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Mar 2, 2022 11:57
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There is no such thing as a "limited war" for god's sake, you're either at war or not, and if you're at war you don't get to say "yeah but you're not allowed to retaliate because we were only doing a little bit of war"
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Mar 2, 2022 11:58
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Russia has the world’s biggest nuclear arsenal, and we cannot go to war with them, ever. We have clearly delineated what Russia has to do to start a nuclear war - invade a NATO country - and anything short of that we cannot retaliate militarily. There is a lot of stuff we can do, like hitting Russia economically, or skirting around what technically counts as war by supplying weapons and so on. But if bullets come out of NATO guns and hit Russian targets the simple fact is the world will careen towards ending. It’s weird that people who can’t seem to get their heads out of Cold War mode even after decades also seem to have trouble with this bit of the Cold War that is still true. Only strange proto-neoconservative weirdos would have suggested an open war with the USSR over invading Afghanistan, for instance. Because regardless of the legality or morality of that invasion, we couldn’t risk nuclear annihilation. The fundamental, and distressing, truth is that as long as Russia doesn’t cross those red lines it can do whatever it wants, and we cannot militarily stop them, including going full scorched-earth and murdering millions of Ukrainian civilians.
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Mar 2, 2022 11:59
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jiggerypokery posted:A no-fly-zone is a limited war. I mean it in the sense of "These are the rules we NATO will engage with. Only Airpower, only within the borders of Ukraine. We won't hit anything outside of Ukraine, including Russian air bases. Withdraw your poo poo or we will have a hot war under these terms" Someone in the war thread says that no fly zone also includes bombing aircraft-related buildings. Would that be “no fly zone plus”?
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Mar 2, 2022 11:59
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Nato can have a little war as a treat?
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Mar 2, 2022 12:01
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A tiny war. An infinitesimal war. Perhaps even an atomic war.Mega Comrade posted:This is why I've actually stayed with octopus. As far as energy companies go they make an attempt to be honest and they invest in green energy heavily. They also do a nice carbon offset tier (which yes I know carbon offsets are questionable but it goes directly to a charity that helps bring energy to developing countries) Electricity from 20.306p to 27.627p per kWh and standing charge from 23.759p to 44.750p per day. Gas from 3.987p to 7.282p per kWh and standing charge from 26.112p to 27.219p per day. Very large change in the electricity standing charge. And gas about doubling but that was expected. Rerunning the numbers on making tea Guavanaut posted:It takes about 7 minutes to heat up enough water for 2 cups of tea and a bit extra on the gas hob, so say 0.3kWh or 1.2p of gas. A cup boiler takes 30s per cup and draws 3kW so 0.05kWh or 1.015p of electricity. 
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Mar 2, 2022 12:04
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little a war, the meme is little a [x], as a treat. and I demand economic sanctions against anybody who gets it wrong!
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Mar 2, 2022 12:05
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Comrade Fakename posted:Russia has the world’s biggest nuclear arsenal, and we cannot go to war with them, ever. We have clearly delineated what Russia has to do to start a nuclear war - invade a NATO country - and anything short of that we cannot retaliate militarily. There is a lot of stuff we can do, like hitting Russia economically, or skirting around what technically counts as war by supplying weapons and so on. But if bullets come out of NATO guns and hit Russian targets the simple fact is the world will careen towards ending. a lot of folks on the left late in the Cold War made a great deal out of the USSR's pledge to No First Use in 1982 as détente broke down and the CND rose against Pershing IIs my vague sense is that this has created a residual assumption that the West's rivals today likewise consistently maintain No First Use as part of the communist high ground. Indeed it remains true of China. But it is not true of Russia.
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Mar 2, 2022 12:05
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jiggerypokery posted:A no-fly-zone is a limited war. I mean it in the sense of "These are the rules we NATO will engage with. Only Airpower, only within the borders of Ukraine. We won't hit anything outside of Ukraine, including Russian air bases. Withdraw your poo poo or we will have a hot war under these terms" How well exactly do you think Russia would react to said "limited war"? Like, do you think they'd go "oh ok, sorry, we'll follow the rules" or "see, this is what we've been saying all along about NATO!" simultaneously proving their own propaganda, supporting their narrative and kicking off a hot war. Only way a no fly zone would work is if it was enforced by China, which is not gonna happen. Sending anti air equipment is going to be much more useful, particularly if they are aiming to use old heavy bombers.
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Mar 2, 2022 12:05
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Solve the energy prices problem by utiizing state resources to heat many areas of the UK to thousands of degrees in seconds.
