Saturday 15th & Sunday 16th February

[Frog222]

Afternoon all !

[Frog222]

[Frog222]

There is a lot of money around, just in the wrong hands !

As the half-term rush gets under way, last-minute easyJet ski flights to the Alps are selling at up to £1,223 return – without baggage.

Demand for escapes to the mountains is so intense that a morning flight from London Gatwick to Geneva on 15 February has only one outbound seat left at £588, while coming back early afternoon a week later there are two inbound spaces at £635.

The identical flights moved seven days later cost a total of £134 – meaning the half-term premium is 1,013 per cent.

https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/ne ... 98245.html

[refitman]

Cheers for starting the thread Frog. GoDaddy went down completely this morning.

[Frog222]

I can't for the life of me remember when Elie Wiesel toured many many radio and TV stations here, warning about Iran ( I heard him on two of the radio stations) --

" It's 1938, Appeasement, DOOM ! "

So in the past few days poor old Neville Chamberlain is being dug up again

Here is a more sympathetic view --

" In the late 1930s, just about every important figure in British government, and/or at least the Conservative Party, knew that it was time to spend on national defense. In November 1933, 10 months after Hitler seized power, the British cabinet created a committee on defense requirements to study the cost of military modernization and how long the process would take. That planning culminated in early 1935 in a “White Paper.” The findings? Even if rearmament began immediately, Britain would not be ready to fight Germany until 1939. The analysis described weapons not yet in production, some of them only prototype sketches. The “Thirty-Niners,” as rearmament advocates were called, realized wishes took time to become reality, and that until then the thing to do was negotiate, buy time, and avoid a new war.

And so, from 1935 on, Britain was in a juggling act: trying to appease Hitler, but also feverishly girding for an inevitable war. In that context, Chamberlain’s much-maligned policy, distasteful as it appears, made some sense. Engaging Hitler in talks and turning a cheek to his invective gained Britain time to man up. Chamberlain probably did feel his actions might make war unnecessary, and even if he failed he could say—as he did on September 1, 1939—that he acted “with a clear conscience.”

By then Britain was ready to fight—or at least far readier than a year before. “Last September we might have lost a short war,” Lieutenant General Henry Pownall, the army’s chief planner, wrote at the time. “Now we shouldn’t, nor a long one either.”"

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/a ... hy-neville

[Frog222]

Labour epitaph if they continue like this --

"But we balanced the books ... "

[AnatolyKasparov]

The bottom line about Munich is that we should never have given Czechoslovakia certain commitments if we didn't intend to honour them.

I understand the pragmatic reasoning behind appeasement then, and it was also (lest we forget) incredibly popular. The cheering crowds were real.

But at the end of the day, it was still a betrayal.

[Frog222]

Jake nails it, in c3 minutes --

Jake Broe: Why Abandoning Ukraine Is The Worst Move For America

[refitman]

Looks like Andrew Wakefield is going to have more blood on his hands. He's fully mixed up in what's currently happening in Texas.

[Frog222]

Short ...

" but right now the most influential member of NATO seems to be Putin "

[Frog222]

Accidental duplication, edited version next ---

[Frog222]

10.15 last night Times article ...........

" The US is demanding a total of $500 billion of rare earth minerals — half of Ukraine’s reserves — in return for continuing to provide military aid to Kyiv. "

Starmer to overrule Reeves and boost spending on defence
PM seeks to seize the initiative as he prepares to fly to Washington to meet Trump
https://archive.ph/GuWmU

just a little later ----------------------------



Trump&Co making yet more friends/not !

Good one by Jack Watling at the G .

[refitman]

Jesus, there are more details of the Gwynne whatsapp group in this blog. I agree with David, that there is unlikely to be any real repercussions from what happened and it's certainly not going to change the attitudes & behaviour of those at the top of the party.

[refitman]

Can you imagine if Labour decided to combat Reform/the Tories by actually helping people? Rather than becoming reactionary, racist bigots, who think that starving/freezing children and the old is 'the sensible' thing to do?

[Frog222]

Jesus, there are more details of the Gwynne whatsapp group in this blog. I agree with David, that there is unlikely to be any real repercussions from what happened and it's certainly not going to change the attitudes & behaviour of those at the top of the party.

" As I have sometimes heard with my own ears, Neanderthal attitudes such as these are echoed among senior local and national Labour figures** up and down the country. Theirs is a culture of organised contempt for everyone outside their circle."

