Cycling UK Forum

[XAP]Bob wrote: ↑17 Feb 2025, 4:20pm

UpWrong wrote: ↑17 Feb 2025, 12:26pm 3) Boost our economy by allowing fracking. This will provide our indusry with cheaper energy to aid manufacturing.

Why do you think that allowing fracking would magically reduce energy costs in the UK?

Carlton green wrote: ↑16 Feb 2025, 11:06pm

You also have to factor in the cost of syphoning off sufficient to pay for the palaces of Putin and cronies grin the Russian defence budget though.

You think people actually get paid? If they do it won’t be much but they might be granted some favour or allowed to live.

Putin mindset: Whether it’s true and possible or not I will tell the West that I have nuclear weapons and am prepared to use them.
The West’s mindset: We must not provoke Putin or he will let off a Nuclear Bomb in Ukraine which will kill some people and cause other damage.

The West’s mindset set: we are vastly superior to Putin in Nuclear strength but should never actually use the deterrent because it will kill some people and cause other damage.
Putin’s mindset: So what if a bomb lands here. My Russia is (geographically) massive, we’ve plenty of people and the people will do as I say. I know that the West haven’t the character to cope with a retaliatory Nuclear hit on their soil, their populations will rise up against their leaders and the civil disobedience will be massive.

Carlton green wrote: ↑16 Feb 2025, 9:40am .........The Russian (leadership) mindset is different too. They are prepared to pay in suffering and deaths in a way in which Western countries are not.

roubaixtuesday wrote: ↑16 Feb 2025, 9:16pm

djnotts wrote: ↑16 Feb 2025, 9:58am I'm currently again waiting on cancer test results - don't seem all that important right now!

Very best wishes.

Nearholmer wrote: ↑17 Feb 2025, 12:18pm Fine, but we are small, and in a playground full of bullies, we’ll get duffed-up unless we get together with our (well chosen) mates.

Nearholmer wrote: ↑17 Feb 2025, 9:02am Looked at from a distance, I honestly think that the alternatives in front of the countries of Western Europe (tgat includes us) are quite stark:

- get swallowed-up into a new order that involves the vast bulk of the power, and therefore the way things operate, being concentrated in the hands of a small coterie of unfeasibly wealthy people and their political front men, with national-populism being used to make people feel good about being bled white; or,

- a really determined move, more determined that in recent years, to create quite egalitarian societies that genuinely serve the interests of pretty much everyone, and regulate the “big boys” sufficiently to prevent them fouling things up for everyone else. Which might imply a less materially prosperous, but much more socially prosperous society.

Clearly the first of those is in the ascendant, and the case for the second hasn’t really even been made …. It’s certainly not what we’ve had in the recent past.

If the second did ascend, we’d very much need to cooperate pan-Europe, but the exact form of cooperation needn’t be the EU exactly as it’s been, which might play to French and German models of how things should be organised, but is too bureau-centric for many. We need that collaboration for defence not only against Russia, but against corporations and wealth-interests that are bigger, wield more money and hence power, than individual states.

The UK is too small to safely go it alone - we are being eaten for breakfast by corporations and wealth-interests.

[XAP]Bob wrote: ↑17 Feb 2025, 9:03am

cycle tramp wrote: ↑16 Feb 2025, 10:45pm Incidently I forgot to mention 'land rover' a vehicle which has been sold all over the world, 70% of all vehicles sold are still working...

For at least one day a week, before they head back to the garage.

cycle tramp wrote: ↑16 Feb 2025, 8:38pm
..we'll survive in the same way we ways have, luck, innovation, effort, an acknowledgement of risk and sheer bloodied mindedness..