Proceedings of the Castle Aching Parish Council, 1905

[TheQ]

On 15/02/2022 at 15:35, wagonman said:

 

After dropping increasingly broad hints, when the next election came round I didn't put in my papers. I was lucky to have a competent vice chairman, though he too baled out after a couple of years. So far I haven't felt the need to move out of the area!

 

 

I assume it wasn't Downham Market council....

https://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2022-02-17/bigotry-and-bullying-claims-spark-town-council-walk-out

[Edwardian]

6 hours ago, Regularity said:

A couple more quotes:

' I have a 10 year old at home, and she is always saying, 'That's not fair.' When she says that, I say, "Honey, you're cute; that's not fair. Your family is pretty well off; that's not fair. You were born in America; that's not fair. Honey, you had better pray to God that things don't start getting fair for you.'

and...

'Wherever there's injustice, oppression, and suffering, America will show up six months late and bomb the country next to where it's happening.'

 

She sounds Immensely Privileged 

[Edwardian]

15 hours ago, CKPR said:

Idle thoughts of an idle fellow #457 - I was reading  the obituary of PJ O'Rourke in the Grauniard and was rather taken with his supporting Hilary Clinton rather than Trump in 2016 on the grounds that whilst he thought she was wrong about almost everything, she was at least  wrong within normal parameters. I'm mentally filing this alongside wrong, very wrong and so wrong it's not even wrong. 

 

Actually, that makes total sense to me!

 

Behaving in a way that is corrosive to the constitutional conventions and laws of your system is worse than keeping within them but using your mandate to enact policies I don't happen to like. 

[Ian Simpson]

5 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

He was incredibly funny, but on reading through a heap of quotations, it became pretty clear to me that he was genuinely a libertarian too, in that the selfishness and victim-blaming peps round the edges of the humour.

I guess libertarians, like socialists, come in different flavours. I remember one libertarian writer describing himself as a "New England libertarian" because he was glad that when he reached the bottom of his drive the state had provided a road. 

I always thought that PJ O'Rourke did understand the importance of society / tradition / culture, but that he was much more interested in the individual and the way they coped with challenges. Right wing and suspicious of the State and petty bureaucracy, but too clever and too decent to think that any single ideology can really explain a complex and messy world. 

[Nearholmer]

Unfair of me to judge on quotations and short passages, even a stack of ‘em, but after laughing a heck of a lot, I came away disquieted by what I suppose amounts to well-dressed cynicism about any attempt to improve or ameliorate the human lot by collective action.

[monkeysarefun]

5 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

She sounds Immensely Privileged 

Til the inevitable school shooting.

[monkeysarefun]

So we get to send you an Alexander Downer as part of the UK Oz free trade agreement.

 

Your border is in safe hands.

 

[Nearholmer]

Was he part-time footwear adviser to Theresa May? Or, did she advise him, and he took things to new heights?

[Regularity]

16 hours ago, Edwardian said:

Behaving in a way that is corrosive to the constitutional conventions and laws of your system is worse than keeping within them but using your mandate to enact policies I don't happen to like. 

Governance and civility outweighed “party”: a way to square principles with voting options.

[Regularity]

1 hour ago, monkeysarefun said:

So we get to send you an Alexander Downer as part of the UK Oz free trade agreement.

 

Your border is in safe hands.

 

I was going to ask if, in the scheme of things and share of the market, etc, this deal was as of mediocre importance to you as to us.

Then I looked at the picture, and realised that there was no need to ask…

[rocor]

War!, what is it good for?

 

A sideshow for western leaders that are suffering some domestic political difficulties, to use as a timely distraction. 

 

 

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, rocor said:

War!, what is it good for?

 

A sideshow for western leaders that are suffering some domestic political difficulties, to use as a timely distraction. 

