Brexit, for once some facts.

[tillson]

How much of the UK's gas comes from Russia?

I think just over 1% of our total gas consumption comes from Russia. I don’t know how much come via pipelines that Russia can exert control over. That figure may be higher.

I’ve never liked the UK’s ever increasing reliance on gas for electricity generation. That seems a waste of a high grade energy source (gas), because of the inefficiency associated with the electricity generation process. Upwards of 70% of the precious high grade gas energy being wasted. A low grade fuel such as coal or nuclear is much better suited.

 

[tommie]

Apparently they have been accused of invading one recently.

Britain of course has constantly invaded countries for a millenium, including several very recently.
.

My goodness!!

Really, .. which ones?

I`ve missed that ....... you mean just like Crimea?

 

[flecc]

My goodness!!

Really, .. which ones?

I`ve missed that ....... you mean just like Crimea?

At least the majority Russian population of the Crimea voted to join Russia, returning rule to where it had mostly been. So Russia in fact didn't invade, nor did it need to since it had long been there with its southern fleet and forces by agreement with the Ukraine.

Iraq, Afghanistan and some Balkan countries are who we invaded. They had no vote in that and we had no prior presence agreed with them.

And as I've posted, our recent largest ships are for invasion purposes only, showing clear intent.
.

 

[Zlatan]

At least the majority Russian population of the Crimea voted to join Russia, returning rule to where it had mostly been. So Russia in fact didn't invade, nor did it need to since it had long been there with its southern fleet and forces by agreement with the Ukraine.

Iraq, Afghanistan and some Balkan countries are who we invaded. They had no vote in that and we had no prior presence agreed with them.

And as I've posted, our recent largest ships are for invasion purposes only, showing clear intent.
.

Yes, the soldiers were home help and doing voluntary work. They volunteered to look after air bases and port facilities. They helped Ukraine so much their Naval commander could come over to London for his holidays. Come on Tommie stop making out Russia are so nasty after being sp helpful...they even helped organise the referendums on matter..they even helped voters vote...how nice is that..

 

[Wicky]

At least the majority Russian population of the Crimea voted to join Russia,

A bit like Putin's election then Another legacy of Stalin's long term policy of Russification.

 

[Danidl]

My goodness!!

Really, .. which ones?

I`ve missed that ....... you mean just like Crimea?

Tommie, i am afraid I am with flecc on this one. The Crimea was from time immemorial, linked with the Russian people. It was provocative of the West to try and shut them off. The rest of the Ukraine should have acknowledged that. When the Ukraine was put together as an national entity, it was under the USSR umbrella and it made no difference, but once western influences attempted to seduce, or entice Kiev into NATO lite, it was to much for the humiliated russians. It was a crass attempt by the west and became unstuck. The current unrest in other parts of the Ukraine, and Russian Agression is a consequence of that. Don't get me wrong.. the Russians were against international law and we need to remind them of that,and the sanctions are such a reminder, but where the vast majority of the population were supportive, i find it difficult to condemn them in that instance.

 

[Danidl]

I think just over 1% of our total gas consumption comes from Russia. I don’t know how much come via pipelines that Russia can exert control over. That figure may be higher.

I’ve never liked the UK’s ever increasing reliance on gas for electricity generation. That seems a waste of a high grade energy source (gas), because of the inefficiency associated with the electricity generation process. Upwards of 70% of the precious high grade gas energy being wasted. A low grade fuel such as coal or nuclear is much better suited.

Cant Agree with your terminology that nuclear is a low grade fuel. Using it to heat water is probably the worst thermodynamic thing you can do with it.But in energetic terms and physics it is the highest form we have.

 

[flecc]

A bit like Putin's election then Another legacy of Stalin's long term policy of Russification.

Not so, Stalin's removal of the last Tatars was of the remaining small minority population, and it was those he replaced. The Tatar population of the Crimea left in waves in their own emigrations, mostly to Turkey for religious reasons. Those migrations took place between 1784 and 1790 and then again between 1855 and 1866. By 1897 only 34% of the Crimean population were the original Tatars, and with the country denuded of population, Russian repopulation occurred, long before the USSR or Stalin, leading to them being the overwhelming majority.

