3 ms·

> > the war as a knock-on side effect of Covid > This doesn't make sense since the war has been happening, at some intensity, since about 2014. https://commons

> > the war as a knock-on side effect of Covid > This doesn't make sense since the war has been happening, at some intensity, since about 2014. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp- https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-... > The decapitation offensive was an escalation in an already existing conflict. If anything triggered it I would say it was the failure of Russian influence ops in the US, and the roll up of their agents e.g. https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-us-fbi-deripaska-sanctions/32 https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-us-fbi-deripaska-sanctions/32... In the end its going to be a bunch of things, perhaps including the ones you noted. For example, I've read credible analysis suggesting that the Russian demographic implosion is a long-term driver: in a decade they may not have enough military age people to operate even their weak military and economy at the same time. That makes them vulnerable to India and China and, in their paranoid fantasies, Europe. But re brexit, the rolling political weakness in the UK, and its severe lack of credibility in Europe, must have looked like it would help their more recent ambitions in Ukraine. I'm fairly confident that brexit will eventually be shown to be at least partly due to organised financing and political disinformation from the Russian state, and I'd be surprised if didn't fit onto some projected timelines in some ministry in Moscow. > > If you’re in the UK and you’re hurting and you voted to Leave, you broke it and you bought it. > Correct. Unfortunately the rest of us have to unbreak it somehow. Yep.

clarada 3y ago
Germany is in recession and so is the Netherlands. Yet the UK hasn't even had one quarter of negative GDP growth recently. France is in political turmoil. Across the EU, far-right political parties are gaining real power. Yet in the UK the far-right (the BNP) has no power at all and no hope of gaining even a single MP. UK politicians are being their usual level of useless, but they're squeeky clean compared to the Qatar corrupted bureaucrats infesting Brussels. So yeah, I'd take Brexit Britain any day over the mess unfolding over the English Channel.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  > UK politicians are being their usual level of useless, but they're squeeky clean You mean like when the UK government gave a no deal Brexit ferry contract to a company that owns no ships, has no staff and copy-pasted terms and conditions from a pizza takeaway? Or when they gave 100's of million in PPE contracts during covid without tender, to companies that were registered yesterday, with links to conservative party? And of that PPE ended up getting burned because it was not functional? Or as this month, they handed over £1.6 billion to an Australian travel firm for a barge to house refugees. This barge is infested with deadly bacteria, and they could have bought the world largest cruise ship with swimming pools and for less! 1 - https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/dec/30/no-deal-brexit-ferry-company-owns-no-ships-and-has-never-run-ferry-service https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/dec/30/no-deal-bre.... 2 - https://www.itv.com/news/2021-04-21/coronavirus-contracts-worth-37bn-raise-corruption-concerns-report-says https://www.itv.com/news/2021-04-21/coronavirus-contracts-wo... 3 - https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1781474/Cost-of-migrant-barges-revealed-contract https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1781474/Cost-of-migr...

clarada 3y ago

Germany is in recession and so is the Netherlands. Yet the UK hasn't even had one quarter of negative GDP growth recently. France is in political turmoil. Across the EU, far-right political parties are gaining real power. Yet in the UK the far-right (the BNP) has no power at all and no hope of gaining even a single MP. UK politicians are being their usual level of useless, but they're squeeky clean compared to the Qatar corrupted bureaucrats infesting Brussels. So yeah, I'd take Brexit Britain any day over the mess unfolding over the English Channel.

ClumsyPilot 3y ago
> UK politicians are being their usual level of useless, but they're squeeky clean You mean like when the UK government gave a no deal Brexit ferry contract to a company that owns no ships, has no staff and copy-pasted terms and conditions from a pizza takeaway? Or when they gave 100's of million in PPE contracts during covid without tender, to companies that were registered yesterday, with links to conservative party? And of that PPE ended up getting burned because it was not functional? Or as this month, they handed over £1.6 billion to an Australian travel firm for a barge to house refugees. This barge is infested with deadly bacteria, and they could have bought the world largest cruise ship with swimming pools and for less! 1 - https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/dec/30/no-deal-brexit-ferry-company-owns-no-ships-and-has-never-run-ferry-service https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/dec/30/no-deal-bre.... 2 - https://www.itv.com/news/2021-04-21/coronavirus-contracts-worth-37bn-raise-corruption-concerns-report-says https://www.itv.com/news/2021-04-21/coronavirus-contracts-wo... 3 - https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1781474/Cost-of-migrant-barges-revealed-contract https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1781474/Cost-of-migr...