Britain has today followed the U.S. and banned Russian oil imports as drivers started queuing for fuel after being hit by the steepest weekly hike in fuel prices in more than 18 years due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – with prices expected to keep rising. The Mail has more.
Oil prices are rising at an alarming rate sparking warnings that petrol could soon hit £2 a litre – taking the cost of an average tank to more than £100 – an increase of around £17.
Unleaded hit an average record of £1.55 a litre yesterday, with industry sources saying it was likely to rise to £1.75 by next week as 5p is being added to the price every 24 hours in some areas. But prices at some forecourts are already pushing £1.80.
Motorists queued outside a Sainsbury’s petrol station in Cambridge today as they rushed to fill up cars and jerry cans before petrol prices increase even further. There were also long lines at the pumps at a Tesco in neighbouring Suffolk. On social media there were also reports of queues at supermarket pumps in Lancashire.
U.S. President Joe Biden has decided to ban Russian oil imports, toughening the toll on Russia’s economy in retaliation for its invasion of Ukraine, according to a person familiar with the matter, and the European Union this week will commit to phasing out its reliance on Russia for energy needs as soon as possible.
Filling the void without crippling EU economies will likely take some time – natural gas from Russia accounts for one-third of Europe’s consumption of the fossil fuel.
The White House said Biden would announce on Tuesday “actions to continue to hold Russia accountable for its unprovoked and unjustified war on Ukraine”.
The U.S. does not import Russian natural gas.
Boris Johnson has said the move to ban Russian oil and gas will punish Vladimir Putin’s regime but will be introduced in a way that “won’t affect” U.K. businesses.
Speaking to broadcasters, the Prime Minister said: “The U.K. is less exposed (than European allies) but clearly we do have diesel that comes from Russia and we can’t move overnight.
“But we can certainly do it and we can do it in a way that doesn’t disrupt supply, that ensures we have substitute supplies on stream in an orderly way and in a timetable that won’t affect U.K. business, won’t affect U.K. manufacturing, road haulage or other parts of our industry but will punish the regime of Vladimir Putin.”
Business and Energy Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng today revealed that the U.K. would “phase out the import of Russian oil and oil products by the end of 2022”.
He added: “This transition will give the market, businesses and supply chains more than enough time to replace Russian imports – which make up 8% of U.K. demand.
“Businesses should use this year to ensure a smooth transition so that consumers will not be affected. The Government will also work with companies through a new Taskforce on Oil to support them to make use of this period in finding alternative supplies.
“The U.K. is a significant producer of oil and oil products, plus we hold significant reserves.”
He added that the market has “already begun to ostracise Russian oil, with nearly 70% of it currently unable to find a buyer”.
“Finally, while the U.K. is not dependent on Russian natural gas – 4% of our supply – I am exploring options to end this altogether,” he wrote.
The U.K. is planning to buy more oil from the U.S., Saudi Arabia and the Middle East instead, but wants nine months to sort out the deals.
The move is expected to be announced this afternoon and will lay out the ban and its phase-in period, which is expected to last about a year to try to stop people panic-buying fuel at a time when energy prices are rocketing.
There will not be a ban on Russian gas – but this is still under discussion within the Government. U.S. President Joe Biden has decided he will ban Russian oil and gas immediately.
It came as Rishi Sunak was urged to put the City of London on a ‘semi-wartime setting’ amid fears the Ukraine conflict could spill further into Europe. The Centre for Economics and Business Research has predicted that GDP growth this year will be slashed from 4.2% to 1.9% in 2022 and down to zero in 2023.
Are we absolutely sure this is a good idea and in line with our core strategic objectives? Drastically cutting oil and gas imports during an energy crisis and scrambling around for alternatives? Dropping GDP growth to zero in the wake of a very costly pandemic? Have we properly costed our interventions and assessed them against our strategic interests?
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So this is what they mean by the great reset and build back better. Count me out.
The Woke West has engaged in economic war on its people which we the people are designed to be the losers of. After crippling debt and soaring inflation, what next? Problem. Reaction. Solution.
Is this the economic catastrophe and chaos which will birth the excuse for Central Bankers’ Digital Currency? All your transactions scrupulously monitored and fed into your profile at a data center. Your money with DRM on it – programmed such that you can only spend it where you are “authorized”. “Rewards” for “good behaviour” in the government’s soon-to-launch Social Credit Score system, not too different from that used in China. Don’t submit to the rulers’ bidding and you find your funds instantly frozen just like the bank accounts of anyone who associated with the Canadian Truckers. A complete slavery system.
This is not mere political stupidity. It is not for any worthy virtuous cause or sanction in solidarity. It is deliberate war on the people. The Great Reset continues full steam ahead.
You get the idea. Covid was just the beginning. Those who thought that the wheels were coming off the Great Reset because we were now deciding to live with Covid failed to see that, having done its job, that scare can be honourably retired and replaced by a much scarier and damaging economic car crash.
Total madness.
An astonishing failure to understand the nature of consumer capitalism, for a start.
“Consumer capitalism” is to be destroyed and replaced by Schwab and Lynne Rosthchild’s Corporate Stakeholder dreams!
Consumers are to be ‘eliminated’!
Sorry correction – I beg to point out that Man (or woman) Made Global Warming was the entrea
To illustrate Klaus Schwab’s wet dream, someone made a 3 min video of how horrifying such a future is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrEUzKTt7j0
Every word you say is true!
Nailed it!
Everyone should be drawing down their savings and keeping their cash in a safe place. Keep a minimal amount in the bank for paying bills but nothing more. Take as much cash out each day as you can before they close the ATMs as they will before the end of the year. This is modern warfare of the mind and we are the victims.
