Mungler

Give it up, it’s over. Look at the world now; 99% back to normal, no masks, no travel restrictions and yet covid is still flying about. Indeed the average death stats and other data now available tells us everything we need to know. We were done, well and truly conned by an over zealous media that thrives on the doom mongering and daily briefings lead by largely irrelevant civil servants who for once found meaning, status and platform. The resulting dent to society, civil liberties and the poverty that will follow will make ‘Covid’ the disease look like a walk in the park. We had a street party Friday and the house over the road has Covid - of the other 20 houses in the road the unanimous response was ‘blimey, is anyone still bothering to test’. That was it. No one gives a monkeys because they are now able to fully ***** and understand the risk.

So, let’s try the lowest hanging fruit. Skripal / Salisbury poisonings and Alexander Litvininko - Kremlin sanctioned assassinations, yes or no.

This is a frightening read and it’s contents are as predicted or rather a predictable result of the ‘pandemic’. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-covid-cult-did-lasting-damage-to-our-kids

And we’re all going to be paying it back in tax and forever

It reminds me just how disconnected, out of touch and irrelevant the (unelected) officials within the Church of England are. Given the historic link between sexual abuse / exploitation and organised religion, the fact that the Arch Bishop feels compelled to say anything on this subject let alone to punt ‘more forgiveness of Prince Andrew’ is incredible, and less we forget that saying nothing and staying out of it were easier and perhaps more viable options. You wonder what weird environments these people inhabit - who told Prince Andrew to do that interview? Rumour is that Prince Andrew, after the interview, told everyone that he thought he did a really good job and that it went very well for him. What planet does he come from? ‘Planet-Thick-As-Mince’ in the ‘Total Moron Constellation’ is perhaps missing one of its higher ranking village idiots. And as for the Arch Bishop, ditto, how did he arrive at the conclusion, that of all of the worlds events that he feels compelled to comment upon or issues worthy of a public expression of his support, Prince Andrew is top of that list. Indeed, the last time we heard from this Guardian reading Liberal pansy, he was taking aim at the Home Secretary for trying to do something about the boat loads upon boat loads of military aged males landing on our shores each and every day. In other news, the Church of England is predicted to be no more by 2033 due to declining numbers. Maybe the Arch Bishop should be focusing on the Church’s rapid decline…

‘Once Upon A Time in Londongrad’ Sky documentary. Brilliant stuff. I’ve just got to the end. Broadly, a long list of Putin / Russian state sponsored assassinations, investigated and tied in together.

Cheers Edd, I’m going to do some research and reading in on that lot today.

Our usual builder has stripped out a ground floor shop / basement (used as a bar / restaurant) and there’s a 1st floor residential flat above. Theres potential to get a mansard on top as an additional 2nd floor but the planning consultant says p-permission is 1 to 2 years away. I have a tenant desperate to get in - will take 15 year lease, credentials as good as they can ever get. Having stripped out the restaurant (ceiling down and back to brick on the walls) I want to make the downstairs as ‘future proof’ as possible and assuming that I will get planning in the months / years to come. That means looking at sound proofing and fire protection now - eg installing a simple / manually operated sprinkler system now in the restaurant whilst everything is stripped out will be easy. Ditto steels for the extra floor (structural engineer already working on that). I’ve never had to go near sound insulation before and don’t know where to start. I don’t ‘need’ a sprinkler system, but putting one in now (even just for the kitchen) is too good an opportunity to miss.

Anyone know anything about: 1. fire regs for a restaurant - particularly for between floors 2. sprinkler systems / options 3. sound proofing - materials, off the shelf systems, methodologies etc ta very

Yes that’s exactly how it goes. It’s the end. The whole governance of this country is now in tatters and ruin because the PM (and opposition party leader) had a beer or two in lockdown and in the intervening months the lawyers, the police and the press have been picking over the corpse of what was dreadful lockdown legislation that was wanged up in a massive hurry and made a distinction between a business meeting and a social event, with one allowed and the other not. No one else at the time go out to a restaurant for a ‘business meeting’? If Boris has committed a crime, then no doubt it’s crime of of the century up there with bugging the headquarters of the National Democratic Committee. Oh no, that’s right, parking on a zig zag for is a more severe criminal offence. So so so bored of it all now and that includes the gnashing and wailing and claims that this is something it’s not : ‘serious’.

I talk to lots of people everyday. Everyone wants to talk about energy prices, cost of living, interest rates, Ukraine and their next family holiday; in short the future. Agreed. Where is the full hauling over the coals of Whitty and that philanderer who made up the R rating? Ppfffftt in fairness I’m not even worried by that now because we’ve all learnt that lesson and it won’t happen again. The future is important, not dwelling on beer gate (either side of the political spectrum).

