A chart has been doing the rounds on Twitter that appears to show a dramatic fall in the number of men in Ukraine. Two population pyramids are overlaid – one for 2021 and one for 2023 – with the latter indicating a substantially smaller young and middle-aged population:
The alleged source of the chart is a Times article by Maxim Tucker. However, the article does not currently display the chart; nor do any of the archived versions that I found. According to a Russian journalist who posted a screenshot of what appears to be the original version, “The editors of The Times realized that they showed too shocking data of the demographic catastrophe in Ukraine, and removed the corresponding graphics”.
But I’m sceptical. If the editors did in fact remove the chart (before anyone archived the article), a more plausible explanation is that it’s simply not accurate.
As you can see in the lower left-hand corner, the source of the data is given as the UN Population Division. I found the relevant page on their website, and sure enough it shows the same two population pyramids. So whoever made the chart actually did use the UN’s data. But this only means the UN is wrong!
According the UN Human Rights Commissioner, approximately 8 million people have left Ukraine since Russia’s invasion last year. So there has been a dramatic fall in population. Yet crucially, 87% of Ukrainian refugees are women. (A recent EU report gives an even higher figure of 91%.) The reason for the imbalance is simple: men are banned from leaving the country.
Despite this well known fact, the chart above shows an approximately equal sized fall in the male and female population. Which could be interpreted as showing that millions of Ukrainian men have died in battle – something that’s wildly implausible.
On 17th March, BBC News Service Russia estimated from publicly available data that up to 47,000 men have died on the Russian side. Even if Ukrainian losses are three times greater (and I don’t think they are), that would still be ‘only’ 150,000 men. This amounts to less than 1% of the pre-war male population – nowhere near as large as the change shown on the chart.
It’s possible that when the UN made the 2023 population pyramid for Ukraine, they forgot to account for the female skew among refugees, and hence divided the 8 million shortfall equally between the two sexes. I don’t know.
Ukraine faces a profound demographic crisis: the loss of millions of educated young women, many of whom may not return once the war’s over. However, there’s no evidence the country has lost millions of men.
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Tunisia? Are Indian call centres not sufficiently useless?
They have a better chance of being exposed to the English language than the legacy French heritage Tunisians, so they would be much better at nor understanding JL customers (QED by the article).
I find the language used in Indian call centres to be far easier to understand than that used by Glaswegian call centres. I guess the accent is Received Indian Civil Service Pronunciation, which to me sound like 1950s BBC with a whiff of curry rather than a smell of Tennants
All of India’s cheap available capacity is currently engaged with BT and TalkTalk.
To be fair I have been routed to call centres in the UK that are bad, there was one in Newcastle that was indecipherable, I forget who that was. My favourite had to be Scottish Power whose call handlers had a lovely East Lothian lilt that I could listen to all day.
It’s just another sign that all is not well in the state of Britain. I would say that the gradual destruction, maybe that’s too strong a word, of the high street is planned. John Lewis’ fortunes are just collateral damage to what is already in full flow. If you join up all the dots, there is a clear trend towards online shopping with maybe just Amazon dominating it all at some point in the not-too-distant future. Further down the line, if you own nothing, then you’re probably not going to be doing much shopping anyway! Whether you’re happy about that depends on your mindset but I’m sure the WEF is thinking about how to do that via some sort of mind control involving one or more aspects of transhumanism/AI/neuralink/5G/mRNA etc. Although their plans will come to naught, whatever they have planned for us ain’t going to be good!
“I would say that the gradual destruction, maybe that’s too strong a word, of the high street is planned.”
Use of the word “destruction” is not too strong Aethelred. The destruction of high streets everywhere is self-evident and it is deliberate.
Near me we have Rochdale, Ashton, Oldham, Huddersfield, all hollowed out market towns that are dismal even to walk through.
Oldham is demolishing its market hall and replacing it with flats. These flats will be slums before they have even been occupied.
Let’s not forget that Civic Pride has to be eliminated. We cannot be allowed any jingoistic nonsense.
It’s not yet that bad in the market towns near me – Market Harborough, Oakham, Stamford – but I can see the decline beginning.
Point taken, HP. Down in the south here it is more gradual but still in progress.
Bolton going the same way Hux. I lived there for 16 years up until June this year and the decline has been sad to see. Bury is easily the best of the lot, hopefully the council don’t start ‘making plans’ which normally equates to ruining everything.
Bury is indeed a small piece of cut glass amongst a desert of collapse in the North.
I’ve gone the other way wrt Amazon. Stopped shopping with them a few years back. Everything on there these days just seems to be cheap Chinese tat. I am going back to waiting until I need a few things and going to a retail park to buy things from an brick and mortar store so that I can check what I am getting for my cash.
I knew something was wrong when JL decided boys and girls genders were the same.
We shopped there regularly but cancelled them for wokism.
Don’t give your money to people/organisations that hate you.
I couldn’t be doing with all that. Why did the writer not just go elsewhere?
She is a well connected box-ticking exercise – she shouldn’t be allowed to lead a pig by the nose.
https://off-guardian.org/2023/10/05/no-jab-no-education-big-pharmas-influence-on-irish-and-british-schools/
A dump but a worthy one.
They are coming after the children , again. No jab, no education.
Alternatively: no jab, no indoctrination.
That’s what happens when you put a Civil Servant mandarin in charge of anything. History shows us that as clear as clear can be.
Especially a civil servant mandarin who has achieved that exalted status through ticking the DIE boxes
The thing that stands out to me from this story is the level of motivation and determination to purchase a John Lewis mattress.
I would have given up on them the moment they couldn’t clarify which mattress was on show, and gone to get one elsewhere.
But perhaps I don’t have the same level of commitment to John Leeis products.
Having moved house this year (and shock horror, to a new build as well – which I am finding very comfortable so far by the way) I was shopping around for a TV stand and a coffee table. Comparing JL to Next there where very similar looking products at both, except at JL they where £300 each dearer.
I can’t help but think that JL have been relying on name recognition to generate sales because there’s no way their coffee table that looks exactly like the Next one justifies the extra £300 cost (note – granted I am comparing online and have only seen the Next product in store not the JL one).
I did end up buying a set of light shades from them (online), using a voucher I had. I bought a couple of others from M&S at the same time, and again not much difference in quality, their home delivery service was fine but I can’t shake the conclusion that, other than name recognition they have no other USP.
Has the DS decided to have a consumer and business news section? What next? A crossword?
I’ve seen many cross words here. I’ve posted quite a few myself.
Diversity box ticking at its finest. Congratulations John Lewis. It was nice to know you.