 

 

 

Busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels

 

[Nearholmer]

Not foreign enough for my liking. It feels like an integrated part of a multi-pronged rolling-up of the carpet of European democracy to me, other prongs being the encouragement of useful idiots in order to fracture the EU, sponsoring of separatists everywhere, deliberate fomenting of discord, that sort of stuff.

 

Disunited we fall, if we aren’t careful.

 

Oh, and we’ve one of the fracturists in charge. How tremendously helpful.

 

 

Edited February 21, 2022 by Nearholmer

[Regularity]

Considering that London is the world’s centre for washing promissory notes (and that avoiding closer scrutiny of the City’s activities in this arena was a primary motive for those ardently pushing for Brexit), the threat to freeze funds is a touch ironic.

[monkeysarefun]

The bullies seem to be  spreading their wings all around the place.

 

Down here last week  a Chinese warship squadron sailed inside Australian territorial waters - really really inside - in the Arafura Sea just off our Northern Coast inside the Torres Strait, think of it like sailing between the UK mainland and the  Isle Of Man. When a RAAF surveillance plane flew over to check it out the aircrew got hit with laser lights from the Chinese ships.  Just another of many recent incidents of China testing the Pacific countries out. 

 

Combine that with the Ukraine situation  and then add the Republican party in the US going full dictatorship mode and declaring anyone who doesn't believe everything that GreatLeader Trump says should be expelled from the party if not executed like all the Democrats will be and are busily putting all the mechanisms in place to prevent the Democrats ever unfairly stealing an election (ie: fairly winning one) ever again and its like we have climbed aboard  the "All stations To Armageddon Via Dystopia" and the brakes have failed.   

 

But at least its taken my mind off climate change for a bit.

Edited February 21, 2022 by monkeysarefun

[Regularity]

6 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

But at least its taken my mind off climate change for a bit.

Well, I suppose if we are all blown to Kingdom Come, we won’t have to worry about the climate anymore.

[drmditch]

Re:Russia

We don't want to fight, but by jingo if we do

We've not the ships, nor many men, and as for the money - well we've borrowed it from you!

 

If I remember correctly the war scare that promoted the original song was during the Russo-Turkish war in 1877 (ish?) which lead to the treaty of San Stefano and the 'Big Bulgaria' That mess took the Congress of Berlin, Bismark and Disraeli (der alte jude - das ist der Mann!) to sort it out.

Do we have anybody of equivalent stature and abilities now I wonder?

 

Of course, that settlement did lead to another problem some 36 years later - but perhaps that happened because the leaders of that time were not of equivalent ability? 

(or just wanted a war anyway!)

 

Edited February 21, 2022 by drmditch

[Edwardian]

15 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

The bullies seem to be  spreading their wings all around the place.

 

Down here last week  a Chinese warship squadron sailed inside Australian territorial waters - really really inside - in the Arafura Sea just off our Northern Coast inside the Torres Strait, think of it like sailing between the UK mainland and the  Isle Of Man. When a RAAF surveillance plane flew over to check it out the aircrew got hit with laser lights from the Chinese ships.  Just another of many recent incidents of China testing the Pacific countries out. 

 

Combine that with the Ukraine situation  and then add the Republican party in the US going full dictatorship mode and declaring anyone who doesn't believe everything that GreatLeader Trump says should be expelled from the party if not executed like all the Democrats will be and are busily putting all the mechanisms in place to prevent the Democrats ever unfairly stealing an election (ie: fairly winning one) ever again and its like we have climbed aboard  the "All stations To Armageddon Via Dystopia" and the brakes have failed.   

 

But at least its taken my mind off climate change for a bit.

 

With bullies you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

 

My generation was very definitely taught that the decision to go to war in 1914 was wrong and that the western powers 'sleep walked' into Armageddon.  Add the Black Adder version of history, a comedic rehash of the immediate post-Great War Lions Led by Donkeys trope, and there you are. Bad idea all round.