I could not care any less about this. All those column inches and hours on the airwaves dedicated to this and yet we have a war in Ukraine and a cost of living crisis in plain sight and we’re arguing about who had a beer when. All the other world leaders must be watching us (notably Putin) and laughing their backsides off. This London media bubble needs sorting out - I haven’t met and don’t know anyone who gives two hoots about any of this.

They have 3Phase in the garage next door and up and down the road. The cost was because they said they needed to traffic light / close the road and pavement because that’s what procedure required. I’ve seen the network map as part of the quote and it’s picking up off the pavement, a straight line and it’s 15’. I get it, they have a procedure which is designed for a uniform approach but I can’t help think we really are in a world where it is about whether the ‘computer says no’.

I didn’t buy my EV, I business leased it on a cracking deal at the height of covid because (1) it’s 100% tax deductible (2) no ULEZ and no congestion charge (3) cheap as chips to run in terms of electricity bills (4) performance that makes you scream (0-60 in 4 seconds and immediate torque and power at any speed). It was a purely economic decision and after 3 years I throw the keys back and I’ll get another albeit I expect the government to start rowing back on the financial incentives to get one. I couldn’t give a monkeys if it catches fire (that’s what insurance is for) nor do I care about the environmental impact - it could run on Panda tears for all I care. The bonus out of all of this is the breathtaking performance and ease by which I charge it up - I plug it in at home once or twice a week. We did look at getting EV chargers at work for that added tax break (using work leccy to charge up) but the thieves at UK Power Networks wanted £15k to run fresh power from the road to the office (a 15’ run) to give us 3 phase, and when the electricity running cost each month is about £60, even with that doubling to say £120 with crazy energy prices coming, that’s 10 years of charging right there in the cost of running a 15’ new supply. So we didn’t bother. I can only speak from personal experience and that is I don’t see myself going back to petrol / diesel. That’s me, everyone else can buy and drive what they like.

From January this year following research released in the US https://thedriven.io/2022/01/11/evs-have-extremely-low-chance-of-catching-fire-but-hybrids-more-risky-data-shows/amp/

Hahahha that is spot on.

Hahhahahah you really should look harder beyond the ‘knock the EV’ narrative. The fire destroyed 4 diesel buses and 2 “hybrid” buses (no EV vehicles) and the cause of the fire undetermined.

Spot on. Indeed, it was arm and feed. Oh and don’t forget, apparently that would have been the US carrying out a ‘proxy war’ against Germany 😉 .

As above, I still don’t see or agree with the proxy war hoo ha in helping Ukraine defend itself. Referencing other countries that weren’t helped to the same extent - well not helping hasn’t somehow become a precedent and perhaps Ukraine was ‘the line’ that got crossed. The only argument for not helping Ukraine appears to be because it would be over sooner, but that does rather skip over the whole Russian occupation, genocide and the Ukrainian people not being too keen on that.

The remoaners claim Brexit was influenced by Russian sponsorship / funding of Farage / UKIP / Banks and on-line shenanigans. I’m ambivalent, I think getting out of Europe will pay long term dividends and self governance (and not being told what to do by the French and the Germans) is something quite precious right now. And as for the ‘as if’ well yes, it’s as if Putin’s thrown a massive boomerang.

Indeed, it’s not a totally unreasonable ‘ask’. Even when you’re on a loser there’s tactical merit it making it attritional if only to be a n a position to cut a better deal. As an aside it drawing it out helps all neighbouring nations at any threat of ‘more of the same’ from Russia; indeed it’s no coincidence that the countries that don’t mooch on their NATO contributions border Russia. Before we got stuck into this, everyone was saying what a tactical genius Putin was - buying Brexit to weaken the Euro alliance etc but this has been a total disaster for him and with 2 counties who had previously steadfastly resisted joining NATO rushing for the signature page.

We’re not that far apart. The discussion point at work was the crunch which will effect us and that is ‘when, not if, the energy crisis hits and electricity is rationed to certain hours of the day and you then have to structure your office / business opening times to fit that supply of power and deal with the economic impact of that…. at what point do you / the nation turn from supporting Ukraine to forcing Ukraine into a settlement with Putin to get the lights back on’. Indeed, if the rumours are true that Putin is planning to cut all energy exports to the EU in September, then that is when it gets interesting. Negotiations will take pace, Putin will save some face and something will ‘break’ because it has to. And that is what is coming over the horizon. Aside from accelerating a domestic nuclear energy program and starting fracking immediately, I would line everyone in this country and the EU against a wall for making us so ‘energy vulnerable’ and not listening to Trump back in 2018. Long term though, we will have Russia as the North Korea of Europe and the world will be buying more tanks and bombs. And where did this all start - Putin rolling tanks over a border for a land grab, when he didn’t have to, and I apportion culpability on that basis not on ‘what about what happened in Iraq’. .

