Big J

Why exactly is that so wrong? Why is it unreasonable for Ukraine to insist that it's neighbour respects it's internationally recognised borders? Russia is unquestionably the aggressor. But, in the spirit of trying to end the war, I would suggest to Ukraine that it gives up Luhansk, Donbas and Crimea in exchange for the return of all other occupied land, EU and Nato membership and a permanent demilitarised zone, manned with international peacekeepers. Putin has his exit ramp, insofar as he can say that he secured those lands for Russia, and Ukraine recovers some of it's sovereign territory and has future security assurances. Though given how the Budapest memorandum wasn't honoured, how much that is worth is debatable. Either way, a lasting peace isn't going to be acheived by simply giving Russia everything it demands. That would only embolden them to repeat the actions in the future.

Brokering a peace is one thing, but total capitulation is another. The US is not asking Russia to make a single concession, other than "give up your aim of taking all of Ukraine". If Ukraine were to agree, and Trump got his 'peace' through, Russia would be rolling through a neutered and defenseless Ukraine within 12-36 months, to finish the job.

I just feel despair now at what the WW2 generation would think of the way that their legacy is being abused and disgarded. The world went to war, tens of millions of people died to defeat fascism and it seems like the sun has barely set on that generation and there is a determined effort to replay the most abhorent episodes from the 20th century. It's remarkable and awful in equal measure that even the most vocal Trump critics didn't predict that it would be this bad.

The US is siding with Russia, Belarus and North Korea in UN votes now against Ukraine. Looking on the bright side, it seems like course of action is too much even for the MAGAs, with 80% of the US population against this new stance on Ukraine. Again I'll say, WTF does Putin have on Trump? Why does Trump feel such a deep and desperate need to appease a geostrategically insignificant country with a GDP 14 times lower than the US?

This is probably also another case of "Good technology, applied badly by the UK". The National Grid is in chronic need of upgrade. The energy infrastructure as a whole really. It, like so many other things, comes down to planning reform.

The UK is of course an island, and therefore tidal is a 100% reliable power source. But as I said earlier, storage has to be looked at. Ideally, each house should be equipped with battery storage to allow for charging during periods of high production or low demand. Most solar installations here now include a battery. 10-15% of the houses in our village have solar, I'd estimate.

Immersion heater within the heat pump boiler. Always loads of hot water (ie, we've never run out and it's always hot - not on a timer). The heating is all radiators, many of them original. We have also got an air source heat pump in the living room (40 square metres) which doubles as AC in summer. I like to keep the house a little on the cooler side on the central heating thermostat (18-19c) but then boost the living areas with the air source pump and also the stove in the kitchen (also around 40 square metres). We use about 6-8 cubic metres a year, max.

No, heatpumps are the future of heating. 25kW is almost never needed and even it it were, the 4:1 efficiency ratio of heat pumps reduces that to just over 6kWh. In the middle of winter, we use about 40kWh a day to fully heat and power our house here in Sweden. It's a big house to heat as well. It's well insulated, but equally, it's nearly 70 years old with it's original double glazed windows. My friend here works as a safety engineer at the local nuclear power plant. He's said that the spikes in energy production are the biggest issue with renewables, as dumping the excess electricity is problematic. So storage has to be the solution for that problem, where it's electrical (battery) or physical (water based - pumping water uphill to a reservoir in times of energy excess to allow it to power turbines on the way back downhill in times of need).

It's interesting to wonder what compromat Putin has on Trump.... I think Trump will quite quickly realise that aligning with Putin and alienating Ukraine and Europe is only popular with a narrow part of his base. How the Republican party has changed - could you imagine Reagan-era GOP politicians siding with the Soviets over Europeans? Trump's grasp of reality does seem to be slipping more by the day. To insist that Ukraine started the war is total nonsense. It now looks like Nato has been defanged, as who would enforce article five? And Trump's idea of a 'deal' with Russia is just to give them everything they want. Again, what does Putin have on Trump? Bleak times ahead. Listening to an interview on Times Radio today with Richard Shirreff today, he believes that the direction we're heading could result in Europe being directly at war with Russia within 5 years. With the potential total US withdrawel from Europe, US capitulation to Russia and Putin's endless thirst for imperial expansion, can states like the Baltics do anything other than fear the worst?

The terrifying thing is to think where the US might be in 10-15 years time, when Musk has truly consolidated power. What's to say that Trump doesn't force through an amendment allowing foreign born US citizens to be president? The future is not a bright place.

Last cold morning for a while, if the forecast is to be believed. Minus 14c on the way to work today but I took the car. Ice skating this evening maybe a little snow in the morning.

I agree that 2014 was the inch that Putin took, that emboldened him to try to take a mile in 2022. And too much reliance on Russian energy is true as well. Many mistakes made along the way in terms of curtailing and containing Putin, but ultimately, the responsibility for the invasion and all the death falls firmly in his quarter.

I very much agree. I listened to The Rest Is Politics interview with his widow, Yulia Navalnaya yesterday. What a remarkable and brave family.

I didn't realise that defending what is right had a price cap. Not everything is transactional, not everything is a zero sum game. Sometimes good people just have to stand up against bad people. I think I feel the most pity for the poor Russian conscripts. At least the Ukranians know what it is they are fighting for. The Russians are fighting a needless war of aggression to fulfill Putin's imperialist fantasies of creating a Greater Russia again. I'm quite surprised that he's not been the target of assassination attempts yet. Would all this end if Putin died or would something even worse take it's place?

A really useful quote from Zelensky, that is worth remembering is that if Russia decides to stop fighting, the war ends tomorrow. If Ukraine stops fighting, there will be no Ukraine. This war, this invasion of Putin's is one where it is incredibly clear to anyone with a basically developed morality that Ukraine is fighting for it's survival and Russia is in the wrong. Seeking to justify the actions of Russia is unforgivable. Russia is seeking to exterminate the very notion of Ukraine and that is why the Ukrainians are fighting. We should continue to support them as it's a fight that is to our benefit as well.