 

Reading in more recent years suggests to me that our analysis has suffered from viewing the decisions of 1914 through the distorting prisms of the unanticipated horror of that war and of our hindsight conviction that we were too harsh on Germany at Versailles and effectively caused Round Two. 

 

I particularly remember the view implicit in my education that saddling Germany with the War Guilt clause and demanding astronomical reparations were the passionate excesses of vengeful foreigners (the French) and went well beyond what was cricket.

 

Believing that nothing could justify the horror of the Great War, or recognising that Germany's subsequent treatment proved counterproductive is fair enough, yet, from the perspective of 1914 I cannot help but conclude that, for all the complexity of underlying causes of the Great War, it was not inevitable, and that the avoidable proximate cause was the Kaiser's 'blank cheque' offering to back up Austro-Hungary if she saw fit to attack Serbia, allowing the Dual Monarchy to risk the predictable consequence of armed Russian intervention.  Thus, if anyone caused the Great War, it was the Imperial German government. Further, the prosecution of that war, with the pre-emptive strike against France and the violation of Belgian neutrality, triggered treaty and moral obligations for Britain to intervene. 

 

In the words of the Prime Minister of the day, Asquith, to the House in August 1914:

 

Every one knows, and no one knows better than the Government, the terrible, incalculable suffering, economic, social, personal and political, which war, and especially a war between the Great Powers of the world, must entail...

 

If I am asked what we are fighting for I reply in two sentences: In the first place, to fulfil a solemn international obligation, an obligation which, if it had been entered into between private persons in the ordinary concerns of life, would have been regarded as an obligation not only of law but of honour, which no self-respecting man could possibly have repudiated.

 

I say, secondly, we are fighting to vindicate the principle which, in these days when force, material force, sometimes seems to be the dominant influence and factor in the development of mankind, we are fighting to vindicate the principle that small nationalities are not to be crushed, in defiance of international good faith, by the arbitrary will of a strong and overmastering Power.

 

Yet the revisionism started almost as soon as the war was finished. Left wing intellectuals openly scoffed at what they considered propaganda concerning German responsibility for the war and German atrocities against civilian populations, all largely correctly reported at the time. And then we have the sheer unprecedented horror of the war and loss of a generation of young men. 

 

So, then we come to Chamberlain, the great appeaser. Whether or not you accept the recent suggestion, propagated via Robert Harris's novel Munich, now a film, that Chamberlain accepted war with Germany was inevitable, but was cunningly buying time until Britain was capable of waging it, albeit at the cost of Czechoslovakia, that 20-year old construct, or whether you see him in more Churchillian terms as a hopeless, doomed appeaser, as I was taught, his dilemma was real, his wish to avoid another war entirely understandable.

 

So, History has condemned Chamberlain for failing to vindicate the principle that small nationalities are not to be crushed, in defiance of international good faith, by the arbitrary will of a strong and overmastering Power, while condemning the Asquith government for allowing Britain to be drawn into war in defence of it. 

 

So, now we again have a bully in Europe. 

 

It has been obvious from the start that this was another Munich moment, though when Ben Wallis, defence minister, recently said that, he had hastily to qualify his statement, explaining that he did not mean to compare Putin with Hitler.  That would have been particularly inflammatory. Britain is not the only nation whose collective identity rests on mythologising the 1940s.  For Russians it's the Great Patriotic War against the Fascists. Then great sacrifices were made by the Russian people, though doubtless even greater than necessary due to the callous incompetence of Stalin's murderous regime. Here the fact that the difference between 1940s communists and 1940s fascists is more a matter of nomenclature than substance is an irony lost on Russians to this day.  However, in terms of foreign policy strategy and methodology, the comparison between Putin and Hitler seems entirely apt to me.

 

Yet it is a Munich moment mainly because it is another moment where the western powers are challenged to vindicate the principle that small nationalities are not to be crushed, in defiance of international good faith, by the arbitrary will of a strong and overmastering Power. 