What for? I don’t imagine you are going to be able to spend a large amount of it anyway – it won’t be accepted for anything big will it. you might get away with local trader goods like cabbages, tomatoes and the like but cash will be removed from the ‘legal tender’ stream as soon as the the digital tender is up and running. This plan is so far advanced that nothing can stop it now. I recommend https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/the-not-so-great-carbon-reset for an insight.
Wish I had more in the bank than “a minimal amount…for paying bills”. Lol
Every word you say is true!
Everything has to be destroyed before it can be rebuilt. Obviously. They’re going the right way about it.
The Evil Americans are always good at the destruction bit…….I don’r see much “re-building back better” in Iraq, Syria ‘ Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq………
If only one could exit the madness!
They would like you to and….. to be fare…. are trying to help!
All going according to plan – by the looks of things.
Very, very difficult to draw any other conclusion other than this being a deliberate ruination of Western society as we know it There’s only one way this plays out as far as I can see and anyone that still does not see that the Great Reset is well underway need their heads checking
It is becoming increasingly difficult to believe they could be THAT stupid.
I’m not sure who you are calling stupid – the people who don’t suss what’s happening, or the people who are doing it.
If it’s the latter, I don’t agree at all that they’re being stupid. Those who consciously bring about the “deliberate ruination of Western society”, to use Free Lemming’s words, will profit from the ruination immensely. If there’s two-thirds depopulation, so what?
If it’s the former, well yeah, but it comes after two years of being softened up with increasingly outrageous virus-themed lies. Things were never heading “back to normal” after that. That would mean the rulers giving up on the open goal in front of them for increasing their profits, and they were never going to do that.
‘… but it comes after two years of being softened up…’
Make that over 100 years of being softened up by transfer of self-responsibility, self-sufficiency and self-reliance from the individual to the State. Few now are capable of thinking for themselves, critical analysis or providing for themselves independent of the State.
Hanlon’s razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Except we are way past the point where this can no longer be explained by stupidity.
I think you’re right however, I also think that what, if any control the WEF had over the great reset has now been lost.
Covid could almost have been managed in the UK by Klaus until Boris began partying and doctors around the world began speaking out. Now there are politicians, scientists and bureaucrats crawling out the woodwork making statements contrary to the narrative.
Nor do I think they could have anticipated Putin’s actions would call into question their pet project, climate change. The public across the west is gradually waking up to it’s implications far too early for them.
Unless Biden can pull a rabbit out of a hat before the mid terms, he may as well go home to Delaware and sleep for the rest of his term as the Republicans will steam roller him.
By the time 2024 rolls around Trump won’t have to bother leaving the golf course to campaign for a win, there won’t be any opposition.
I believe Obama once said “Never underestimate Joe’s ability to fuck things up” and I suspect that’s coming back to haunt the Davos mob.
They’ve already pulled a rabbit out of a hat in 2020. Don’t see why they can’t use the same rabbit again, considering they got away with it despite the mountains of evidence.
Too many strategies being put in place by the Republicans now. They also have three years to work on voter ID, ballot harvesting, drop boxes and postal voting. Hopefully some prosecutions as well.
Some counties have dropped Dominion machines altogether and are insisting on hand counting. Principally Republican counties I suspect, but if Durham comes up with the goods and there are prosecutions then Democrat areas may not have a choice.
The survival of the West depends on MAGA. It was always understood by the working classes that Trump needed to win which was why the Democrats and their Globalists needed to destroy him. It will forever be a deep shame on the media and the middle classes that they couldn’t see this through their blinkered snobbery and hubris. We will get a MAGA landslide in the mid terms. Hopefully the media and the bankers will be completely broken up.
I hope you are right.
Unfortunately it’s a bit late. The fix is in. At the very best Europe will be in another dark ages for a few generations. At the worst there will be rape and murder and genocide exactly as planned and practiced in Iraq, Libya and one could argue South Africa a d India with the vaccine programmes. No one in the West looked deep enough into the whys and wherefores and America got away with some terribly deeds.
I hope that our spiritual strength will grow again and we will go through the poverty and hardship by regrouping and creating communities. Learning to care for each other and the land. I think the cities and large towns will be hardest hit by disease and corruption. I do think the smaller towns and villages may well survive. We will see. Cash will be the key.
Much as I like Trump (with one or two rather insignificant reservations), isn’t De Santis possibly a safer pair of hands?
Errors happen, but when they become serial, a deliberate pattern emerges and malevolence is the only explanation.
Many still are. My brother doesn’t see anything wrong in getting rid of cash. He doesn’t think the jabs are dangerous either. He knows nothing of the Canadian Truckers and the treatment they received from Trudeau and he thinks I am off my rocker for calling Soros and Gates psychopaths.
Big Tech, with worldwide jurisdiction, decides to de-platform an entire country. Ordinary Russians become locked out of their own mobile wallets when their app says “no”. Don’t think for a second that it can’t happen to us as well.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/apple-google-payment-systems-block-russians-causing-chaos-moscow-metro-system
Surely your brother’s heard of the recent sanctions against Russia. The fundamental issue is the same, just on a larger scale. Digital currencies will just make it easier and more efficient to micromanage individuals.
Anybody like to hazard a guess at what kind of Russians predominantly use these kinds of trendy high tech western systems?
[clue: not necessarily Putin’s core support.]
Bonus question:
Who will the people (other than the most die-hard already Putin-hating Russians) suffering from this kind of disruption most likely blame?