" But I’m not alone in my disillusionment, with 40,000 members quitting since the general election. Euston Station will be looking on in envy as Labour manages to achieve a departure every ten minutes. " (First LOL of the day )

** What I find interesting too is that the british 'laddish culture' is still so widespread and apparently goes so high up the social scale .

Very uncouth !

[refitman]

As ever, fuck The Guardian and Sonia Sohda in particular.

[refitman]

Hang on, I thought there wasn't any money? Isn't that the reason they put forward for the 2-child benefit cap and removing the winter fuel allowance? I'm beginning to think this Starmer fellow isn't entirely trustworthy.

[Frog222]

Hang on, I thought there wasn't any money? Isn't that the reason they put forward for the 2-child benefit cap and removing the winter fuel allowance? I'm beginning to think this Starmer fellow isn't entirely trustworthy.

Far be it from me to accuse Starmer of being trustworthy

But if you cast your mind back all the way back to yesterday's article , on Chamberlain and Rearmament from 1935 onwards , I'm making an exception on this one for your PM .

--------------------------------------------

Michael O'Leary is VERY unhappy --

Flight costs from France to rise as government more than doubles air tax
‘Solidarity tax’ to go up in move criticised as ‘irresponsible’ by Air France, as Ryanair threatens to cut flights in country

""Income from the new rates of “airline ticket solidarity tax”, also called the Chirac tax after the former president who introduced it in 2006 to fund international aid programmes, is expected to more than double to almost €1bn a year.

Well Rachel , tax the buggers who can easily afford it !

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/ ... es-air-tax

[AnatolyKasparov]

Jesus, there are more details of the Gwynne whatsapp group in this blog. I agree with David, that there is unlikely to be any real repercussions from what happened and it's certainly not going to change the attitudes & behaviour of those at the top of the party.

What are you expecting exactly?

Gwynne will very likely never be a Labour MP again, Ryan's future is also quite uncertain. And a dozen Labour councillors have been suspended.

Plus the right wing press have been busy rooting about for other WhatsApp groups like this one, but thin pickings so far.

You or indeed the likes of Osland might not want to admit it, but this *isn't* typical of how people in the party routinely behave.

[refitman]

For a start, I'd expect the same condemnation from Starmer and the Labour leadership over Gywnne's actual anti-Semitism - especially considering the facebook group he was 'added into' back in 2019 - as the confected outrage they showed regarding people protesting the genocide in Gaza. I would also have expected something from Starmer himself, not just a statement from his spokesperson.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Turns out drinking a load of wine while you're feeling like shit is merely a temporary reprieve that ends up doing more harm than good. I can't say for sure but the hangover headache I had on Friday seemed to effortlessly morph into sinus pain which continued relentlessly until easing this afternoon. Not Covid though according to a £2 Tesco testing kit.

I'm currently luxuriating in the blissful experience of being able to breathe through my nose. We take so much for granted.

Like not having fascist far right Americans trying to force their perverse agenda on us while they kiss the arse of a murderous Russian despot.

Nobody saw that coming did they? Some ridiculous Yank nutcase turning up and telling us protecting women going to an abortion clinic was worse than invading a country and indiscriminately killing thousands of civilians.

There was always the pathetic hope, the delusion, that Trump wasn't exactly what he appeared to be, 'we can work with him'. Well no you fucking can't. Now he's been fully unleashed he's like Mussolini on acid.

And the weird thing is the US has done well out of dumping a load of it's old cold war armaments on Ukraine while its own military gets more modern equipment, they're modernising their own armed forces while depleting the military resources of a rival, which surely sounds like a good deal. Unless of course that rival suddenly turns out to be a friend.

This is the end of 'postwar' peace as we've know it and been brought up in.

Believe it or not, we might have just lived through the most peaceful and prosperous period in history and the stupid fucking yanks have blown it.

[refitman]

Today I found out I probably can't donate blood anymore.They’re taking me off the blood donor register, mostly due to the operation on my shoulders and I most likely had blood products during the surgery . I'm going to miss donating. It was nice to be able to help so many people, while doing relatively little myself (plus the free biscuits were a nice bonus). 38 donations was a good run though (the nurse estimated this would have helped over 100 people).

[Sky'sGoneOut]

That sucks dude.

Or maybe it sucks less.