Russia set up the referendum but didn't need to fiddle the vote. With their huge population majority and their ill feeling against the Ukrainians who had deposed the pro Russian Ukraine government, the outcome was a foregone conclusion.
.

 

[Wicky]

Ukraine inc Crimea declared itself an independant state in 1991 a fact Soviets / Russ recoginised in 1991 until Putin changed his mind...

Since 1992, the 24th of August is celebrated in Ukraine as Independence Day

This wasn't something the West imposed to humiliate Russia but reflects that the Ukrainians wanted shot of Russia's domineering influence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russification_of_Ukraine

The Russification of Ukraine was a body of laws, decrees, and other actions undertaken by the Imperial Russian and later Soviet authorities to strengthen Russian national, political and linguistic positions in Ukraine.

Russification policy was more intense in Ukraine than in other parts of the Soviet Union, and the country now contains the largest group of Russian speakers who are not ethnically Russian: as of 2009, there were about 5.5 million Ukrainians whose first language was Russian. Russian speakers are more prevalent in the southeastern half of the country, while both Ukrainian and Russian are used equally in the center, and Ukrainian dominates in the west. Some of these "russified Ukrainians" speak Russian, while others speak a mix of Ukrainian and Russian known as "surzhyk"; many do have some proficiency in Ukrainian. Estimates of their prevalence in the country vary, but according to different studies, "russified Ukrainians" comprise a third to a half of the total population of Ukraine.


This Russification process was one of the reasons my Hungarian Grandmother sent my Mother & Aunt to the West as teenage refugees after Soviet Invasion. Evenif you weren't ethnically Russian the intent was to make sure you spoke, wrote and thought as a Russian. Think of it as Russian Borg Assimilation Process...

Resonant with my background, Translations a play by Brian Friel explores the cultural imperialism of language in an Irish context.

 

[flecc]

Ukraine inc Crimea declared itself an independant state in 1991 a fact Soviets / Russ recognised in 1991 ...

You mean America's stooge Boris Yeltsin recognised in 1991, as his US masters wanted. Fortunately drink soon finished him off and Russia was able to take back full control

This wasn't something the West imposed to humiliate Russia but reflects that the Ukrainians wanted shot of Russia's domineering influence.

But not what the majority Russian Crimeans wanted.

The irony is that the Ukrainian Orange party minority deposed the pro Russian government on accusations of corruption, but their present leader stands accused of proven corruption on a far greater scale.

The Ukraine is a very young country only a century old, and it shows in their comprehensive incompetence and inability to run a country. There's now little doubt that the EU has lost any enthusiasm for accepting them as a member.

The West needs to stand back from this whole issue, since all they ever do is make matters far worse. As in Iraq, as in Afghanistan and as in so many other places long earlier.
.

 

[oldgroaner]

Interesting news on the Beeb this lunchtime
As a backstop if all else fails Northern Ireland will remain in the EU
Ho ho ho!

Davis said during the transition period Britain will be able to make it's own trade deals for the first time in 41 years
We will have to busy to achieve parity with what we have now
"
The EU gives UK business preferential market access to over
50 countries outside of the EU
Anyone care to guess how many we will cover during the transition period?

Re the alleged Russian Nerve agent
The independent international inspectors coming on Monday will do tests on material provided, and that they find themselves
They will identify the material, not who made it, who used it, or where it came from.
Not a lot of use really, is it?

And as icing on the cake Putin has said "if Nerve agent had been used the victims would have been killed instantly"
I reckon somehow he is in a position to know that, don't you?

Every day in every way, it get's a little dafter.

 

[Kudoscycles]

BRINO is becoming a reality every day...
TM/DD has agreed that EU nationals during the transition phase will enjoy the same rights as those already here...Rees-Mogg is fed up,hehe.
TH/DD has agreed that fishing limits and quotas will stay same as current....Gove is fed up,hehe.
Next up....
Transition period to last as long as required,with the border problems that could be 5 years plus,hehe.
UK decides to stay in the customs union,Fox will be fed up,hehe.
Oh hell,we might as well stay in the single market....actually we might as well stay in the EU.
BRINO....No Brexit,at twice the price (no rebate) and no vote,hehe.
Bet the Brexiteers are loving this,hehe.
KudosDave.