““Giving the keys of our lives to companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and the digital world is the biggest mistake for mankind,” remarked one respondent to the story.”
Just as it was on Iraq, sanctions are a catastrophically stupid and counterproductive policy. But it’s something, and something must (supposedly) be done, so….
The evidence is against you!
They are trying to take out freedom of movement away and our independence. They’ve been trying to do this since at least the ’50s, at least in the US.
There are no conspiracies, but there are also no coincidences ….
The plan is to phase out Russian oil. What if Putin says, “Sod this for a game of politics” and cuts off oil and gas immediately – no transition, no alternative supply?
Nordstream 1 is currently working flat out at 100% capacity to Europe, as are all other supply lines. Just sayin’.
They are, but Russia has threatened to retaliate if oil is embargoed. If they can get the same money from China why wouldn’t they ship it that way, I think the pipes have capacity.
My point is the whole price hike in oil and energy is a co-ordinated political decision by the West, and totally unnecessary. How many colonial, oil, territory and currency wars has the West fought this century that have caused such massive economic devastation to the West itself? In truth, we hardly noticed Iraq or Syria or Libya or Afghanistan at the pump or in our gas and food bills. The banks and the market were primed, and complicit.
This time around the West’s leaders are standing on the precipice of a new age. Flushed with the power that comes from slaughtering their own people with experimental treatments and bio-weapons, ruining businesses and stripping away what were seen as inalienable rights they have now jumped onto the Ukraine bandwagon as an means of further punishing the plebs. At the end of this charade look forward to hyper inflation to strip the rest away.
As some fat rich bloke recently said, we will own nothing and be happy. I’ll give him 5/10 for that prediction.
I think the answer lies in the speed of Putin’s success in Ukraine. If he occupies the territories he wants fairly quickly, then stops, as I think he will, he has the west over a barrel.
He can have his demands met with no prospect of military retaliation under the threat of cutting off gas supplies. Thereafter it’s a negotiated peace with Putin getting what he wants and sanctions are largely lifted or he turns down the supply as and when he wants to.
Germany and Italy can’t build renewables quickly enough to pretend to fill the energy void but Germany can build lignite fired power stations fairly quickly and bring their yet to be decommissioned nuclear plants back online. But they still need lots of gas.
There is a video going around of Trump, when he was POTUS, at a conference announcing that Germany was far too exposed to Russian gas domination and they should change the situation immediately. The camera turned on the German delegation who were laughing at him.
Stupid Bratwurst’s………
It can’t be a quick operation, as unlike NATO’s savage carpet bombing of civilians employed in recent colonial and oil adventures Putin is going after military targets only while clearing the fascist brigades out of the Donbass – all the while keeping the civilian infrastructure (energy, trains etc) intact. It would have been over in a week, with countless thousands of civilian deaths, if he had thrown the Russian air force into Ukraine NATO style.
This painstaking approach is resulting in many more Russian soldier’s lives being lost than NATO would ever risk – yet the EU (particularly Germany and the Netherlands) happily channels more and more arms to a de facto US proxy militia to keep it going, despite knowing about 8 years of atrocities that have been committed by Ukrainian forces (including neo Nazi Battalions) in the Donbass.
Russia is not only fighting the Ukrainian forces militarily, but fighting the West as a whole on several other fronts – including the pledge by the EU, UK and US (backed by the world banks) to reduce the Russian economy to tatters – despite none of those bodies actually being at war with Russia.
Russia is the only significant bulwark remaining between life as we knew it pre-Covid and the great Global re-set – by the time people cotton onto this it might well be too late.
I don’t think it will go on much longer. The arms being supplied to Ukraine are largely hand held. Very effective anti tank Javelin missiles, but no ones trained to use them.
NATO can’t roll in heavy equipment for the Ukraines as, again, they aren’t trained and would be more of a liability than a benefit. Besides, small arms is one thing, heavy arms would likely bee seen as a step too far by Putin.
Nor does he want all of Ukraine, just enough to gain control. He neither wants nor needs to go any further because he can’t encroach on NATO borders.
If he achieves his objectives quickly and stops, he’s holding all the cards.
Red Hot,
Am I the only one who read the Russian Ambassador to the UN laying out their conditions for a peaceful resolution to this war?
They were immediately rejected by the little comedian in Ukraine, Pu pued by aWashington and censored by the Enemydia.
It was over at the Gateway Pundit yesterday.
The pipes go west.
…apart from the ones going east
He will do this before he uses WMD. He is the grown up un the room whether we like it or not. He is already talking of shutting down Nordstream 1 as much Russian oil is being bought by China and India. I can see the gameplan is for Russia and China to break the petro dollar and therefore bring down the most corrupt government in history along with their bankers. Those to
Investment bankers are the same families who brought about the destruction of Russia and Putin knows his history well.
What exactly are our strategic interests in non-NATO member Ukraine again?
I’d stopped reading the comments here, but this is the last time I click on the website too.
Just vile.
So you think empty gestures like these will make Putin turn around and leave do you? Or do you think “something must be done?” Please explain why you think this will be a game changer. If you don’t believe it will be then why are you in favour of hurting ordinary people for no gain at all?
There’s one swept up in the emotional hysterics of the latest moral panic.
Just shows that resisting one doesn’t mean you will resist them all. Different people are gullible in different areas.
“just vile”
Classic emotive response, exactly like the covid panickers, accusing those who don’t share their hysteria of being “uncaring”.
This is the society we’ve built, and we need to find a way to teach people to be more mature and resist the hysteria.
