Debenhams will close the doors of its remaining U.K. stores for the final time this weekend because of lockdown, bringing more than 240 years of retail history to an end. Sky News has the story.
The department store chain, a staple of high streets since 1778, will close its remaining 28 stores for good on Saturday after the company collapsed amid the fallout of the Covid pandemic.
It closed 21 of its sites across the U.K. for the final time on Thursday.
The retailer was already struggling before the coronavirus outbreak, as shoppers moved away from traditional department store models and moved online.
But it could not cope with the enforced closure of sites during lockdown and quickly went into administration within weeks of the virus fully hitting the U.K..
The company, which began life as a high end draper in London’s West End, started its liquidation process at the start of this year after failing to secure a rescue sale.
Debenhams employed more than 20,000 people before lockdown struck. The closure of its stores is just the tip of the iceberg for the high street. Over 11,000 retail outlets permanently closed in 2020, and the Local Data Company expects this will be followed by 18,000 more closures in 2021.
The Sky News report is worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Arthur Beale, a 500 year-old yacht chandler in London, has closed its doors for the last time. The Wall St Journal has the story.
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He destroyed the empire, bankrupted us and turned us in to a vassal state ever since occupied by uncle sam. Worse the keys of power were then handed to Atlee who implemented an ever growing socialist state. I’m mystified by those who hold him in high regard.
Sorry pal but comment is ridiculous.
I forgot to say he handed eastern Europe to Stalin when we went to war over Poland. So we achieved what exactly? Ww2 was the total defeat of Britain ppl should understand that.
Sorry but your grasp of history is as strong as the hands of the dead.
Churchill had many fine qualities and many not so fine.
His strategic leadership during WW2 is littered with the carcasses of failed military initiatives until the US was attacked by the Japanese and joined the war and eventually the success of the North Africa campaign against Rommel following failure after failure by the British under Churchill.
The single factor which won WW2 was America’s astounding and overwhelming manufacturing capacity to supply all things from warships and weapons to chocolate, stockings and condoms.
Without any of that the US army and its allies would have been helpless and Churchill would really have had to fight on the beaches in person neither surrendering nor winning.
Success in Africa had nothing to do with the US. In fact initial engagement of US in Africa was a disaster as their troops were not battle trained and poorly equipped.
And by the time the US joined the war and by 1944, Germany was done anyway because of its war in the East.
Not so.
And this was what won the desert war in North Africa in 1942.
How American Tanks Helped the British Beat Back Hitler in Africa
It is worth noting how easy it is for loud mouths to get air time these days. Unlike Churchill and others whose reputation is attacked. They cannot answer back because they are still dead.
instead of inventing reasons to criticise our national hero’s it would be better to condemn the misguided/evil/incompetent/marxist politicians in office now and recently. They are still alive!
Churchill did not declare war. That was Chamberlain. Churchill did not become PM until the 10th May 1940. the same day that Germany invaded the Low Countries. Churchill’s alliance with Stalin only started after the start of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941. Churchill knew that he had to keep Stalin in the war in order to defeat Hitler. It was the Russians who paid the butchers bill to defeat Hitler. So you need to get your facts right before you have a go at Churchill. Sometimes war requires difficult choices. Churchill knew that. The alternative to Churchill was Halifax who wanted to capitulate and so perhaps we would all be speaking German now.
Indeed another sophomoric, moronic article attacking a man who saved this country. No Churchill and the elite led by Halifax would have made a deal with Hitler and this country would have been occupied. Of course you ally with the hated Russians who did more than any other country to defeat Nazism. Brain dead criticism in this lametard post.
Churchill could have allowed Germany to wipe out Communism but chose to help the Russian people, or done nothing to assist Russia. While Russia paid the butchers bill they also chose tactics that almost ensured mass slaughter – employing machine gun battalions to shoot retreating Russian soldiers that were sometimes sent in to fight without weapons. While Russia fought on it’s own vast land where it could supply itself over land Britain was fighting in the air, the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean, the Pacific, the deserts of North Africa, the jungles of the far East and eventually up through Europe. The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest battle of WW2. We fought as allies and we could have shared war stories together, but Stalin chose to push Soviet colonialism instead, which included either erasing any mention and/or bad mouthing the Western allies efforts. They have elevated their own view of themselves using their high death count and used that to denigrate those that once fought to help them, which is treachery.
