Would it be some kind of appealing beardy communist peacenik betrayal to suggest that NATO should stop expanding and/or even go back to what it used to be?

Last change that advanced east was 2004, 18 years ago.

Only 4 NATO countries border Russia, are you going to throw out Norway?

Where to start with this? Honestly do you really believe this stuff that’s been fed to you via the tory propaganda machine?

Would he stay in a NATO as PM?

Is he not a lifelong campaigner for peace?

Do you not watch RT? Do you choose to watch the biased UK MSM when RT is prepared to speak truth to power?

Do you want to ignore Young Labour and their carried motion to leave NATO? Do you want to ignore the young who vote for JC?

many saw Corbyn as a stretch too far.

If he had won there’s a strong chance we would be out of NATO and sending peacekeepers to support the two self declared states that Russia has just recognised. All part of his life long campaigning for peace.

There will be millions upon millions of current cars on the road in 5, 10 years from now

20 years plus, what car can people on low incomes afford?

Mobility will become the next issue in affordability once new ICE cars are banned

Don’t expect 20 yo Tesla’s to be supported by the manufacturer

Or maybe the fact that it’s mid afternoon, broad daylight and she’s got the curtains drawn and the light on might make them question her mental faculties,

No, that’s the photographer we are paying very well to take these

Can’t help but think poor Zelensky is thinking he didn’t sign up for this shit. One minute he’s playing at being the president in a tv sitcom, next he’s being threatened in real life by the Russian Gangster-in-chief. It can’t be a comfortable place to be.

How many Ukrainians do you think are comfortable right now?

He’s probably asking his scriptwriters what to do,

I doubt it, he has a lot of very serious professional advisors who believe in Ukraine

and probably has a plane on standby to whisk him to exile in the US.

Nope, I expect he’ll hold out to the end, he’s not part of that political elite who can fund living in exile and I think that he’s daft enough to stay because he believes in Ukraine

We had a system of recording IRR mileage

You claimed for the shorter of the two journeys either office to site or home to site, IRR mileage was the actual travelled.

Company was a FTSE 100 and tax cautious so I would check. The commute from home is irrelevant if for example you were staying at the girlfriends/ boyfriends

Also if you don’t have a contractual requirement to have a car and say cycle to work I don’t see how a automatic deduction works

Seriously though, stop worrying. If anyone tells you there’s a risk of nuclear war then they’re idiots. No one is going to destroy human civilisation because of an Eastern European backwater which is mostly empty. Not even Putin.

There is always the risk of nuclear war, too many regime’s that have them are at best described as unstable or dictatorships

Ukrainian ambassador on Newsnight claiming Russian troops have already crossed the border in the disputed regions

Putin’s now ordered russian troops into the rebel held areas on ‘peace keeping missions’. I assume they’ll shortly be ‘attacked’ as the final pretence.

I’m sure it will be due to NATO aggression, the secular Saint and “Stop the War” will be out to campaign for peace quite soon

The Baltic States will be looking at the Russian playbook and thinking “we would be next if we weren’t in NATO”

2 builders from ‘mybuilder.com’ have registered to provide a quote.

£1995 I bet

I remember a woodwork teacher who had a “break glass” 3 minute warning kit, it comprised a tea bag, a match and a cigarette

Given how widespread the Soviet infiltration of the UK was, I’d be astonished if CND had escaped their attention.

That’s not to say it was some sort of KGB run puppet organisation though

Uk/US/etc have probably done the same for years

Anyway, to lighten the mood, why not hit Todmorden with a Topol SS25

The stone mines at Lee Quarry were once a prospective command centre, I think they were put off by the fact no-one in senior ranks would move there

I think that the Soviet threat was exaggerated during the cold war, certainly post Cuban Missile Crisis. It suited both sides politically.

If you look at the mapping exercise that the Russians did it was for only one reason. You don’t need detailed maps of Grimsby for defensive reasons.

Unless Biden has an ace up his sleeve. the US putting out real time info must have Putin spooked as he is ex kgb. Is there a rat or plot to relapse him must be running through his mind. the USA could just be making it up but somewhere there is glass to the wall and info is leaking.

Mobile phone and social media data will be helping, getting everyone to switch their phones off and not message home is impossible.

Russia already has well developed targeting capabilities using mobile masts. I suppose that NATO will have similar capabilities

Trained police firearms officers can fail the basic army annual personal weapons test.

They may have been ribbed mercilessly about it

It’s not the cost, it’s the shitty attitude

It was the shitty attitude I got as a paying member that means I no longer part with cash

I think we are both now struggling to see any positives that could come from this,

As many have posted there are lots of positives to being a parent, they are just different to those of those who choose to be childless.

Choices either way are valid but you need to commit to one or the other and enjoy. If you choose to be childless get the snip it’s far more ethical.