To be fair, I feel exactly the same about the BBC and The Guardian.
You might find this 2014 article in The Guardian interesting. Perhaps even hard to believe today that they published it then. Of course almost all of its content has been viciously scrubbed from everyone’s memory this year. Here are some excerpts.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/30/russia-ukraine-war-kiev-conflict
Ye Gods! Most of us have turned into Guardian journalists!!!!
Speak for yourself! I’m identifying as Prof John Mearsheimer.
Oh Jenny!
Please don’t make me bite my lip!
Curiously it isn’t so hard to believe. Around the same time, maybe a little earlier, the Graun was kicking up merry hell about the EU banking crisis, and in particular the way the German banks were asset stripping Greece. I recall one piece calling for the UK to get out of the EU before it became further sucked into the unfolding financial mess because of the guarantees it had given to support the Euro. Although I accept this was the exception.
This less prescriptive editorial policy whereby it was occasionally capable of seeing the bigger picture seems like a lifetime away from its Covidian extremism over the last 2 years. Indeed, by the time canvassing started for the 2016 EU referendum the Graun’s editorial team had closed ranks, and the rag was firmly in the Globalist/EU/neo-Liberal camp – where it has remained since.
Also in the Guardian about November last year…Zelenskyy’s dodgy financial dealings…..and yet today in the Telegraph Alison Pearson is crying over his magnificent speech to the UK Government.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/oct/03/revealed-anti-oligarch-ukrainian-president-offshore-connections-volodymyr-zelenskiy
Ah well it did take her eighteen months to ‘catch-up’ with the reality of the Covid lies…….
^^
Just so you know, the Ukrainian embassy closed at 6pm: you’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning to turn your fine words into actions by signing up to fight.
That’s nice. Their homeland is on fire, but they get home in time for tea…….
Just like in Scotland with the face masks and hand sanitisers… any ideas on how to sort out your own dictator?
Wars happen. Get used to it.
The last time we got involved in situations that were none of our business we set the middle east alight.
Perhaps staying out of it, not providing arms to prolong the war, and rendering aid to refugees might be the best option.
Make sure the door doesn’t hit you on the way out!
I’m with you here. I’ve been reading this site ever since it started as Lockdown Sceptics when comments were reasonably balanced. However, over 2 years comments have become increasingly hysterical and perverse, with Ukraine now generating comments that I agree are vile.
How did the site’s comments get taken over by people who support a ruthless gangster’s brutal invasion of a democratic country, murder and destruction on a vast scale and a world crisis that will impoverish us all? I despair.
Who here is ‘supporting’ the invasion?… I see lots of people expressing an understanding of the reasons behind the invasion but no one is getting gung-ho ‘supporting’ it. Look at RedHotScot’s comments above.
You mean the CIA, MI6 and Biden supplying arms to Ukraine to perpetuate an ongoing civil war over the past eight years that killed 14,000 people?
And our own government supplying arms to Saudi Arabia so it can bomb Yemen? More people killed there than civilian casualties caused by the Russians in Ukraine.
It is nice to vent one’s moral virtue but unfortunately international relations is not a morality play. The American regime is very happy to use Ukraine as a pawn against Russia and they will fight to the last Ukrainian to do so.
Zelensky is a puppet who is doing their bidding. Ultimately, he will lose more Ukrainian lives than if they negotiate in good faith around Russia’s terms of Ukrainian neutrality.
Remember too that Cuba is still under US sanctions following her decision in 1962 to ally herself with the then Soviet Union. Sanctions kill civilians too; it just does not become visible on the evening BBC news.
The US only supports the freedom of small states when it suits them. No absolute morality here just a practical question of how to end the war and stop prolonging it. The current western approach is not designed to do that at all. The opposite.
Virtue signalling by the elites at the expense of ordinary people. Politics as usual. The COVID crisis on repeat.
This is not virtue signalling. Well, it is, but you got it backwards. This is about removing our freedom and independence and making us, in effect, slaves to the state. They have set up the narrative in such a way in order to make it seem like virtue signalling. They have brainwashed the crowds to believe that giving away your freedom is a virtue.
…
This pro-Israeli comedian will fight to the death of the last Ukrainian for the Ukraine to have US airbases? How well is that going down with the Ukrainian population?
You seem a bit obsessed with Israel. Zelinskyy, whose first language is Russian, may well be Jewish, but he’s not an Israeli. He is pro-EU though and enjoys comedy.
I expect he was about as funny as Miranda Hart.
What amuses me is the idea that not buying Russian oil and gas is going to hurt Russia.
In case our beloved leaders have forgotten they banned selling anything to Russia a few days ago.
What did London think the Russians were doing with their dollars? Smoking them?
The Russians use roubles internally and they have as many of them as they need to get the job done.
Countries export to gain imports, not generally for decoration. The people employed in the export industry can be redeployed producing war goods.
What are we planning to use our soon to be newly unemployed to do. Invent more logos and hashtags we can hurl at the Russians?
When they import something from China, do you think China wants roubles? They want dollars.
I think you’ll find that’s changing. The Chinese know that dollar dominance underpins US dominance.
Hasn’t been much they could do about it in the past, but overuse of sanctions and punitive asset seizures make dollars quite unattractive.to a lot more people.
Nothing will change – until everything changes. And people in the US sphere will bitterly rue their former carelessness about what their rulers have been doing in their names.
And you imagine there aren’t entities that will convert the money?
For a very favourable commission of course.
30 litres of petrol stored at home is the legal maximum. Heheh. But you can store as much diesel as you like.
Prepare for…you know what.