 

That we shall probably fail to vindicate that principle will be due to weakness and disunity. Biden has shown how craven he is prepared to be by his abandonment of Afghanistan.  The US and its allies have ruled out a military response. Macron is busy posing as a Bismarkian 'honest-broker', largely, my cynical instincts suggest, in order to show how France remains as important as she likes to think she is. Britain, well, who really cares what we think or what our Prime Buffoon says? Yet, a non-military response sufficiently robust to make Putin think again is probably possible in the form of meaningful economic sanctions. These will not, I fear, be effective unless imposed by all the western powers uniformly, and, so, will likely fail. Ironically enough this will almost certainly be due to Germany.     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 22, 2022 by Edwardian
spelling

[Tom Burnham]

In terms of the Great War, I've seen it suggested that Germany was counting on Britain remaining neutral as we had in 1870 and that the Foreign Office should have signalled the British committment to Belgian neutrality more clearly.

Looking at older maps it's interesting that the western part of Ukraine was never part of the pre-Revolutionary Russian empire, or indeed part of the Soviet Union before the partition of Poland under the Hitler-Stalin pact 

[alastairq]

Like all wars, the winner will achieve the result by economics.

 

How much are we UK-ites prepared to pay for our litres of petrol?

Four fifths of this nation's population have proved to be far too much in love with their protected lifestyles.

At what point do the less-well-off start to question, 'who are these Ukrainians, anyway?'

Yup, I understand what Putin is trying to achieve.

I also understand, in a way, why.  [Russians are brought up under the influence of the cold war, just as much as our older generations]

Yup, I don't believe Putin will stop at the Ukraine, either......especially once he discovers we in the west aren't interested in doing anything more than posturing.

The eastern Baltic states? Despite their being members of NATO, I don't think NATO as such will do much to help them.  Obligations mean nothing these days.

 

Currently I have reason to believe the Russian Armed Forces have a technological war-fighting advantage over NATO...or rather, the US.

Especially in the field of unmanned weaponry, tactical oversight, and economical warfare.

Their advantage will not last long, however.

 

Does Russia, economically, need the eastern part of the Ukraine?

[Nearholmer]

TBH, I'm not even sure about the relevance of the principle that you say is at stake, Edwardian, given that we sometimes find ourselves part of "a strong and overmastering Power" doing something that looks very like crushing the odd small nation.

 

The question feels more like one of direct self-interest than high principle, something like: how much longer can the bngger be allowed to get away with it, before he even more seriously damages our way of life than he has done already? Allied to practical questions along the lines: so, if we do want to call a halt to his behaviour, what are the best means at our disposal to do that?

 

I think you can forget the idea of a western physical response to the inevitable invasion/annexation/anschluss/regime-change/coup/whatever-card-he-decides-to-play that moves first eastern, then western Ukraine into Moscow-satellitehood, because (a) there is no obligation, (b) there is insufficient preparedness, and (c) it isn't anything like clear that there would be the collective will, even if (a) and (b) were in place.

 

So, the approach has to be entirely non-physical, by which I don't mean just financial, which is necessary , but not sufficient. If we aren't already going hell-for-leather using all the sub-physical measures that Putin himself uses, and any more we can think of. We surely should be: cyber war; stirring-up his population against him; giving succour to high-level dissidents (ideally highly-placed covert ones, rather than just lowly-placed overt ones); destabilising the edges of his empire; poisoning his tea; all that stuff. Maybe we already are, and maybe thats what has driven him to get physical as a signal for us to back-off, and as a way of distracting his own population from the mess he's gotten them into.

 

Clearly Germany is in a very vulnerable position, but I'd say the US is a problem in all this too, because (a) there is a strong and genuine strand of isolationism, and questioning of the self-interest of getting enmeshed in europe yet again, that has always run through US politics, and (b) I honestly believe that they have been very seriously penetrated by 'soft war' actions by Putin, as have we, but presumably Biden does have command, at least for now, of all their spooks, covert warfare, black ops, cyber warrior types, and their intelligence gathering capability, which are the really useful bits at the moment.