” shoot retreating Russian soldiers that were sometimes sent in to fight without weapons.”
So Putin is exactly copying his hero Stalin now in the Ukraine Meatgrinder War, in which…
” shoot retreating Russian soldiers that were sometimes sent in to fight without weapons.”
Someday, the world will realise that the only purpose of all these wars is to kill White People= the Genocide of Ethnic Europeans, as Heroic Jews like Brother Nathanael and Henry Makow have tried to warn the West.
I haven’t a clue what language swathes of people around here are speaking but it ain’t English.
Hitler invaded Poland on 1st September, 1939, Britain declared war on Germany two days later. Churchill became prime minister on 10 May 1940. Noah Carl seems a little misinformed, but, of course, he is still very young, and these events are all ancient history to him.
I also notice that what MSM writes, especially in headlines, does not match up to what Cooper actually said. Noah’s piece here a fairer representation.
What would the world have been like had Britain not declared war on Germany?
Never forget.
History is always written by the victors.
Hitler gave 2 fingers to the World Banks of a certain ethnicity.
Do that at your peril.
Russia, Iran now firmly in the frame.
And lest not forget the WEF, the ECB, and the EMF bankrolled by you know who.
Agenda 2030….
Caoitalism is broken, so only chaos can save them.
Yes.
A man of extraordinary courage, and energy who dis what necessary to defeat an enemy which genuinely threatened this nation, and the civilized world.
All the while seeking to the lives to extent possible Britain’s citizen army.
Not perfect but who is?
For my money the man of the century.
The second I get a whiff of anyone sympathizing with one of the most notorious, evil, mass-murdering psychopaths of all time, whilst simultaneously painting somebody who will always be remembered and revered ( not saying he was perfect, but nevertheless…) for the pivotal role he played in British history as a villain then that’s a red flag right there and you know you’re dealing with somebody who has an agenda and cannot be trusted. I saw some clips of this guy on Twitter and what a transparent prat. Robert Spencer exposes him here;
”No one really knows why Tucker Carlson featured historian/fabulist Darryl Cooper on his podcast, but one thing is clear: Cooper wasn’t there to talk history. His historical points were all made in order to support present-day political positions. Even his demonization of Winston Churchill served this purpose: it was meant to change people’s minds not so much about World War II, but about the Israel-Hamas conflict.
This first became obvious in Cooper’s wildly tendentious summation of the early years of World War II. He said: “If you go to 1939, when the Germans and the Soviet Union invade Poland, as soon as that war’s wrapped up on the German side, Hitler starts firing off peace proposals to Britain, France, because they had already declared war. He didn’t expect them to declare war, actually. There’s a famous scene where he throws a fit when he finds out that they did do that. And so he doesn’t want to fight France, he doesn’t want to fight Britain.” The poor misunderstood guy! He threw a fit for peace!
Even worse, Cooper’s drunk manchild Churchill is only interested in taking courses of action that line his pockets:
There it is. The Jews put Churchill in power!”
https://www.frontpagemag.com/why-tuckers-historian-hates-churchill/
Very useful links, as ever.
Ta, Corky.
This is all fairly predictable. Most people like to view the world in black and white, with heroes and villains and no in-betweens, which is of course ridiculous.
Arguably, without Churchill the Western world, in Europe at least, would have fallen to the Nazi regime. This doesn’t make him in any way a perfect human being, and conventional historical records suggest as much.
Misters Cooper and Carlson are simply ensuring they get maximum publicity for this new perspective of Mr Cooper’s, as one would expect both of them to do.