In the Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces near Moscow, also known as the Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ near Moscow, who’d have guessed what has been happening?
“Drops of red appeared on the icon of the Virgin in Russian army’s main church”
Meanwhile, Tomas Halik writes in the Tablet: “‘Say No to the Devil’ – the blood of Ukraine cries out to the Lord of hosts“.
Roman Catholicism has in recent decades, generally speaking, been far less Armageddonist than Orthodoxy…but things are hotting up across the board.
There will be more of this.
Psychological warfare has depths and domains that cosseted Guardian scribblers would never have fathomed.
Star,
It is well known and believed by traditional Catholics, that the Virgin Mary appeared at Fatima and requested that the Pope together with all his Bishops re dedicate Russia to God, in order to restore peace to the world.
This has not been done.
Russia was the first country in the world to legally deny the existence of God in the Communist constitution.
Non believers may scoff at this, but as it has not been done – yet – we must wait for a Catholic Pope
Where’s the oil and gas coming from? It’s not there.
This is why Russia was one of the largest suppliers of oil tot eh US in 2021 – because of the sanction son Venezuela. Now they’ve been begging Maduro for some of his oil to get around the problem of their sanctions on Russia.
I guess Juan Guaido is no longer President of Venezuela!
Look at the positives – unable to afford the use of your car. Get on your bike. Thus saving the planet (sic) and getting healthy! Hey – no longer able to afford to charge your computer, watch TV; bloody hell actually go promenading and meeting people. Return of bed socks and sleeping caps. Blimey a return to the good old days. Reading books by candle light, going to bed early and rising with the sun. Chucking the freezer out and eating food seasonally. This sounds brilliant.
Of course nobody saw this coming – well perhaps those with a brain did. But they don’t exist in Government and MSM etc………….
I am not sure you know what “sic” means…
There are many things I would not like to be without, but sometimes I yearn for those days when there was no Internet and only 3 tv news bulletins a day. Information was easier to sift then; I find it so overwhelming now (and I no longer trust anything I see or read is true).
Who is ‘our’ here? This well planned conflict is absolutely going to crush the remaining financial resilience of millions who are right on the edge after the Covid scam. Increased tax revenues will help refloat the post-Covid crony government coffers. The MIC will be dancing, as ever. Partygate is now forgotten. Windfall profits aplenty as pump prices surge. Greenheads see it as an opportunity. Frackheads see it as an opportunity. The EU edges closer to being an autocratic military superpower. NATO is starting to resemble North American Territorial Outposts. Rafts of legislation are being pushed through unnoticed (Bill of Rights, Online Safety Bill etc). Vaxx deaths and injuries forgotten. New ranges of experimental treatments to be approved in 100 days along under new regs, with more EGT for winter flu plus a simmering fake HIV epidemic.
By March 2023 many might have just about ‘got it’.
When they say “we” or “our”, we’re not included in that.
Absolutely right! They’re not referring to us!
They are following the/this neocon warmongerers playbook instead of trying to broker and achieve a peace and prosperity.
https://realclearpolitics.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=61572bb8acf7b8704903af7b8&id=2ecf0608c9&e=0d9d370ceb
The cost of virtue signalling.
Sadly, the costs are born by those who don’t want to engage in the signalling, as well as the hysterical morons who do.
The brights spot is, that this plus the upcoming food price explosion and shortage should lead to civil unrest and a correction of that disastrous ‘strategy’. And some others.
The White House said Biden would announce on Tuesday “actions to continue to hold Russia accountable for its unprovoked and unjustified war on Ukraine”.
Unprovoked????
Biden knows very well that the US, NATO and the EU have been provoking Russia since 1991 and more so very recently.
Unjustified????
Putin has been very patient over the last 8 years and has every justification even against so-called International Law when agreements and treaties have been broken inching Ukraine towards possession of nuclear weapons and NATO membership on Russia’s doorstep.
“Hold Russia accountable” indeed. Biden is a daft sod! And apparently he plans to “continue” to do it as well.
Has anyone else been wondering what on earth has been taking the western powers so long to implement across-the-board economic measures against Russia?
A guess would be that
Pie in the sky meets the green Wonderland, and aided and abetted by Johnsonian delusion and institutional incompetence, produces a national disaster. Even Heath, Wilson and Callaghan didn’t manage to inflict quite as much destruction.
Interesting that this site seems to operate as a kind of rationality sieve.
First it attracted those who saw through the covid moral panic.
Then we had the BLM nonsense and a number of people took the hump at some of us here (and Toby atl) not respecting the sainted BLM, and a bunch declared their intention to leave because of the “racists” here.
Now we have people declaring that the place is just unacceptable because there’s not enough respect for the holy cause of finger-wagging at Russia for doing what our own leaders regularly do.
Interesting process.
What will the next moral panic be, and what will the terms of abuse be for those who decline to fall for it?
They don’t bother to define your ist anymore (racist, sexist, etc), “You ist” is enough in this high speed fast paced word.
“*ist”?
Perhaps the police could collect lists of people guilty of “non-crime *ism incidents”?
Domestic Terrorism – White Supremicists , quite a few suspects on this site I imagine.
“suspects” aka nonconformists to woke orthodoxy.
It will be common sense’ism shortly.
Mark,
Where does that leave the Global Warming Cultists?
As I noted previously, they’ve been at a relatively low intensity the past couple of years, mostly I think because they’ve essentially got all the elites kowtowing to them anyway.
If that changes and we start to see meaningful resistance to their dogmas, they might start to get hysterical again. (In larger numbers, I mean. Obviously; there’s always a few about).
