Energy price cap

It may not exactly be good v evil, but one side in this conflict are definitely evil and apparently getting their sorry arses kicked all the way back to mother Russia.

Mungecrundle wrote:

It may not exactly be good v evil, but one side in this conflict are definitely evil and apparently getting their sorry arses kicked all the way back to mother Russia.

I don't have any strong opinions on Ukraine and Zelensky, but I'm pretty sure that Putin is not someone I'd want to get more money and power than he's already got. Unfortunately in conflicts, it's always the poor that suffer the most.

Something something PR merchant something something clothing branding er ... making other countries spend more money on weapons ... er ... financial corruption ...

Must be channelling the Stalinka or maybe Mao suit?  Oh, wrong "side"...

Anyway clearly a sign of a poseur or tinpot dictator.

Roulereo wrote:

None on Zelensky banning Gay marriage

Zelensky has said that his government is prioritising legalising civil partnerships for gay couples; he also said that Ukraine's constitution defines marriage as being between a man and a woman and he cannot introduce constitutional change during a war, but that he will be lookng to do so as a matter of priority once the war has ended. Which doesn't sound like banning to me (which in any case implies that it was there to ban, which it wasn't).

It was the Iraq war narratives that made me realise how unreliable our apparently independent media really is.

We're in a post truth world now, for better or worse.

Rich_cb wrote:

It was the Iraq war narratives that made me realise how unreliable our apparently independent media really is. We're in a post truth world now, for better or worse.

I'm still waiting for Tony Blair to be held accountable for war crimes

Same here.

The legacy of that war is nothing short of horrific and it was all based on lies.

And pretty much everyone now agrees with that.

Rich_cb wrote:

It was the Iraq war narratives that made me realise how unreliable our apparently independent media really is. We're in a post truth world now, for better or worse.

There's nothing to stop you shopping around - choice is good, right?  If you put in the linguistic (and cultural...) legwork you can also compare and contrast with news from around the world.  It's never been easier.  I got into that when living abroad and it is incredible just how divergent viewpoints from different countries are.  However for bigger events it is quite often possible to distil some common "agreed facts".

Unfortunately despite a massive expansion in possible inputs many people still choose to get their news from a small pool of sources.  So not much change from asking Sue at the corner shop for the gossip.  With a massive expansion in "coverage" there's more temptation for journalists to make use of stories from elsewhere with zero fact checking.  Or to just decide that "opinion" is what you're going to put out.  Indeed the meaning of "journalist" has become much wider and looser.

It's human nature to favour slogans and stereotypes over the complexities of reality.  In the case of the Ukrainian Azov battalion this requires more historical understanding that either the West or Russian narratives normally deliver:

https://www.ft.com/content/9f9a7aee-04e7-45ce-871c-f5d157e08d08

Yes, that's been my approach, unfortunately 'fringe' viewpoints often come from stopped clock websites.

99% nonsense with a grain of truth every now and again!

I see the past few years as a massive blanking of anything that doesn't meet with the deemed narrative on Covid, Ukraine, etc. You can't rely on any old media for truth, it's narrative and sneering opinion. Then Big Tech actively wipes anyone and anything which "it" deems as misinformation. The corporate media is now fully on board with this, slurring anything like Hunter Biden's laptop as Disinformation, while promoting the Clinton's "Steele dossier" of Trump's supposed Russian election collusion (hint, it was a hoax perpetuated by the media with no repercussions). Governments, Johnson, Trudeau, they all carry on like tyrants and dictators with the knowledge there was not a massive expansion in possible inputs, as the media and Big tech are complicit in repeating their lies, or removing any dissent or non-narratives. There simply isn't journalism anymore, it's opinion and re-tweets. An old crooked Premier in Australia used to call news conferences where he would provide talking points to subservient journalists as "feeding the chooks", how prescient he was. 

I'm not sure it needs historical understanding to somehow condone Zelensky's support of his Azov battalian, neither to explain why he has released from prison a convicted child rapist Ruslan Onishev, a former head of the infamous Tornado division, to fight for him, along with ISIS members, rapists, etc.  Putin is a total POS no one's arguing that, but honestly funding a proxy war for this scam artist with our taxes is not the way. Peace talks is. 

Good convo though, thank you for putting it well and not resorting to sad piffle like a couple of others here when they read something that hurts their feelings. 

The thing with peace talks is both sides need to want them or care about the consequences of continued fighting. Not much motivation for that in either side.
The Russians don't care about what everyone else thinks
(short of nuclear war), nor how many Russians or Ukrainians are expended. Even allowing for wasteful tactics materiel advantage means they can overrun the place (although after that, who knows - but it wouldn't be a place to visit). I think Putin has made it "impossible to lose" despite a literal stranglehold on the populace.
The Ukrainians as individuals seem overwhelmingly in favour of "live free or die". And it's pretty clear it's "fight now or die later at Russia's leisure". Which is why there's sympathy in the US populace I suspect.
Fewer nazis than you'd find in a US militia...

I think that is the basis for a windfall tax.

Not sure if the profit is going up in % terms though but in £s it's going up a lot.

(22 posts to go before you get your free road.cc socks !)

brooksby wrote:

hirsute wrote:

(22 posts to go before you get your free road.cc socks !)

???  I'd assumed if I hit 10K posts then I break the site or something...

That's what I'm hoping for, but looks like you're going to find out before I do.

Maybe you get reincarnated (reinstantiated) under a different username - your score resets to zero, the site palette changes but now it's much harder (more ads / trolls / triggering stories)?

Year 10000 problem.

chrisonatrike wrote:

Year 10000 problem.

Year 2038 problem

brooksby wrote:

Does anyone think there will still be human civilisation on Earth in Y10K?

Do you think we've got human civilisation on Earth now?

Maybe is will appear as  #### posts as the width is wrong.
I'd hope they'll send you a feebie though !

The companies digging the oil and gas out of the ground made lots of money from the rise in price of fossil fuels, but a whole load of energy suppliers went bust in the last year.

I would suggest buying gas on the wholesale market and selling it to consumers hasn't been that profitable.

Much of that is down to bad management.  Enticing customers in on low-cost fixed rates and failing to buy forward to ensure that the demand could be met with supply at a known cost.  This meant they had to buy energy in the spot market at prices well above what customers were paying.  However, in the short term, 'profits' were distributed to shareholders and directors.

The punchline is that we are all paying for the costs of supplying customers of bust firms through our standing charge, along with the green levy for which we are receiving no financial benefit as renewable electricity is sold at the rate of marginal generation which is linked to the gas price.

Not to mention the decision to close Rough, a large gas storage facility, meaning we constantly need to import gas at points of peak demand, rather than being able to build reserves at points when the price is lower.