This is slightly unfair. Winston Churchil wanted to step up British engagement in the Russian civil war, to support the Whites, but Lloyd George wasn’t having it. And didn’t Churchill want to press on after WW2 to take on the Russians (or kick them out of Poland at least)?
Excellent points! Churchill’s hands were tied by the wholesale kidnap of thousands of British, American and Allied Prisoners of War by Stalin’s Army, under the guise of “liberating” the POW camps before the British and Americans could reach them.
Stalin dragged them all off to Siberian Gulags as hostages, to force Churchill to send back the White Russians who had escaped to the West and helped the Allies.
This historical truth has been carefully hidden from the public for over half a century, but exposed by English researcher Nigel Cawthorne in his book “The Iron Cage”
Alanbrooke was as good a judge of a man and a leader as any, and far better than most:
‘The diary entry in question focuses on a heated group discussion in which the Prime Minister—“very tired” and “trying to recuperate with drink”—began an angry tirade about the perceived slowness of operations headed by General Montgomery. As this was only the most recent of Churchill’s broadsides against his general officers, Alanbrooke decided he’d had enough. “I flared up and asked him if he could not trust his generals for five minutes instead of continuously abusing them and belittling them…He was furious with me, but I hope it may do some good in the future.”
As Danchev and Todman conclude, Alanbrooke viewed his role less of adviser to Churchill and more as a “nanny.” He was in nearly every way the Prime Minister’s opposite, yet he recognized that Churchill, with his rhetorical flair and strategic vision—no matter how frequently the latter was misguided—was vital to the British war effort and to sustaining the spirit of the average citizen. This task required a guardian who was not a rival and could focus his energies on bringing out the premier’s better angels.’
https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2020/7/22/in-a-time-of-global-crisis-lessons-from-an-unhappy-warrior-reviewing-a-biography-of-alanbrooke
Churchill emerges from Alanbrooke’s diaries as a flawed leader (as they all are) and a flawed human being (as we all are), but a great man nonetheless.
Stalin wasn’t threatening to invade the UK. Hitler was.
It should also be noted that the USSR and the Reich of Adolf Hitler were allies at the time Churchill become PM. There had been cooperation between Weimar Germany and the USSR as far back as the late 1920s.
And what of Churchill’s pre-war observations about Hitler that were favourable? Churchill’s premiership during the war can be used to obscure other more dubious parts of his career. It’s notable that he was decisively rejected by the British electorate in 1945.
Churchill was undoubtedly a patriot. He wasn’t responsible for the mess he inherited when he become PM in 1940. The legacy of his that keeps on giving as in a one-way street is his claim of this ‘special relationship’ between Britain and the USA. That’s not something that Woodrow Wilson would have endorsed in 1918.
How times change. Churchill privately supported the USSR’s expansion into the Baltic states, yet today there are wannabe Churchill’s who exult in every military hurt Russia experiences. There is even a British minister who encourages a country in its continued invasion of Russian territory. Can it be imagined that Churchill would have done that during the Cold War?
Not so. It was the radical policies of the Labour party which stole the election from the Tories under Churchill. And the ensuing reforms were radical including the creation of the National Health Service, school meals for children and suchlike.
In 1945 working people were not wealthy and could not afford private medical care.
Who would you have voted for in 1945 is you were one of the workers – Labour and healthcare based on need or the Tories with nothing comparable.
If a political party today were to make it policy to take away affordable healthcare for all would that party win an election?
‘Winston Churchill had a purpose in his strategy of deploying strength in dealing with the Soviets.
He was, as Sir John Colville has said, a leader who adopted a “flexibility” which “may have a certain relevance in the 1980’s.’
Pamela Harriman
The present U.S. strategy regarding Russia is not so different to the policy regarding the USSR advocated by Churchill immediately after WW1.
It is also often overlooked when discussing the Munich Agreement and the subsequent carving up Czechoslovakia, that Poland was a beneficiary party to this and Hitler allowed Poland to invade Czechoslovakia and claim part of their territory. The myth of Poland as an innocent victim to one-sided territorial expansion by the Nazis is thus inaccurate.