Great post.
I originally fell for the Great Covid Panic in early March 2020. But I recovered before the end of the month. The wake up call for me was actually when my hands were covered in callouses from using hand sanitiser. It hit me that perhaps the so called remedies might be as bad as the illness. I then searched out more data points and realised that the whole thing was overblown and that the solutions were counter productive anyway.
I have then resolutely not fallen for the BLM and climate change hysterias. This evil Russia / saintly Ukraine hysteria is the worst so far because it has potential to lead to WW3.
Someone needs to do a study of the psychology of serial hysteria non converts. It might be interesting.
Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat.
We do import Russian coal, mainly for the industrial process to make concrete. Banning Russian coal won’t affect energy prices but it will affect materials costs in the construction industry.
Was someone – Star, maybe? – asking for any proof of the existence of US biowarfare labs in Ukraine?
This seems to amount to a confession:
“The US is working with Ukraine to prevent biological research facilities from falling into the hands of Russians — Nuland”
https://twitter.com/RT_com/status/1501299583133134857
Chinese seem to be on the case as well. From the same twitter thread:
“Chinese Foreign Ministry: “The US has 336 labs in 30 countries under its control, including 26 in Ukraine alone. It should give a full account of its biological military activities at home and abroad and subject itself to multilateral verification.“”
https://twitter.com/CaoYi_MFA/status/1501201567478865922
“The U.K. is planning to buy more oil from…Saudi Arabia”
I’m assuming this is a different Saudi Arabia to the oppressive autocracy committing atrocities in Yemen?
Yes. The very same. The US has also decided to buy from Saudi Arabia. Funny, isn’t it.
Oh, and on a completely unrelated note: one of the Saudi terrorists being held in the US for 9/11 was just released back to Saudi Arabia. I’m sure there’s no connection there.
Well I assume war crimes and one of the worst human rights record in the world isn’t so bad when you’re one of the UK’s biggest customers for military equipment.
This virtue signalling moral high ground is awfully confusing though.
And a different Saudia Arabia from the one whose nationals flew planes into the Twin Towers.
Have all us sceptics now accepted that 17 shepherds evaded all security and brought America, including their airforce, to a standstill ?
I remember talking to a guy just a couple of years after 9/11. His old man was a journalist and flat out stated the whole thing was a false flag to precipitate war in the middle east so organisations like Halliburton would be given vast amounts of international money to rebuild nations.
Haliburton also payed vast amounts of tax and employed vast amounts of people and bought vast amounts of American made products in their rebuilding efforts.
I pretty well scoffed at him, then the war on terror got going and Iraq kicked off and, whilst I’m still not entirely convinced, it doesn’t half make me wonder.
Yes, pre-covid-era I scoffed. Now I don’t, at all. I’ve seen what “they” are capable of.
Watch the documentary on Amazon called 7, it is about the collapse of WTC7. You’ll understand then that there is no way that on 9/11, all THREE buildings were brought down by fire (only three multi-story buildings in the world have collapsed due to fires).
The so-called West has been imposing so-called economic sanctions on Russia since 2014. To exactly no avail. This is gesture politics at its worst and it ought to be stopped, not the least because it’s misdirected: Trade wars ultimatively harm ordinary people and not governments, at least not directly.
Generally ordinary people can select governments. In exceptional cases, ordinary people topple governments.
In certain political systems, some subset of the ordinary people may be involved in selecting political figureheads to some degree. But that’s neither generally nor naturally the case and it’s questionable into how much influence on actual politics this translates.
Some times, the population of a capital has succeeded in replacing a government. But that’s rare and attempts to do so usually go pear-shaped. And why would a population the so-called West has selected as target which is to be collaterally damaged to stage a political demonstration have much sympathies for it? That’s just morale bombing with different means and known to be ineffective.
Great. Just… great. Meanwhile, Boris is being told to stop exploiting local oil. It seems like the globalist, net-zero, stay at home strategy is going on as if nothing’s happened. Everything they do is aimed at getting people to give up the freedom conferred by their cars. Highway Code rule changes meant to make drivers second class road users. Widespread taxation of vehicles in city centres. Plans to introduce telematics units and tax drivers by the mile, taking away their privacy in one fell swoop. And now they’re doing all they can to drive petrol prices higher and higher.
And none of these things impact EV drivers, even though they are the ones that cause some of these issues. Vehicle tax is being increased because EV drivers aren’t being taxed, nor do they pay for petrol, so the government is seeing a deficit. Doesn’t matter that inflation has killed our incomes while prices are soaring, we don’t need to make more money. But the government mustn’t have less income! MP pockets must be kept nice and full.
I also bring up speed cameras. Catching speeding drivers is only their secondary purpose. Their primary purpose is to surveil all road traffic. They’ve been with us for over a decade.
All in the name of safety…
Yep, nothing safer than average speed cameras ensuring you keep your eyes on your speedo rather than the road ahead.
We all remember the news story from a while back of the lady that mounted a fake speed camera in her yard in order to trick drivers into slowing down. The police took it down because it was distracting drivers and creating a dangerous situation. Oh, the irony.
You may not have noticed but the prevalence of speed cameras dropped precipitously when the Conservative government ousted Blair. Many of them were burned out and just left or removed.
The M25 was littered with them under Blair, then they gradually disappeared. There are still some but most on the overhead gantry’s in every lane have gone.
Many have gone on my journey up the M11/A1/M6/M74 up to Scotland. There are the occasional speed camera vehicles on the overpasses but only two I can recall on my last journey there and back in February.