 

So, Old Kev's Almanac says: "dig in" along the present easter borders of EU/NATO; attempt to come to terms with Putin that leaves western ukraine as a buffer/vacuum for as long as possible

(basically, hang the poor defenceless western Ukrainians out to dry, don't invite them into our tent, but prevent them going into his), and get our act together to create, ruddy quickly, an EU defence capability that can actually do something without US boots on the ground, but with US material aid, and intelligence and political warfare back-up.

 

We should also put an advert in a corner shop window, something like: Wanted: leader of major western power to act as catalyst for united western response to Russian expansionism. Exact nationality un-important, but must be hugely intelligent, deeply cunning, speak multiple languages, be of internationalist outlook, have an apparently open and friendly personality, and a real talent for creating and cementing alliances. Ideal candidate would have c20 years experience in leading their contry, and a pre-existing international profile, but not be older than 55 years. Ancient blokes, shambolic buffoons, national populists, and those with no discernible track record need not apply.

 

PS: Did the west already cede The Black Sea and the corridor into the Middle East? I get confused about whether we have, or not.

 

 

 

 

Edited February 22, 2022 by Nearholmer

[Edwardian]

18 minutes ago, Tom Burnham said:

In terms of the Great War, I've seen it suggested that Germany was counting on Britain remaining neutral as we had in 1870 and that the Foreign Office should have signalled the British committment to Belgian neutrality more clearly.

Looking at older maps it's interesting that the western part of Ukraine was never part of the pre-Revolutionary Russian empire, or indeed part of the Soviet Union before the partition of Poland under the Hitler-Stalin pact 

 

Reading Asquith's speech, it seems that the Imperial German government tried to bribe Britain into neutrality, inter alia by a secret deal that would sacrifice France's colonies and 'backed up' by German guarantees that they wouldn't go any further.

 

The Kaiser's government should have realised it had a problem when these terms did not find favour. Yet, I agree, saying 'no' to bullies must be done both loudly and clearly. 

 

This is an interesting tactic as it bears similarities with the 'guarantees' Hitler offered Britain to make peace in 1940, offering us the chance to retain our empire in exchange for a free hand in Europe.

 

It is interesting that the German government thought this tactic might work in 1940 when it had evidently failed in 1914.

 

I always rather like Sir Ralf Richardson's dismissal of such shenanigans even if it is 1940s mythologising!

 

 

Edited February 22, 2022 by Edwardian

[Compound2632]

8 minutes ago, Tom Burnham said:

Looking at older maps it's interesting that the western part of Ukraine was never part of the pre-Revolutionary Russian empire, or indeed part of the Soviet Union before the partition of Poland under the Hitler-Stalin pact 

 

That's not the case. Western Ukraine, having since the 16th century been part of the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania, was, in the partitions of Poland in the late 18th century divided between Russia and Austria - Austrian getting the area around Lviv - Eastern Galicia. The newly-independent Poland after the Great War attempted to annex Western Ukraine from the People's Republic of Ukraine; in the sunsequent settlement Poland held Eastern Galicia.

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Edwardian said:

If I am asked what we are fighting for I reply in two sentences: In the first place, to fulfil a solemn international obligation, an obligation which, if it had been entered into between private persons in the ordinary concerns of life, would have been regarded as an obligation not only of law but of honour, which no self-respecting man could possibly have repudiated.

 

I say, secondly, we are fighting to vindicate the principle which, in these days when force, material force, sometimes seems to be the dominant influence and factor in the development of mankind, we are fighting to vindicate the principle that small nationalities are not to be crushed, in defiance of international good faith, by the arbitrary will of a strong and overmastering Power.

 

Which is easy to say when you are the Prime Minister of a great Imperial Power.