If a country is to be excoriated because it is expansionist, what of NATO?
NATO has become an expansionist power since the early 1990s. Isn’t NATO an expression of American political desires for the European continent by other means?
NATO cannot be expansionist.
It has no forces of its own.
Russia is a party to OSCE which guarantees the rights of nation states to determine their own foreign relations, foreign alliances.
So how come it is expanding?
Finland? Sweden?
The idea that nation states requesting to join NATO and being accepted is NATO ‘expanding’ is silly.
NATO has not asked them to join.
They asked to join NATO because of Russian aggression.
Had Putin not invaded Ukraine, twice, Finland and Sweden would not be NATO members.
Every member state of OSCE, which Russia is party to, is guaranteed a right to their own foreign relations, foreign alliances.
Silly?
OK. Let me explain silly.
So according to you whilst NATO continues to expand, that is not expanding.
Oh. So when my local gym does not ask me to join them but I apply for membership the gym is not expanding its membership because it did not ask.
So if NATO did not want to expand it could have told Finland and Sweden to get lost.
But it did not, just like my local gym did not tell me to get lost.
And if I start shopping for meat at the local butcher’s shop that shop is not expanding its business by gaining another customer.
And when I stuff myself full of chops and other foods and my waistline increases that is not expanding either.
Oh, and the party balloons. When I pump them up they are not expanding because they did not ask me to pump them up.
So I am sure the Oxford English Dictionary would welcome my definitions of ‘silly’ just so people like you can try to understand what ‘silly’ really is.
However, I am sure the OED would simultaneously not accept it as a way of defining ‘expanding’. That would also be silly.
Writing this comment is so cathartic.
This is not complicated.
The Gym advertises for more members.
When you join, you have no idea whether the membership of the gym is increasing or declining, and you do not care. You are joining for the sake of your health.
And so it is with NATO.
Turkey, France, Hungary are semi detached. Canada has considered leaving. Greece has, in the past, withdrawn from NATO’s military command.
Algeria, Malta and Cyprus left NATO with a change of government.
NATO is not expanding. Every OSCE country has a right to form its own foreign alliances, agreed by Russia.
And it is still expanding its membership when new members join even when it is not advertising.
What is it about the word “expanding” you don’t understand?
Of course not. When organisations expand that is because they are getting bigger.
Organisations do get bigger even when doing nothing to provoke that.
Advertising is irrelevant to when an organisation gets bigger. It can get bigger either because it does something to get bigger like advertising or because it just gets bigger anyway.
If 500 migrant asylum seekers turn up in your local town businesses in that town may well expand their customer base with the influx of new customers.
And they have done a big fat zero to cause that.
It is not expanding if members are leaving, is it?
Those joining do not care that Algeria, Malta, Cyprus have left, Turkey, Hungary are semi detached. Canada and Greece have previously discussed leaving. France has previously left the NATO military command. The EU is talking of setting up its own alliance to replace NATO.
The fact that people are leaving the gym does not concern the person joining the gym, does it? He is only interested in himself and what the gym offers him.
And so it is with Sweden and Finland, only joining because of Putin’s imperial expansionism just across their border; an attempt to set up a European superstate to dominate Europe.
This is NATO strategy:
‘It is the role of the Atlantic army to replace the strategic nuclear deterrent as the instrument with which the attack option is foreclosed to (Russia). But that is a bare minimum. In a modern strategy the Atlantic army must provide for the West a sense of security to a degree that will encourage it to act and react in respect to global events with confidence. That forecloses to (Russia) the options of intimidation, blackmail, and political leverage.’
LAND FORCES IN MODERN STRATEGY by LIEUTENANT GENERAL DE WITT C. SMITH, JR. US ARMY
NATO is all about deterrence, nothing to do with expansionism. It has no forces of its own with which to expand!
So far as I can see Algeria was never a member of NATO:
Algeria was a member when it was a French colony.
When it changed government, it left NATO.
No. France was a member of NATO. Algeria was not a member of NATO.