I would also point out one side of the discussion aligns with what Rod Liddle thinks

The other doesn’t

There are other threads for Scottish Indy discussion. Let’s try and keep it off this one.

To be fair it was more an insight into the thought processes of the poster.

They’ve flooded Ukraine with weapons though which could easily be seen as an act of aggression deterrence

Seeing as the weapons aren’t that much use for offensive operations

The rats are abandoning ship

She could just be visiting her mum for the weekend

Do you see England honouring the results of an independence referendum should it go against them ?.

That could well be a question for the future.

Will we see the US siding with England and claiming the Scottish referendum is illegal.

LOL, fantasy stuff

If the referendum is legal and binding then of course it will be respected. The last one would have been respected.

Gas is an internationally traded commodity, so prices are set by the market.Any price pressure just ramps up the speed of decarbonisation. RUK government has Barnett savings, I imagine it will also stop the massive tax subsidies for decommissioning etc. In other words paying Scotland for gas isn’t an issue in a web of complexity unless they start territory grabs and threatening to shut the gas off which is fantasy stuff

Lancashire don’t seem too bad. Stuff I report seems to get actioned in the main. Mainly duff Stiles though.

It was only built as a outrageously expensive temporary structure 20 years ago.

FIFY

i think I’d be prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt and say that if I was in a job where I’d seen 2 of my colleagues murdered in the last few years my views on cops shooting people might be different from the mainstream.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say her views on this are probably mainstream for Ashton under Lyne

Hopefully the first thing that is drummed out of police on firearms training

As has been discussed, we know that Russia wants aRussian controlled buffer zone between itself and NATO

FIFY

Heard about similar on a consumer news thing, takes ages to sort out

Also Julian Assange is a journalist, how are we treating him?

A lot better than plenty of countries would.

Three meals a day, medical care, legal representation, no torture

But isnt it strange that the war in Syria went on and on and on until Russia stepped in and ended it.

It’s still going

Then syria – Total dead about 1/2 million

The Russians have been involved more than any western country

Had a fight with Ukraine, leaving 5000+ dead, Russia annexed Crimea due to the government according to the voters being illegitimate brought about by a coup d’etat, killed 2 Ukrainian soldiers and promptly pinched it from from Ukraine.

After years of being setup as a client state of Russia by a pro Russian elite. The war in the Donbas saw IT professionals from Kiev joining the Ukrainian frontline as ideological volunteers. The Ukrainian state was essentially taken off life support and a “not Russia” identity forged in the fighting with regular Russian troops. The relative lack of casualties is arguably the one bit of good news

Idiotic comment quite frankly. Corbyn is doing what he’s always done, which is campaign for peace and social justice.

Pass the koolaid comrade

Must be slim pickings I guess finding addresses without tv licenses

I doubt it. All the address data will be available to them, cross reference with credit checking agencies and you get a list of easy targets. Poor area, low credit rating, suddenly stop paying, they will focus on these rather than the long-term no licence addresses

Random thread resurection, but we were actually visited by a TV license person this morning. Sadly, he / she didn’t so much as knock on the door, just posted through a ‘You’ve been visited’ hand filled in form.

They have told a commons select committee that they expect to double prosecutions now we coming out if the pandemic

They’ll probably credit check you and realise you aren’t vulnerable and ignore you and go for the easy pickings

I thought that yesterday’s Opinium poll which gave Labour only a 3% lead might have been a bit of a rogue poll but apparently not if a YouGov poll today gives the same identical figures.

Has Richard Burton been on the telly recently?

Diane’s “stop the war” support can’t have had that much traction

. I don’t think that the capabilities of modern US battlefield tech have been trialled in this kind of conflict.

As the people who make these things know, as soon as you reveal your capabilities the other side develops counter measures.

You seem quick to dismiss any analysis in any paper which you disagree with

Simon Jenkins is never “analysis”

It’s a distorted picture to reflect his views and to attack individual members of the government and Brexit which he hates

As for Twitter what am I picking up off that platform?

Unlikely, given the size of the country and the Russians already living there who feel they are still part of Russia. In Afghanistan the entire population hated the invaders, plus the lack of infrastructure made moving about difficult so insurgents were able to hide.A Ukrainian insurgency would fast run out of places to hide.

Makes you wonder why they just don’t give Putin the keys and let him get on with the takeover.

I think the only qualification to that is that US hawks will be interested as to how well US defence tech currently in Ukranian hands performs, and what hidden capacity, particularly cyber, the Russians decide to use. Getting Putin sucked into a draining insurgency-style conflict would be a bonus.

The tech gets plenty of use elsewhere, the grownups in the room will know that this is bollox reason which no-one sensible will put forward, a Russian invasion means half of Europe goes cold when the gas gets turned off.

There is no “upside” in a conflict, just dead Ukrainians and Russians and a rise in the cost of living, and more international uncertainty for us