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Mar 2, 2022 12:06
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OwlFancier posted:There is no such thing as a "limited war" for god's sake, you're either at war or not, and if you're at war you don't get to say "yeah but you're not allowed to retaliate because we were only doing a little bit of war" Western Europe is already sending arms, equipment and volunteers. By this logic, there is zero difference between the situation we were in Monday last week, a "no-fly-zone" and total apocalyptic war.
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Mar 2, 2022 12:10
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Comrade Fakename posted:Because regardless of the legality or morality of that invasion, we couldn’t risk nuclear annihilation. You have a very twisted view of what kind of species you're sharing the globe with. We can and we repeatedly have.
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Mar 2, 2022 12:17
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jiggerypokery posted:A no-fly-zone is a limited war. I mean it in the sense of "These are the rules we NATO will engage with. Only Airpower, only within the borders of Ukraine. We won't hit anything outside of Ukraine, including Russian air bases. Withdraw your poo poo or we will have a hot war under these terms" You're describing the military equivalent of "I'm just going to start waving my arms and walking towards you and if you get hit it's your own fault". We wouldn't accept that behaviour from a child, why the gently caress are we talking about it being an acceptable option for a multinational, nuclear-armed, military alliance?
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Mar 2, 2022 12:19
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For the same reason as the old "What do you call a gorilla with a machine gun?" joke, because it's a multinational, nuclear-armed, military alliance and not a child.
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Mar 2, 2022 12:22
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Bacon Terrorist posted:The RMT is a union of contrasts. Being widely supportive of CND whilst their Barrow branch having a nuclear submarine on their banner, for instance. namesake posted:Despite Truss saying it was A Okay to go join the Ukrainian militias it is not okay so if they start talking about it on the applications or border crossing then they might find themselves stopped. Haven't Ukraine specifically said only people with military experience should come?
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Mar 2, 2022 12:22
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jiggerypokery posted:Western Europe is already sending arms, equipment and volunteers. By this logic, there is zero difference between the situation we were in Monday last week, a "no-fly-zone" and total apocalyptic war. If you can't tell the difference between sending weapons for Ukraine to use and an American pilot shooting down a Russian pilot then I really don't know what to tell you.
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Mar 2, 2022 12:24
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NATO is almost certainly not getting involved in this The best case (and absolutely awful) scenario is that this conflict just drags on as a meatgrinder for the Russians for months/years, until internal opposition forces a change in leadership at the Kremlin. At which point they can declare.... mission accomplished I guess, and withdraw leaving a heap of rubble and hopefully as much of the Ukrainian state intact as the Ukrainians were able to keep hold of. And then... maybe Putin, and some lower ranking Generals go to ICC (providing that he's alive), and Russia makes some vague apology and pays some rebuilding reparations in about 50 years time. keep punching joe fucked around with this message at 12:31 on Mar 2, 2022 |
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Mar 2, 2022 12:26
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goddamnedtwisto posted:If you can't tell the difference between sending weapons for Ukraine to use and an American pilot shooting down a Russian pilot then I really don't know what to tell you. This doesn't actually work as an argument against the post it's quoting.
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Mar 2, 2022 12:26
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goddamnedtwisto posted:If you can't tell the difference between sending weapons for Ukraine to use and an American pilot shooting down a Russian pilot then I really don't know what to tell you. And if you can't tell the difference between using an American pilot to shoot down a Russian pilot in Ukraine and sending nukes followed by columns of tanks into Moscow/Brussels then I strongly recommend not following goings on over the next couple of weeks because it's going to be loving terrifying.
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Mar 2, 2022 12:32
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the boundaries of what would constitute a credible commitment to thermonuclear war has always been a bit airy. During the Cold War itself the emphasis was on tripwire forces - “What can 7,000 American troops [in West Berlin] do, or 12,000 Allied troops? Bluntly, they can die. They can die heroically, dramatically, and in a manner that guarantees that the action cannot stop there.” after the Cold War ended and the Soviet archives were opened, it was seen that actually barebones tripwire forces increased rather than decreased the probability with which the Kremlin assessed the likelihood of retaliation. The Soviets never invaded West Berlin because they, in fact, did not intend to invade West Berlin. But they did approve the Korean war because they thought that Korea could be quickly overrun, so that that the Soviets could then present a fait accompli. Russia assessed the weakness of a Western position by the probability of a lightning assault changing the facts on the ground, rather than whether the West would feel duty bound to retrospectively justify the deaths of its soldiers the Ukraine crisis presents a genuine problem because it seems that for a large part of Europe, the NATO commitment has morphed to a kind of pan-European identity - someone from France is willing to die to defend Albania on the same-ish grounds they would die to defend France, so to speak. It is this that has propelled European acquiescence to pushing the border east: it turns out that the expansion of the NATO mutual defense umbrella has actually proven slower than the expansion of this identification of some concept of fellow Europeans, gauging from the astonishing reaction in European capitals over the past week. There is some abstraction applied here in which Georgians do not qualify but Ukrainians do.
