Latest Moan From You and Me 2025

So we do all this on our own while the rest of the world dont.

Its not feesable, its unrealistic and very likely to get us invaded once they know we are a soft touch.
Airspace technology that nothing can get through is a myth, something will always get through.
We would probably only be trading with half a dozen countries around the world.

Which countries are aggressors, that will always be open to debate depending on your point of view.

 

Do we produce everything needed to build a submarine or do we buy it in

 

Probably; we are currently building 3 out of 4 Dreadnought submarines. The power units will be supplied by Rolls Royce. Everything else could be UK sourced, although the nuclear missiles will be sourced from the US; we could make them here for a cost.

 

@pete, trade restrictions etc would need to be NATO-wide. An aggressor would be defined as a country that physically invaded another. (Hacking and tech invasion is a different problem, albeit a pressing one. It won't be solved up bankrupting the country on new subs though.)

What we have isn't working to stop the Putins of this world. I don't see how more of the same works any better.

Anyway, Big Money will have its way, so it doesn't really matter what the other 9 billion of us want, sadly.

 

They said the other day that Europe spends more money on Russian oil and gas than it spends on aid to Ukraine.

I assume if they stopped importing all together there would be massive shortages.
I don't know what the answer is but wars have gone on for thousands of years and the only real answer to aggression is aggression.

 

Had a call yesterday from our vets informing us that our dog is now ten years old and as a senior dog would we like to take the opportunity of thorough tests to check her overall health. I was curious to what this entailed and apparently it's blood tests and x-rays, presumably in the hope they can find something to charge you for. Now as far as we are aware, she is in good health, and we have no intention to take up the offer which I've never even heard of being a thing before. It doesn't help, when the person doesn't even know that annual vaccinations are injections (we booked hers when he was on the line). I know a lot of hedge funds now own vets but it's so profit based now.

On the same topic, our friends dog developed a growth on her nose and long story short, it's an aggressive cancer that has taken over most of her face on one side and under her nose. The scan, which averages £2000, or so they were told, cost £3500, and they are still waiting for the results two weeks later. The problem is that our local vets referred her to a specialist in the area and the communication is awful. Our friends decided it's not in the best interest of the dog to intervene, which we support completely, but they have still had all the options explained. The one that annoyed them most is that even the specialist probably wouldn't touch it but they could pass it on to Cambridge university where half her face could be removed and reconstructed. She is a twelve year old dog that has lived a good life, so it would seem more like experimentation which we don't think is particularly ethical.

 

Thats very sad, @Thevictorian. My feelings are that once a pet has reached a certain age, there is less need for vaccinations ( unless needed for travel / boarding kennel regulations) and certainly no need to look for conditions that aren’t causing symptoms.
As for aggressive treatment for conditions like cancers, that really seems unkind. The dog will never know that it has a serious condition, or have any concept that unpleasant treatments will have a supposed benefit of a longer life, but at a cost in discomfort. Your friends are right not to intervene, there is no benefit to the pet.

 

@ViewAhead countries need to be strong enough militarily to make a potential aggressor think twice about the reaction to anything they do. The Cold War remained relatively peaceful because all sides knew the result would be mutual annihilation. If Putin believed he could march into Europe unopposed he would do it in a heartbeat.
Sanctions against Russia have been tried, and they aren't working anything like as effectively as many hoped. Why? quite simply because those with similar political beliefs have been supplying him which items the West has sanctioned. That won't stop.

 

When importing of oil etc from Russia started it should have been obvious to anybody with a brain that at some point Putin would use it to try to control Western Europe. Sadly the politicians who make the decisions don't seem to have a brain cell between them.

 

Putin, like many others, underestimated Ukraine's determination not to become a Russian satellite again. Russia needs to be put back in place before it starts on the Baltic stated and Poland again. Appeasement won't work. Any historian will tell you that Russia has coveted the Crimea since the year dot as it needs warm water ports and isn't clever or honest enough to get access thru trade treaties.

As a %age of GDP, 16 countries are spending more than the US in supporting Ukraine with funding, training and weapons. Most have borders with Russia and have been occupied by them in the past, to their cost, and don't want to go there again.

Meanwhile, the EU is accelerating plans to stop all imports of Russian gas and oil by 2027 and has already reduced Russian gas from 45% to 19% of its imports.

 

I hear you, but my feeling is the way we go about getting armed up is not so much about showing we can match fire power as using that rationale as an excuse to funnel tax payer money into the industry, with very little to show for it. And history demonstrates a constant arms race does not bring peace as, sooner or later, some madman gets hold of the keys to the store.

Rather than have every country buying hardware, training forces, etc, it would be much more efficient just to have nuclear capability held/controlled centrally. If anyone invading territory knew that would lead to instant nuking, Putin would not be in Ukraine now as he would have been toast the day after he annexed Crimea.

Of course, armed efficiency is not what anyone in the industry wants, so the whole world is held hostage to their profit motive. Eventually there is a war, to show all the arms are needed. If no war is on the horizon, a reason to start one is invented. There are better things to spend the money on, IMV, than this constant game of chicken that leads to death and destruction for millions.

Sanctions haven't worked. Those at the top don't want these to. The financial system has thrived on the concept of money being borderless with freedom of movement. Govs continually add loopholes so make sure legislation that looks like it might help can be circumvented. For example, the unexplained wealth order prosecutions will almost always fail because those under investigation are allowed to spend as much as they like on lawyers whereas the gov side is very restricted on funding. This problem was pointed out in the HoC time and again during the passage of the bill, but the wealthy wanted it that way, so that way it is.

 

Why do so many people have an email address of the type First Name Surname Year of Birth or Surname First Name Year of Birth for example Billbloggs1963 .

 

I think it's usually done as something they can remember easily.