Alphabetical list of NATO member countries
Algeria had its own assembly after 1947 when the Algerian Assembly was created. This assembly was composed of 120 members. Algerian Muslims, representing about 6.85 million people, could designate 50% of the Assembly members, while 1,150,000 non-Muslim Algerians could designate the other half.
Doesn’t change the fact that Algeria is not and was never a member of NATO.
Alphabetical list of NATO member countries
And NATO has been expanding since it was first established.
Your thesis it has never expanded and is not expanding now is complete tosh.
But it never was a member of NATO.
So it clearly was a NATO member as a self governing department of France.
Completely wrong.
France was a member of NATO and Algeria never was.
Alphabetical list of NATO member countries
Which of course also means your thesis that membership of NATO is contracting is also complete and utter tosh.
Algeria was used for nuclear tests by NATO in the 1960s, for heavens sake!
France was a member of NATO and Algeria never was.
Alphabetical list of NATO member countries
Which of course also means your thesis that membership of NATO is contracting is also complete and utter tosh.
France carried out nuclear tests in Algeria.
So far as I am aware NATO as such has never carried out nuclear tests and has no nuclear weapons of its own.
So, let me get this straight…the self governing country of Algeria allowed NATO to test nuclear devices in the Sahara in the 1960s when, according to you, it wasn’t part of NATO…..
Enough said……
NATO never carried out nuclear tests in Algeria.
You continue to embarrass yourself.
France carried out 17 nuclear tests in Algeria prior to Algerian independence in 1962.
No nuclear tests were carried out in Algeria after independence.
Algeria was a French colony until it gained independence from France.
Algeria never was a member of NATO.
So far as I can see Malta has never been a member of NATO:
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_52108.htm
Malta was a member of NATO when governed by Britain.
When it changed government, it left.
No. Malta has never been a member of NATO.
Alphabetical list of NATO member countries
The 1946 National Assembly resulted in a new constitution in 1947. This restored Malta’s self-government and its membership of NATO as a self governing part of the British Empire.
Completely wrong. Malta has never been a member of NATO.
Alphabetical list of NATO member countries
Which of course also means your thesis that membership of NATO is contracting is also complete and utter tosh.
Members of my family serving in the Royal Navy were based at the NATO naval base of Valletta in the 1940s.
I have a photograph of a family member landing his Royal Air Force fighter at the NATO airbase of Luqa in Malta in the 1960s
So far as I can see Cyprus has never been a member of NATO and indeed clearly cannot be because of the ongoing dispute between Greek and Turkish partition of the island:
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/nato-membership-for-cyprus/
Cyprus was a member of NATO when governed by Britain.
When it changed government, it left.
No. Cyprus has never been a member of NATO.
Alphabetical list of NATO member countries
It was a member of NATO as a self governing part of the British Empire. As I say, when it became independent and changed government, it left NATO.
No. Cyprus has never been a member of NATO.
Alphabetical list of NATO member countries
Which of course also means your thesis that membership of NATO is contracting is also complete and utter tosh.
Cyprus still has NATO forces positioned on the island. Wake up!
Wake up!
Cyprus has never been a member of NATO.
Alphabetical list of NATO member countries
Which of course also means your thesis that membership of NATO is contracting is also complete and utter tosh.
How does it have NATO forces on the island, then? Did NATO invade, do you think?
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear……..
Wake up!
It is better to stay silent and let others think you are a fool than say something and remove all doubt.
This is continuing as you started it – very stupidly.
Cyprus has never been a member of NATO.
Greece and Turkey are both members of NATO. Western Cyprus is Greek territory and Eastern Cyprus is Turkish territory.
So it is hardly surprising there are troops from NATO member states on Cyprus.
But Cyprus has never been a member of NATO.
Alphabetical list of NATO member countries
Which of course also means your thesis that membership of NATO is contracting is also complete and utter tosh.
Oh dear, oh dear.
Southern Cyprus is most certainly not Greek territory. It is the independent Republic of Cyprus. I have just been there (and seen a NATO aircraft landing there!)