[Edwardian]

9 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

TBH, I'm not even sure about the relevance of the principle that you say is at stake, Edwardian, given that we sometimes find ourselves part of "a strong and overmastering Power" doing something that looks very like crushing the odd small nation.

 

The question feels more like one of direct self-interest than high principle, something like: how much longer can the bngger be allowed to get away with it, before he even more seriously damages our way of life than he has done already? Allied to practical questions along the lines: so, if we do want to call a halt to his behaviour, what are the best means at our disposal to do that?

 

I think you can forget the idea of a western physical response to the inevitable invasion/annexation/anschluss/regime-change/coup/whatever-card-he-decides-to-play that moves first eastern, then western Ukraine into Moscow-satellitehood, because (a) there is no obligation, (b) there is insufficient preparedness, and (c) it isn't anything like clear that there would be the collective will, even if (a) and (b) were in place.

 

So, the approach has to be entirely non-physical, by which I don't mean just financial, which is necessary , but not sufficient. If we aren't already going hell-for-leather using all the sub-physical measures that Putin himself uses, and any more we can think of. We surely should be: cyber war; stirring-up his population against him; giving succour to high-level dissidents (ideally highly-placed covert ones, rather than just lowly-placed overt ones); destabilising the edges of his empire; poisoning his tea; all that stuff. Maybe we already are, and maybe thats what has driven him to get physical as a signal for us to back-off, and as a way of distracting his own population from the mess he's gotten them into.

 

Clearly Germany is in a very vulnerable position, but I'd say the US is a problem in all this too, because (a) there is a strong and genuine strand of isolationism, and questioning of the self-interest of getting enmeshed in europe yet again, that has always run through US politics, and (b) I honestly believe that they have been very seriously penetrated by 'soft war' actions by Putin, as have we, but presumably Biden does have command, at least for now, of all their spooks, covert warfare, black ops, cyber warrior types, and their intelligence gathering capability, which are the really useful bits at the moment.

 

So, Old Kev's Almanac says: "dig in" along the present easter borders of EU/NATO; attempt to come to terms with Putin that leaves western ukraine as a buffer/vacuum for as long as possible

(basically, hang the poor defenceless western Ukrainians out to dry, don't invite them into our tent, but prevent them going into his), and get our act together to create, ruddy quickly, an EU defence capability that can actually do something without US boots on the ground, but with US material aid, and intelligence and political warfare back-up.

 

We should also put an advert in a corner shop window, something like: Wanted: leader of major western power to act as catalyst for united western response to Russian expansionism. Exact nationality un-important, but must be hugely intelligent, deeply cunning, speak multiple languages, be of internationalist outlook, have an apparently open and friendly personality, and a real talent for creating and cementing alliances. Ideal candidate would have c20 years experience in leading their contry, and a pre-existing international profile, but not be older than 55 years. Ancient blokes, shambolic buffoons, national populists, and those with no discernible track record need not apply.

 

PS: Did the west already cede The Black Sea and the corridor into the Middle East? I get confused about whether we have, or not.

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, I retain thee old fashioned notion that principle is what does, and should always, count. It is the rules-based international system that Putin's Russia and Xi Jinping's China constantly seek to undermine, precisely because it is an obstacle to their dominance. That is precisely why it must be defended.

 

It's been a good long while since we've been a strong and overmastering power, but it was a good job we were. No amount of ex post facto guilt and revisionism can disguise the fact that Britain was decisive in saving Europe from Napoleon, the Kaiser, and Hitler, and that despite our distorted view of the Russian War of the 1850s, due to Crimean incompetence, we defeated and contained Russia in the wider war, most notably at sea, and another threat to peace and the balance of power in Europe was removed.

 

3 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Which is easy to say when you are the Prime Minister of a great Imperial Power.

 

Though it doesn't mean you're wrong!

 

See above on pointless chest-beating post-Great Power angst.