I listen to a lot of podcasts at work and one of the regulars is one called The Bulwark from the US which comes from what was originally a centre right conservative group of republicans who define themselves now as "Never Trumpers". A very interesting and usually moderate source of news and opinion. Anyway what was an amusing aside to an otherwise depressing escalation of events from the US, was that they referenced an old Mitchell and Webb sketch where Nazis on the front line in World War II have a moment of self-reflection and wonder, nay, realise that they are the baddies. Tim Miller of the Bulwark posed that question about the US now. Siding with Russia against Ukraine, denouncing European countries and repeatedly talking about forceful territorial expansion does nothing to dissuade me of that notion either.

I am not quite working 9:00 to 5:00, rather Monday to Friday shift work during the daytime. I seem to have fallen into the role of sawmilling contractor, working between the two big sawmills in the neighboring village. The work is good, and the cycle commute to get there is wonderful. It is not quite what I imagined I would end up doing, but it forms a perfectly satisfactory part of what is a very nice life. I appreciate your curiosity 😁 Proper Alpine cold as a wonderful thing. Those mornings where you can see the ice crystals hanging in the air, the deep frosts and possibilities for actually enjoying winter. I imagine that a Devon winter is pretty similar to an Irish one. They are genuinely insufferable, and the 19/20 winter almost broke me and was the final straw for us moving out of the country.

A little colder again this morning on the way to work. Minus 12°c. Made for some excellent beard ice. It's hard to get across to people in the UK that cycling in that temperature is much more pleasant than 3-4°c and rain in the UK. Here, there is no wind, no rain, no humidity and no mud. It's just cold. I personally do enjoy it, even if I prefer the warmer months.

The ice had been forming for a week or more, and we just had one period of a few hours of snow that lightly covered the ice. It's a good idea to try to clear it before the sun gets on to it because if the snow melts partially and then refreezes, you have a very rough surface to skate on. That whole corner of the lake is only about 90 CM deep. The lake as a whole is 120 ha and this corner is maybe 15. I use an auger to drill through the ice and take measurements from various places. It all tends to be pretty much the same though and we have about 95 mm of ice.

Wonderful weather at the moment. Deep frosts overnight and a degree or two above during the day. We did a lot of skating over the weekend on the lake. I am not a very good skater, but it is a lot of fun.

You're conflating the crews that flew the bombers with the commanders than designed the operations. The crews were not party to the level of civilian death they were responsible for. Bomber command (as in, the commanders) intended to kill maximal numbers of civilians and destroy maximal amounts of civilian infrastructure. I am not saying that this style of operation wasn't done by the Nazis too (although it was on a lesser scale - I don't think that's the most important issue - intent is intent), and that it's equally morally reprehensible. What I'm saying is that people in Britain have a habit of looking backwards with rose tinted, holier than thou glasses, whereas the truth is much less pleasant.

The thing is that very few in bomber command knew the totality of the plan that was carried out on Hamburg and Dresden. The flight crews were intentionally kept in the dark about the nature of their targets and the type of bombs that they were carrying. I am not blaming them for one minute. But Bomber Command knew exactly what they were doing, and what they were doing was intentionally massacring tens of thousands of people in the most brutal fashion imaginable. Look, Nazi Germany needed to be stopped, I fully understand and support that. It was a dark chapter in human history, but I do think that it's crucial to be cognizant of all actions on both sides, rather than sugar coating aspects of history that don't suit our agenda. You now have a situation where Musk, his cronies and the European far right are seeking to rewrite much of the history relating to the Nazis, which is frankly terrifying. Those who choose to ignore history are doomed to repeat it. I will fully agree with you that humans are mostly awful, or at the very least, capable of being utterly awful. We think we're civilised but we really aren't.

Dresden and the firebombing of Hamburg were war crimes. Hamburg especially. As many people died in Operation Gommorah (lasting 8 days and 7 nights) as the entire Blitz. Very few people actually knew the full scope of the operation and the truly evil details. Arthur "Bomber" Harris masterminded it, with the specific goal of maximising civilian casualties and terror within the German population. The sequence of bombing was as follows: first to be dropped were high explosive bombs to destroy windows and doors (creating the ideal conditions for the rapid spreading of fire). Then incediary rounds were dropped to create a firestorm, alongside timed high explosive to target emergency workers. A quarter ofbetter a million homes were destroyed. 37,000 (mostly) civilians died in a week. It was a war crime. Another example is the Bengal famine of 1943. Churchill intentionally diverted food away from Bengal and continued rice exports as the population starved. This was to supply well fed European soldiers and top up European stockpiles. He referenced the Bengalis as "breeding like rabbits". 3 million Bengalis died. Yes, the UK was fighting on the of what was right in WW2, but it doesn't absolve it of responsibility for heinous acts. Looking a little further back into the UK's past and you can take your pick of any number of atrocities, oppressions and wars for which the UK was entirely responsible. I detest this revisionist attitude towards British Imperialism as being a universally benevolent force in the world. Yes, it brought some benefit in some ways, but it was largely hugely negative. India, as an example, had between 25-35% of global GDP for the 1500 years preceding British colonialism, and 2% when the Brits left in 1947. Come to think of it, is there a single example of a country anywhere in the world that is objectively better for having being under colonial rule? Perhaps Australia and New Zealand, but their history with their aboriginal populations is chequered at best, and genocidal at worst. It's a huge topic

Morning everyone! Minus 15c here. Perfect for world-class beard ice whilst cycling. And I made an ice skating area on the lake. I love this kind of winter weather.