Northern Cyprus is The Republic of Northern Cyprus.
Thanks for the conversation but you are too far away from reality……
You continue to embarrass yourself.
In May 1983 Denktash proclaimed the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC); the republic’s independence was recognized only by Turkey.
Why shouldn’t there be NATO airbases in the two parts of Cyprus?
But no part of Cyprus has ever been a member of NATO:
Alphabetical list of NATO member countries
Which of course also means your thesis that membership of NATO is contracting is also complete and utter tosh.
Oh dear, oh dear.
So far as I can see Turkey has been a member of NATO since 1952:
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_52044.htm#gre-tur
Turkey is ploughing it’s own furrow. Turkey has much wider interests than NATO. Its army is in Syria and regularly crosses into Iraq.
It has tried to form a Turkic bloc that includes ex-Soviet countries like Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.
But it is still a member.
But you were claiming NATO was not expanding because members were leaving.
Now you admit Turkey is a member of NATO.
The UK has alliances with AUKUS but the UK is still a member of NATO.
You really don’t understand English do you.
That was in reference to the gym.
Do try and keep up.
That was by reference to your comment about Turkey.
Do try to keep up.
So far as I can see Hungary has been a NATO member since 1999:
Alphabetical list of NATO member countries
Canada and Greece are also NATO members:
Alphabetical list of NATO member countries
Yes.
But they have previously considered leaving. Greece has left NATO military command for a period.
They are members of NATO:
Alphabetical list of NATO member countries
Yes, but its foreign policy differs from stated NATO policy in some regards.
All members of NATO have differing foreign policies but they are still members of NATO.
If they are not part of NATO military command, they cannot be part of any alleged NATO ‘expansion’
Nonsense.
An attack on one is an attack on all.
Every new member is part of NATO’s expansion.
And of course NATO has been expanding ever since it was first formed:
Alphabetical list of NATO member countries
So far as I can see France remains a member of NATO:
Alphabetical list of NATO member countries
In 1966, President Charles de Gaulle decided to withdraw France from NATO’s integrated military structure. This reflected the desire for greater military independence, particularly vis-à-vis the United States, and the refusal to integrate France’s nuclear deterrent or accept any form of control over its armed forces.
In practical terms, while France still fully participated in the political structures of the Organization, it was no longer represented on certain committees, for instance, the Defence Planning Committee and the Nuclear Planning Group. This decision also led to the removal of French forces from NATO commands and foreign forces from French territory. The stationing of foreign weapons on French territory, including nuclear weapons, was also banned. NATO’s political headquarters (based in Paris since 1952), as well as the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe or SHAPE (in Rocquencourt since 1951) moved to Belgium.
Despite France’s withdrawal from NATO’s integrated military structure, two technical agreements were signed with the Alliance, setting out procedures in the event of Soviet aggression. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, France has regularly contributed troops to NATO’s military operations, making it one of the largest troop-contributing states. It is also NATO’s fourth-biggest contributor to the military budget.
From the early 1990s onwards, France distanced itself from the 1966 decision with, for instance, its participation at the meetings of Defence Ministers from 1994 (Seville) onwards and the presence of French officers in Allied Command Operations and Allied Command Transformation structures from 2003. At NATO’s Strasbourg/Kehl Summit in April 2009, France officially announced its decision to fully participate in NATO structures1.
If France withdraws from NATO military command as it has done in the past, that is a contraction of NATO
France is a member of NATO:
Alphabetical list of NATO member countries
Which of course also means your thesis that membership of NATO is contracting is also complete and utter tosh.
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/126245.htm
So despite all the waffle and guff from you, all the countries you suggest are in some way not part of NATO are members of NATO,
In addition NATO has been expanding ever since it was first established in 1949.
But you claim NATO has not been expanding.
How unbelievably weird.
Is it the use of ‘accession’ and ‘enlargement’ what confuses you? Do you think the use of those words means NATO is not expanding by new members joining by accession to the treaty or enlarging NATO by joining?