 

[Kudoscycles]

Interesting news on the Beeb this lunchtime
As a backstop if all else fails Northern Ireland will remain in the EU
Ho ho ho!

Davis said during the transition period Britain will be able to make it's own trade deals for the first time in 41 years
We will have to busy to achieve parity with what we have now
"
The EU gives UK business preferential market access to over
50 countries outside of the EU
Anyone care to guess how many we will cover during the transition period?

Re the alleged Russian Nerve agent
The independent international inspectors coming on Monday will do tests on material provided, and that they find themselves
They will identify the material, not who made it, who used it, or where it came from.
Not a lot of use really, is it?

And as icing on the cake Putin has said "if Nerve agent had been used the victims would have been killed instantly"
I reckon somehow he is in a position to know that, don't you?

Every day in every way, it get's a little dafter.

The EU will give preferential market access only if we dont try to do direct deals with those countries,they can control us!!!
Isnt that the same as being in the EU?
How much will we pay for access to those deals?
BRINO !!!!!!
KudosDave

 

[Wicky]

You mean America's stooge Boris Yeltsin recognised in 1991, as his US masters wanted. Fortunately drink soon finished him off and Russia was able to take back full control.

But not what the majority Russian Crimeans wanted.

The irony is that the Ukrainian Orange party minority deposed the pro Russian government on accusations of corruption, but their present leader stands accused of proven corruption on a far greater scale.

The Ukraine is a very young country only a century old, and it shows in their comprehensive incompetence and inability to run a country. There's now little doubt that the EU has lost any enthusiasm for accepting them as a member.

The West needs to stand back from this whole issue, since all they ever do is make matters far worse. As in Iraq, as in Afghanistan and as in so many other places long earlier.
.

Ukrainian independence was also recognised by Georgia, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Cuba, Iran, China, Syria, Libya and Soviet Union - Were all these countries also controlled by US stooges in '91/'92...

A United Nations General Assembly resolution was later adopted, by a vote of 100 in favor vs. 11 against with 58 abstentions, which declared the referendum invalid and affirmed Ukraine's territorial integrity.

Its stability hasn't been helped by Russian military interference / support.

Your view would of the West standing back and letting the the country lapse back under Russian control would be welcomed by Putin but not many others for good reasons.

 

[flecc]

Russification policy was more intense in Ukraine than in other parts of the Soviet Union,

I don't know why you added that long edit about Russification, but as I've shown above, little of it concerns the USSR or Putin so is of no current relevance.

As I've shown, most of the Tatars left the Crimea in the 18th and 19th centuries, long before the Ukraine even came into existence.
.

 

[flecc]

Ukrainian independence was also recognised by Georgia, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Cuba, Iran, China, Syria, Libya and Soviet Union - Were all these countries also controlled by US stooges in '91/'92...

Only Yeltsin was controlled of course, the rest just followed the Western line as still happens now, plus that many of them were breakaways from the USSR so would agree.

I support Russia against the gross distortions of western propaganda because what the west has done was wrong and is currently doing is idiocy.

If instead of being deposed by western interference, Mikhail Gorbachov had been allowed to continue his policy of a gradual orderly transition into democracy, Russia today could well have been a democratic country on route to becoming an EU member. Or even already one.

Instead, thanks to the USA's impatient demand for an instant switch from USSR communism to full democracy via Yeltsin, an impossible aim, cold war two arrived with all its human costs.

Nothing happening now is necessary, it's only due to Ukrainian intransigence and the three part solution is in their hands:

First give up any claim to the Crimea, as Danidl and I have shown, that is invalid and the west knows it which is why they haven't acted.

Second, give up that narrow eastern strip that is in conflict because it has a mostly Russian population. It is worthless anyway, an old USSR industrial region with out of date broken down factories, it's worse than 1970s Birmingham. Give the mess to Russia, few would want such a doubtful "asset".