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Mar 2, 2022 12:39
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BREAKING: Tim Gammonchops has sent us a press release for a publicity stunt Oh, and also , Armageddon. 
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Mar 2, 2022 12:47
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endlessmonotony posted:You have a very twisted view of what kind of species you're sharing the globe with. When did NATO get in a shooting war directly with the USSR?
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Mar 2, 2022 12:48
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Comrade Fakename posted:When did NATO get in a shooting war directly with the USSR? He's talking about risking a shooting match, not engaging in one, i.e. "we have repeatedly risked nuclear annihilation"
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Mar 2, 2022 12:50
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keep punching joe posted:Russia is not officially at war.
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Mar 2, 2022 12:53
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Turkey/Russia just very recently - shooting down Russian bombers in Syria, Russia bombing Turkish army convoys, etc. There is actually precedent for an I'm-not-touching-yoooou shooting war on the borders of the NATO umbrella. Not active belligerence but kind of a convenient carelessness in a war with numerous factions. Rather than a hard-and-fast trigger rule, "everyone knows" that Turkey and Russia were really just jockeying for influence in Syria so there was no real appetite for escalation. If one really thinks that it's just another proxy conflict for influence in Ukraine, then the same argument would apply too. Nobody really knows how seriously Russia interprets Ukraine. If one believes that speech then Putin regards Ukraine as an integral part of the all-Russia nation. If one thought Russia was rational and predictable, well, that concept also took some hits lately. ronya fucked around with this message at 13:01 on Mar 2, 2022 |
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Mar 2, 2022 12:56
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Lol can you seriously make something 'not a war' by calling it something else? Hi, yes, I'm sending troops into your borders uninvited and shelling your cities and shooting your citizens, but we're definitely not at war, dumbass. jiggerypokery posted:And if you can't tell the difference between using an American pilot to shoot down a Russian pilot in Ukraine and sending nukes followed by columns of tanks into Moscow/Brussels then I strongly recommend not following goings on over the next couple of weeks because it's going to be loving terrifying. I don't think anyone is going to be sending nukes or columns of tanks into either Brussels or Moscow. E: Vvv Not to try to justify Russian aggression or anything but is there any truth in this do we think? Ukraine does have a lot of neo nazi fash paramilitaries (the public rehabilitation of which is going to be one deeply worrying outcome of this whole mess) and I kinda can imagine them getting up to some pretty shady poo poo wrt self declared ethnic Russians in the breakaway regions. We're encouraged to take Ukraine's side in this 100% but I'm not sure that's particularly helpful. ThomasPaine fucked around with this message at 13:08 on Mar 2, 2022 |
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Mar 2, 2022 13:00
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Borrovan posted:What was that declaration of war about then? They didn't make a declaration of war, they announced a special military operation in self-defence, against a rogue state that they believe to be carrying our genocide against ethnically Russian citizens while also carrying out a hostile military buildup on their borders. As far as international law goes the language used matters even if it's total bollocks. Though they did spoil all the careful diplomatic chat with all the numerous and publicly viewable warcrimes so go figure. keep punching joe fucked around with this message at 13:09 on Mar 2, 2022 |
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Mar 2, 2022 13:02
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jiggerypokery posted:And if you can't tell the difference between using an American pilot to shoot down a Russian pilot in Ukraine and sending nukes followed by columns of tanks into Moscow/Brussels then I strongly recommend not following goings on over the next couple of weeks because it's going to be loving terrifying. Are you genuinely trying to claim sending actual NATO forces in to Ukraine to fight Russian forces - because that's what a no-fly zone *is* - somehow isn't a colossal escalation of the situation?
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Mar 2, 2022 13:05
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JeremoudCorbynejad posted:He's talking about risking a shooting match, not engaging in one, i.e. "we have repeatedly risked nuclear annihilation" “Risking” is not what we’re talking about. There have been plenty of one-off crises where mistakes were made or one side thought they could get away with someone, sure. But this is committing to shooting down any Russian planes over a country for an extended period of time. This is less a risk than an invitation to nuclear war.
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Mar 2, 2022 13:05
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ThomasPaine posted:I don't think anyone is going to be sending nukes or columns of tanks into either Brussels or Moscow.
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Mar 2, 2022 13:08
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