Lighthouse

If nothing else, I think the USA would push to defend the Baltics to send a message to China/Taiwan. However, I think if it came to it, NATO would defend them and Russia wouldn't attack.

Okay, walking up to four blokes outside a pub holding a grenade, pulling the pin, then standing at the pearly gates claiming you won 4-1.

That makes zero sense. That’s like getting into a fight with four blokes outside a pub and thinking they’ve got more to lose because you can punch four of them.

No they don't, we both lose exactly the same - everything! People are talking as if the west would respond to all out nuclear Armageddon with some hashtags and T-shirts. That's not the case, there's a reason the cold war stayed cold and all the wars were fought by proxy; mutually assured destruction.

That works both ways. Putin is clearly desperate to lead his own Russian empire and that wont include getting annihilated by Britain and USAs nuclear deterrent. You can flip your argument around both ways; would Putin risk his own Empire, betting against nuclear war with USA, just for a small, economically insignificant piece of land like Lithuania?

It is now, it's been cleansed. Or even the cash. It's not like Putin's going into places with massive amounts of financial reserve or natural resources he can commandeer. A prolonged occupation of Ukraine, combined with the sanctions which will follow, isn't going to come cheap. This kind of invasion and occupation has gone tits up for countries with much stronger economies, invading much smaller places.

Let's at least keep this thread civil and on topic, please.

What? During the cold war the USSR was the second largest economy in the world. Now it's 11th and, with the exception of China, everyone above them is a democracy. They'll almost certainly slip to 13th behind Brazil and Australia with the sanctions they're likely to receive. China will take them to the cleaners on any deal for oil or gas, knowing the West doesn't want to buy from them and good luck selling oil TO the Middle East. The cold war ultimately bankrupt the Soviet Union and Putin seems very keen on replicating that.

In three months Leeds have conceded 7, 6, 4 twice, 3 three times, 2 three times and 1 twice. Zero clean sheets.

Sending NATO forces into the area, whilst undoubtedly a big escalation, isn't going to lead to either a world or nuclear war. Neither side is going to risk total nuclear obliteration over some farmland and a couple of coal mines in East Ukraine.

Be interesting to see how that washes with his supporters, I.e. right wing, halfwit xenophobes who know little about the situation other than Putin = Russia = communism = Satan… and Trump’s just w*nked him off live on air.

The danger of that is you scare everyone off and they look for ways to permanently wean themselves off Russian gas. This is embarrassing and expensive for Germany, being bent over a barrel by a county who's economy is about 1/3 the size of their own. A good time to buy shares in wind turbines and solar panels, I'd imagine.

That's a bit of a Mexican standoff, Europe can't afford to completely shut off the gas and Russia can't afford not to sell any.

For further contrast, and casually assuming Wikipedia is in the right ballpark, the invasion and seven year occupation of Iraq cost the USA alone $1.1tn

I've no idea what that translates to in real terms, you'd have to ask an economist, but $630bn is less than the GDP of Switzerland or Argentina. Doesn't SEEM like a lot to be hanging your hat on when your assets are being seized across the free world.

TBF I think that's more of a warning shot than the sum total of the west's response and it's already hit Russia's stock market and the Rouble.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-europe-60454795 There's a video of Russia's spy chief absolutely sh*tting a brick and not knowing whether he's coming or going, when talking to Putin.

So we're all agreed; It seems like the correct decision based on the information we have now. Nobody is enamoured with Boris and the Tories' shenanigans during lock-downs There's no reason to think it influenced this decision and that a different one would have been made without the parties becoming public knowledge. aintforever doesn't like Boris, as he's well entitled not to, but it has nothing to do with what's been announced this week. Let's move on shall we.

I'm done, I'll leave you to it. If it gets too rough, the safety word is 'Hercules'.

Okay, I’ll rephrase; whatever Boris may or may not be thinking (which is pointless debating because none of us are Clinton Baptiste) he has arrived at the conclusion, either by luck or judgement, which you personally believe to be correct?

You said you're more than happy for restrictions to end on Thursday but you dislike Boris. That's fair enough and I wouldn't disagree but you can't use something he's done correctly against him. He may well want to be popular and have everyone forget about the Tories' indiscretions but it hasn't impacted this decision in any way so... What you're basically arguing is a coin toss whereby; heads - Boris is a w*nker and tails - Boris is a w*nker. The coin toss is an irrelevance as all possibilities default to the same outcome. The coin has no say on your decision.

😆 Not really TBH, before Christmas we had reason to be cautious and omicron was an unknown quantity. Now we know it’s the variant we’ve been hoping for and we’ve got the anti-virals we can move on with life. Plus I caught it in an après-ski bar three weeks ago and I was fine, so f**k the rest of you guys.

That’s not really true though, we basically did return to normal. Compare the nationwide lockdowns of April 2020 and January 2021, with anything that’s happened since last summer and it’s a completely different story. Even with omicron we had a normal Christmas, shops, bars and schools have pretty much stayed open and the only minor inconveniences have been masks on public transport and isolation for those positive. That was all down to the protection offered by the vaccine. If you want to continue with the mask it’s your prerogative but I don’t really understand what you’re waiting for. The virus is endemic, it’s not going to disappear. We’ve had our vaccines, we’ve got the anti-virals, the hospital numbers are manageable and trending in the right direction… I don’t really get what you’re waiting for now. It isn’t going to get any better than this. We will continue to get mutations but they will lack the shock value they had previously because of our inherent immunity and the drugs we have to combat them. Now we can finally say it’ll just be like a bad flu. Covid will ‘steal’ victims from seasonal flu and vice versa, it’ll just become part of daily life.

Forget Boris for a second; is it right - based on the medical and economic needs of the country - that these restrictions end on Thursday, yes or no?

He wants them though and he’s clearly enough of a loony to try his luck in a fight. If we go all ‘League of Nations’ over Ukraine, you can bet that’s where he will turn next. Why not go full Russian Empire? If he’s going to keep banging on about historical territories, it’s only been a century since they laid claim to the Baltics, half of Poland, Finland, Moldova, bits of Romania and most of that central Eurasian plateau.