Alphabetical list of NATO member countries
Countries apply to join NATO.
That cannot be construed, however you try and cut it, as NATO expansion.
Indeed, as the geographic and military size of various members has declined since 1945, the geographic and military size of NATO has contracted.
LOL.
You are really funny.
NATO has been expanding ever since it was first founded but according to you that is not expanding.
Alphabetical list of NATO member countries
Putin does not seem to agree.
He sees NATO expanding east to encroach on Russia’s borders.
So now you are arguing that NATO is not expanding at all because on balance over the years members have left and now new ones are joining.
Snore snore snore.
Hey, if I send you the money will you buy a bigger shovel so you can dig a bigger hole for yourself faster.
Answer me this:
If you want to join a gymnasium, do you first ask the gym to provide you with figures for how many have joined and how many have left the gym over the last thirty years?
Unbelievable. When the membership increases the gym is expanding its membership but according to you that is not expanding.
And even though its membership is expanding according to you it is not expanding if you personally don’t know if it is expanding or not.
And a balloon is not expanding despite being pumped up if you are not looking at it as it is being pumped up because you personally don’t know it is being pumped up.
etc etc etc etc
Is to miss the point.
In fact the gym may very well be contracting as other members leave. You have no idea and no interest.
You, and not the gym, call the shots because you have to pay the subscription. That is the point. It is not a policy decision of the gym to expand by recruiting you, is it? It is your decision to join the gym. The size of the membership is irrelevant.
So countries elect to join NATO, not the other way round.
You also avoid the point that Russia is party to the OSCE which guarantees the rights of nations to decide on their own foreign alliances.
Russia has always agreed that everyone should be able to join the gym!
LOL.
You are really funny.
NATO has been expanding ever since it was first founded but according to you that is not expanding.
Alphabetical list of NATO member countries
NATO had twenty six divisions in Europe in 1977.
It now has eight and those are only battlegroup sized components.
You will have no idea how many battlegroups a fully constituted division comprises.
Clue: many more than one.
By all means consider eight to be an expansion on twenty six.
But you may be considered a bit silly, as I have previously pointed out.
LOL.
You are really funny.
NATO has been expanding ever since it was first founded but according to you that is not expanding.
Alphabetical list of NATO member countries
Wake up! You are way behind the times.
This is 2024 and not 1971 – over 50 years later.
In the era of modern warfare much more can be achieved with fewer boots on the ground.
The Russians lost vast numbers of tanks to Ukrainian infantry equipped with British shoulder launched missiles.
The UK supplied initially 400 and the Russians tank crews were petrified of getting killed by them.
Drones are used widely.
And much much more is being done with less and less.
Heroism to me is the display of extraordinary courage, at a moment in time. No-one saves puppies from a burning building every day. Once is enough. You’re a hero.
Churchill was a uniquely flawed individual, but when the moment arose, he did indeed display incredible valour and courage in standing as our leader against the Nazi threat, at a time where many of the elite sympathised with Hitler and wanted some form of capitulation. . Churchill not only dug in against it, but his rhetoric and statesmanship came to the fore in setting Britain up as a stoic defender of freedom, at great cost. Even if you think you know his great speeches, listen to them again. His rise to PM in 1940 was an aligning of the planets, an alignment that never really reoccurred after 1944. Was he a hero, absolutely in my eyes.
“the most important historian in the United States”.
No difficult accomplishment that.
Of course Churchill had to make an alliance with the Soviets. We were in a desperate war of national survival. A war which broke us financially, and from which arguably we have never recovered.
I know it’s kind of old fashioned to say it was our finest hour, and we would not have managed to stand and fight and win without Churchill (with all of his flaws), but I still believe it to be true.
I detest those who disparage the great moments of our history.
It was Chamberlain who declared war, not Churchill.
The question is why? It was the other side of Europe, Poland was no particular partner, ally, friend or strategic interest (Ukraine?) to UK.
Hitler’s eyes were set East, left alone that’s where he would have gone – as he soon enough did – but he and his generals certainly could not accept an enemy to the rear.