The police and government are not allowed to routinely surveil vehicle movements, it’s a gross invasion of privacy. I seem to remember it being raised in parliament some years ago and police records being inspected.
But not being allowed to do sommething, and not actually doing it, are two different things.
As the new government free for all Bill of Rights will make clear. Well actually it won’t make clear and that’s the point – catch all, ‘the wider public interest’ and ‘the public good.’
We are being thoroughly shafted.
Relevance?
ANPR
Do doubt already been asked but it’s late.
What % of UK consumed oil came from Russia prior to the present ‘crisis’?
Not much ?
How about before the takeover of Crimea ?
Fake crisis a mile away.
However it’s global supply, take 8% out and some others won’t sell, supply and demand, less supply prices go up.
Consider how global markets work.
paul B did that just for us in the post above leek
After 2 years of totally f***ing the economy and spunking magic money all over the place why do you think they would start now?
2 years? More like 2 decades.
30 years of impending NetZero haven’t been costed yet in the UK, far less a few years of increasing inflation and energy prices.
Our government can’t use an abacus far less a computer to figure out costs or options.
It’s like it’ll all disappear overnight once the war in Ukraine stops, we’ll import gas from America and Norway and they’ll give it to us at discount rates. My aunt Fanny……
Had Cuadrilla been allowed to begin fracking in 2019 instead of being sacrificed at the alter of climate change we would be well placed to simply increase production to materially affect the global gas price. As it is we could begin now and not surrender our energy independence, once again, to foreign actors.
Who knows what Biden will do. He’s convinced everyone in the west is obsessed with climate change and his virtue signalling will capture votes. He really doesn’t get that his poll rating are in the gutter right now because of his reckless lunge at woke popularity. Meanwhile the UK will suffer as his throttling of domestic fracking will create further shortages and continue to drive prices up.
But then socialists just don’t accept the concept of supply and demand, but his hand will be forced over the summer as by then the penny will have dropped with his staff and they’ll be forced to ensure energy costs fall in the US or his hopes of any success in the mid terms will evaporate.
Yes there has been….
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2022/03/Kelly-Net-Zero-Progress-Report.pdf?mc_cid=3de10e3d7a&mc_eid=4961da7cb1
“steepest weekly hike in fuel prices in more than 18 years due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine”
No – it is not due to this! It is due to government sanctions.
Lockdown was not due to covid but due to government actions.
Can we please be clear about the causes for these things!
not forgetting that at least half the price is tax so it’s totally in the government’s power to reduce the cost to consumers.
The tax element is an absolute value, so the proportion will change as the price changes
The ‘tax’ element is fixed – VaT is 20% on most fuels The ‘duty’ element is 57.95 pence per litre on petrol, diesel, biodiesel and bioethenol, so it is the duty that has the varying proportion, not the Tax.
Currently then, 58p of the ~£1.60 pump price is duty and 32p is tax (because you pay VaT on the duty as well)…thats 90p out of £1.60 making it 56% of the price goes to the government……but they are doing all they can to alleviate the pain at the pumps……..yeh…right.
Forgot to add source
https://www.gov.uk/tax-on-shopping/fuel-duty
That would mean acknowledging that all the problems result from decisions which are entirely within the control of our governemt. And admitting that would never do!
The deflection method is tried and tested now – how many times and in how many places have you seen and heard “Due to the Pandemic…”, usually prefacing an order not to do something (or to do something pointless), or as an excuse for crap service fromm companies. And the sheep just accept it every time.
Did you know that much of the market had already stopped buying russian oil.
A sort of self sanctioning..
Damn right.
Aren’t sanctions supposed to hurt the other guy, not us?
Define “us”.
Fair point.
I suppose the whole point of these sanctions must be to hurt us, the UK public, because they’re created by the same government which has spent the last two years trying to kill us with lockdowns, masks and fake vaccines.
Stopping a trade, is what sanctions actually are. A trade normally benefits both parties, so stopping it gives a loss to both parties.
It only creates a loss if the goods can’t be sold/sourced to/from other places, if they can then it only creates an inconvenience, and a temporary one at that.
And the sheep are already queueing, more political driven crisis FFS. This time last year I paid 33p per liter, the 88p per Liter I just paid for heating oil is going to look cheap soon too.
Controlled demolition of the economy, welcome the great reset
What does that even mean? Looks like more of the same nudging to try to create some sort of national unity and allow Johnson to do his best Churchill impression. Well, it ain’t going to work with a lot of us. I’ve never before regarded the whole political class (and the media) with the level of complete,absolute contempt which I hold for them now. Two years of the Covidian bollox,and now all this anti-Russia tub-thumping and all these claims that the situation is unprovoked and completely unexpected. Clearly they are relying on the dumb public swallowing it all, as they did with the Covidian bollox.
Anyone who is vaguely aware of the Ukraine situation will be aware that this has been brewing for years. NATO have been poking the bear with a stick repeatedly, then pretend to be surprised when the bear eventually turns on them. And as for the hypocrisy – it’s off the scale. In this situation the US-sphere would have done the same if the boot was on the other foot – and probably done it earlier and more violently too. Trying to claim the moral high-ground, despite all the neo-imperialistic crusades in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, etc, etc, is utterly contemptible.
Well, Johnson does indeed do a pretty good Churchill impression – sadly of the nodding dog as seen on TV!
Anyone who is vaguely aware of the Ukraine situation will be aware that this has been brewing for years. NATO have been poking the bear with a stick repeatedly, then pretend to be surprised when the bear eventually turns on them.