Then put their house in order and have a much less disputed alignment with the EU, but don't join NATO since that would only give further cause for conflict.

It really is that simple Wicky, all that's need is commonsense, a little tolerance and an end to interference.
.

 

[Wicky]

The deportation of the Crimean Tatars was the ethnic cleansing of at least 191,044 Tatars from Crimea in May 1944. It was carried out by Lavrentiy Beria, head of the Soviet state security and secret police, acting on behalf of Joseph Stalin. Within three days, Beria's NKVD used cattle trains to deport women, children, the elderly, Communists and members of the Red Army, to the Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan, several thousand kilometres away. They were one of the ten ethnicities who were encompassed by Stalin's policy of population transfer in the Soviet Union.

On 14 July 1944 the GKO authorized the immigration of 51,000 people, mostly Russians, to 17,000 empty collective farms on Crimea.

Soviet propaganda sought to hide the population transfer by claiming that the Crimean Tatars had "voluntarily resettle to Central Asia". In essence, Crimea was "ethnically cleansed." After this act, the term "Crimean Tatar" was banished from the Russian-Soviet lexicon, and all Tatar toponyms (names of towns, villages, and mountains) in Crimea were changed to Russian names on all maps. Muslim graveyards and religious objects in Crimea were demolished or converted into secular places. During Stalin's rule, nobody was allowed to mention that this ethnicity even existed in the USSR. This went so far that many individuals were even forbidden to declare themselves as Crimean Tatars during the Soviet censuses of 1959, 1970, and 1979. They could only declare themselves as Tatars. It was only during the Soviet census of 1989 that this ban was lifted.



Funilly enough Anger as TV broadcasts exclude Crimea from Ukraine map

Just as National Theatre is just about to show Translations this Summer.

"Their ambition is to create a map of the area, replacing the Gaelic names with English. It is an administrative act with radical consequences."

 

[flecc]

The deportation of the Crimean Tatars was the ethnic cleansing of at least 191,044 Tatars from Crimea in May 1944. It was carried out by Lavrentiy Beria, head of the Soviet state security and secret police, acting on behalf of Joseph Stalin. Within three days, Beria's NKVD used cattle trains to deport women, children, the elderly, Communists and members of the Red Army, to the Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan, several thousand kilometres away. They were one of the ten ethnicities who were encompassed by Stalin's policy of population transfer in the Soviet Union.

On 14 July 1944 the GKO authorized the immigration of 51,000 people, mostly Russians, to 17,000 empty collective farms on Crimea.

Soviet propaganda sought to hide the population transfer by claiming that the Crimean Tatars had "voluntarily resettle to Central Asia". In essence, Crimea was "ethnically cleansed." After this act, the term "Crimean Tatar" was banished from the Russian-Soviet lexicon, and all Tatar toponyms (names of towns, villages, and mountains) in Crimea were changed to Russian names on all maps. Muslim graveyards and religious objects in Crimea were demolished or converted into secular places. During Stalin's rule, nobody was allowed to mention that this ethnicity even existed in the USSR. This went so far that many individuals were even forbidden to declare themselves as Crimean Tatars during the Soviet censuses of 1959, 1970, and 1979. They could only declare themselves as Tatars. It was only during the Soviet census of 1989 that this ban was lifted.

There was no need to post this diatribe Wicky, I knew it if course as I also knew and posted that the vast majority of Crimean Tatars left before the creation of the USSR and the Ukraine, leaving a minority of under 34%.

Anything that happened afterwards didn't alter that fact and had no relevance to recent events.

Try reading this reply, thinking, and dropping your family historic intolerance, albeit well justified originally.
.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

All the rhetoric in media against Russia and you,d think they,d invaded a country or something...

It's pretty serious. The use of chemical weapons is forbidden by international convention. Those responsible may well find themselves in The Hague answering war crimes. The only question is who they are.

 

[Zlatan]

"There was no need to post this diatribe Wicky"

Likewise Flecc.