Left alone, the Germans would have become so embroiled in a large geographic area with large antagonistic populations, the supposed threat to the UK and World never would have materialised.
WWI was a war between Russia and Germany (fag-end of Austro-Hungarian Empire), once again far side of Europe, why did Britain involve itself in that? Ironically Russia who had started the war, withdrew leaving France & the UK to carry the can.
I know the usual justifications about stopping an expansionist power… how did that work out? So I don’t believe any of it. Like now we are supporting Ukraine in the name of freedom and democracy.
Ha! Lockdowns, forced vaccinating, jailing protesters against immigration.
By moving into Czechoslovakia on 15 March 1939, Hitler clearly demonstrated his readiness to act on his ambition, outlined in ‘Mein Kampf’, to dominate Europe.
The Budapest Memorandum was struck in 1994, following lengthy and complicated negotiations involving the then Russian president Boris Yeltsin, Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma, US president Bill Clinton and the then British prime minister John Major.
In exchange for giving up its nuclear arsenal, Ukraine initially sought legally binding guarantees from the US that it would intervene should Ukraine’s sovereignty be breached. But when it became clear that the US was not willing to go that far, Ukraine agreed to somewhat weaker – but nevertheless significant – politically binding security assurances to respect its independence and sovereignty which guaranteed its existing borders. China and France subsequently extended similar assurances to Ukraine, but did not sign the Budapest Memorandum.
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine weakens the credibility of major power security assurances, undermines the nuclear nonproliferation regime and dampen prospects for future disarmament.
And documents leaked from the Kremlin indicate that Russia’s demographic decline has determined Putin on a course of imperial expansionism designed to create a European superstate of 250 million souls; to dominate Europe.
It is by no means necessary to ‘occupy’ Europe in order to dominate it.
‘In a modern strategy the Atlantic army must provide for the West a sense of security to a degree that will encourage it to act and react in respect to global events with confidence. That forecloses to the Soviet UIlion the options of intimidation, blackmail, and political leverage.’
LAND FORCES IN MODERN STRATEGY by LIEUTENANT GENERAL DE WITT C. SMITH, JR. US ARMY 1977
Anywhere online those can be found?
I find the complacency or apathy in European nations to bring this murderous destructive war to an end inexplicable.
I hear none calling for peace or how to achieve that.
Starmer is willing to support Ukraine to the last drop of Ukrainian blood borrowing money against future taxes to do so with his £20bn ‘black hole’.
I have never heard him mention peace once.
WTF is going on?
FSB ways and means strategy document Sept. 1991, copy held by RUSI
Directorate for Cross Border Cooperation strategy document held by Delfi Estonia, the London-based Dossier Center, the Swedish newspaper Expressen, Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung, German radio networks Westdeutscher Rundfunk and Norddeutscher Rundfunk, the Polish investigative outlet Frontstory, the Belarusian Investigative Centre and Central European news site VSquare. The authorship of the strategy document belongs to the Presidential Directorate for Cross-Border Cooperation, a subdivision of Putin’s Presidential Administration, which was established five years ago. The rather innocuously named directorate’s actual task is to exert control over neighbouring countries that Russia sees as in its sphere of influence: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova.
There is little talk of anything other than peace in European capitals, A Summit on Peace in Ukraine was held in Switzerland on 15 and 16 June 2024. In addition to Switzerland, 92 countries and eight organisations attended the summit, including India, South Africa and Brazil (as an observer) who had initially been non-committal. In April 2024 the Ukrainian Government acknowledged that the participation of the rest of the global community was crucial and in particular countries such as China, India, Brazil and South Africa.
There will be another such peace summit in November.
But we hear nothing of peace from Russia, the country that murdered a British citizen on British soil in 2018 and has just funded, organised an arson attack in East London. Why? Because Russia, Putin, has no interest in peace, only in advancing the cause of the Russo-centric ‘Union State’, a planned European superstate of 250 million souls to dominate the domestic and foreign policies of all Europe.