This doesn’t hold water: The position of the NATO relative to Russia has been unchanged for the last 18 years. And it’s not a NATO country that’s being attacked. In other words, the supposed cause doesn’t exist and neither does the supposed effect.
I could be wrong here but I think that up until 2020 the biggest supplier of crude oil to the UK was Norway followed by the USA – then it was Russia which supplies the UK with less than a quarter of that supplied by Norway and around a third of that supplied by the USA – Nigeria supplies the UK with almost as much oil as the Russians.
Correct on Norway being biggest supplier to UK.
But new supply/demand balance applies to the whole market, so drives up prices.
Dr Will writes:
“Have we properly costed our interventions and assessed them against our strategic interests?”
Evidently not but as nothing was costed for the C1984 Scamdemic why should we expect our treacherous parliament to do things differently for stage two of the reset?
They have had years to cost NetZero, but daren’t do it.
Thankfully Professor Michael Kelly has done it for them and the cost to each household in the UK will be anywhere between £150,000 to £450,000 by 2050.
That’s only £5,300 to £16,000 every household has to find every year for the next 22 years. Then there’s increased Taxation on top to pay for all the subsidies on Heat Pumps, EV’s etc.
That doesn’t include the cost of council housing within that which private householders must subsidise, nor the increased cost of goods to cover the cost of alterations to factories and fleets of EV’s.
Nor does it account for inflation, those are todays prices. In 28 years time those numbers will be an awful lot higher.
If they want to peddle the mantra the NetZero is all about the children then why don’t they consult the children who will be saddled with all this expense, and the lost inheritance many will lose from their parents labouring under this burden.
They will also be saddled with student debt. But then I doubt any of them will be going to university because it will be just unaffordable.
And buying a house? Forget it. I have been looking at the building cost’s of a super efficient house. A modest, cuboid, 3 bedroom version will set you back around £400,000., and you have to buy the land on top of that which is unlikely to cost you much less than £100,000.
It’s an absolutely ludicrous idea and it’s happening because the UK politicians only consider what the Americans tell them to do, not what the UK voting public wants them to do.
This is all about the richest of the rich making fortunes at the expense of the honest majority.
The rich will have loaded up late last autumn on wheat, oil, gas, metals etc.
They’ll have doubled their money in three months, as near as dammit.
Of course they want the prices to skyrocket: that’s gonna make them fortunes!
“We have substitute supplies on stream in an orderly way and in a timetable that won’t affect U.K. business, won’t affect U.K. manufacturing, road haulage or other parts of our industry”
Well, it’s affecting pretty much the entire population. And this comes right on top of 2 years of nonstop terrorizing of pretty much the entire population of pretty much everywhere.
I wonder…are they (pretty much the entire population of pretty much everywhere) starting to suspect that something ain’t quite right yet? (rhetorical)
“Pandemonium at the pumps”. An attractive headline, but actually the other day there wasn’t one at my local branch of ASDA; E10 petrol @148.7 p/litre – 119.7 a year ago, or about 24% up. It’s quite easy to create short term panics via the MSM though. Don’t join the club.
Tut tut JohnK,
You have respect for an engine feeding 10% corn.
Our allies in Saudi Arabia won’t increase production. We have a crazy energy policy in the UK, likewise in America.. Ever thought this is all orchestrated to impoverished us
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I give up!
We have been infantalised. It’s OK for Ukraine to starve and bomb the people of the Donbas but its not OK for Russia to take out WMD. It’s OK for America to bomb the living daylights out of Syria but it’s not OK for the Syrian people to ask Russia and Iran for help.
It’s now OK for Europe and America to do everything in their power to destroy Russia whilst at the same time destroying their own nations and the majority of us will blame Russia. This truly is a mad bad world we are living in and I want nothing to do with it. The psychopaths that are engineering this Great Reset care not a jot for us. They are playground bullies and we are too scared to speak the truth and fight back.
‘the majority of us will blame Russia’ : yep – even here there are some who have fallen into this propaganda trap!
In answer to the questions at the end of the article
No
No
No
And NO!
Great move Johnson, punch us all in the face to teach Putin a lesson
How can Boris stand there with a straight face and claim they are going to introduce a ban on Russian oil but are going to do it in such a way as to not affect businesses when the price of petrol is already going up every 24 hours?
… also….
Do the station forecourts receive a new delivery every day? Because that is the only way prices should be changing for the fuel already bought and paid for by the petrol stations…..All of this stinks of managed forced social change.
I agree.
‘Have we properly costed our interventions and assessed them against our strategic interests?’
You mean like ‘we’ properly costed our interventions in the Middle-East; costed environmentalism/climate change; costed Made In Government CoVid calamity?
i shall be disappointed if the question isn’t rhetorical.
Sorry to disappoint, but costings and research are something this governments doesn’t do. Its all about feelings and emotions..
Someone needs to sit down with Johnson and have a serious chat. Banning oil or gas from Russia will only destroy this country. Honestly, he cannot be that stupid. Or can he?
There are no bounds to Bunter’s stupidity.
Bunter keeps his brains in his pants.
Does anyone in the Uk think this is a senseless decision? Do our MP’s who represent us have any say? Or are Brits meant to swallow this poor decision making and live or die with the consequences? It does not make sense.
UK bans Russian oil, prices surge upwards, but it’s Putin’s fault!
This government is Insane!
“Have we properly costed our interventions and assessed them against our strategic interests?”
Did we properly cost COVID interventions and assess them against overall good for the country? No. So nothing’s changed.
Something must be done!!! This is something, so let’s do it!!!
Knee-jerk government.