We’re not a million miles apart save for ‘proxy war’ and ‘what about Iraq’ and now ‘why aren’t we doing more to negotiate’. I’ve said my piece on proxy war and Iraq - by dictionary definition it’s not a proxy war and as for Iraq, aside from that being two decades ago, ‘so what’ it hasn’t set a new moral or legal benchmark for invading a neighbour. My beef is with the whiff of ‘we have to look to why Putin has done this’ and ‘we should be negotiating with him’. Starting with ‘negotiation’, yes all wars end round a table. However, history has taught us that there are some people you can’t negotiate with. We all know the history of the Second World War and Japan’s refusal to negotiate or surrender notwithstanding that on any analysis it was over for them. Having gone island to island and not being prepared to deal with Japan on a similar basis one yard at a time the Yanks forced them to the table with 2 very good reasons to pack it in. I agree though that the door to negotiation should always remain open but you can’t reason with the unreasonable and you can just wear yourself out trying. To suggest that a negotiated settlement should have been reached by now and that the lack of a negotiated settlement is somehow the fault of everyone but Putin is at odds with the reality of the man and what the man has chosen to do, has done and is prepared to perpetuate. As to Putin’s reasoning, it’s a land grab pure and simple and nothing to do with NATO or Nazis. The constant ‘we should understand why he has felt the need to…’ undermines the reality. When Hitler rolled tanks into Poland I am sure there were people at the time asking that the world understand his reasoning, and to excuse it because of historic imperialism on the part of Britain (“yes he’s rolled into Poland but ‘what about’ Britain, the empire and Africa and India etc”), or they excused his actions reciting the fear Germany had of its neighbours following the First World War. As for negotiating with Hitler? Well, Chamberlain has gone down in history for his conviction and failure for that.

The intercepts from the soldiers mobile phones are very telling to me - they are contemporaneous and there are a lot of them being collected to document the war crimes. Those intercepts, in summary, show (1) early on the troops were told very little, then of (2) a training exercise, then (3) a special military operation against Nazis (4) then an invasion / war against Nazis. Now we’re on a mix of Nazis and a pre-emptive strike against NATO. We’ve had a similarly wandering narrative from Putin. Whilst I said right at the beginning that the Ukrainians can’t ultimately ‘win’ (they are up against a nuclear power with far far greater reserves of men and machinery) I think you have to accept that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has not gone well as well as the Russians might have hoped. Indeed, it’s been a total and wholesale military and economic disaster for Russia with the current score sheet showing losses far outweighing any gains. So, back to the black and white moment - none of this needed or had to happen and that’s the bottom line for me, and anything that follows is ‘on’ the invading force. The Putin apologists only ‘counter’ is ‘what about Iraq?’ Indeed, what about Iraq? Two decades ago, different continent, entirely unconnected and only connected to Ukraine because apparently it’s a free pass now to invading a neighbour on a land grab. And all the while the quickest end to this conflict is Russia withdrawing back over the border, not asking the Ukrainians to surrender or starving the Ukrainians of aid so that the Russians can get an easier and quicker victory (that like of argument is just mental).

You are measuring apples with pears if you’re going to wander down the Israel path; indeed, the tenor ‘there’s a lot of wrongdoing in the world and we’ve all done it before, so what’ only just serves to water down what is happening right now. Part of the significant and undermining propaganda flying around is the ‘it goes on all the time and we’ve all [sic UK/US] done it before’ but what Blair / Bush did two decades ago is no excuse / justification / reason for what is happening now. You can reach back into any country’s history and find something awful, but what’s that got to do with Ukraine? The point about Ukraine is that it is near enough to be in our direct vision, was a settled democracy with elections and it was not an aggressor towards Russia. There’s a lot wrong in the world, and as for Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan (1) they are far away (2) I can’t ever remember when they haven’t been in conflict (3) so what? If another country outside of Europe is in conflict and we don’t get involved / are involved to a lesser extent, how is that a precedent for how we should approach Ukraine or a reason to do nothing. I think the UKs approach right now is correct - provide what assistance we can and at distance. However, the suggestion that that assistance is a proxy war in the circumstances to hand is just nonsense and does not meet the stated dictionary definition of proxy war in any event. The repetition of ‘it’s a proxy war’, ‘what about Yemen’ and ‘what about Iraq’ only serve to water down our feelings and the national response. I’ve seen the Twitter bots in action and Putin has done well in his cyberwar - he’s won over a few on here no doubt 😀