Wednesday 26 October 2016

Fun Online Polls: The 'price' of Single Market access & Refuelling the Admiral Kuznetsov

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Which 'price' is worth paying to retain tariff and quota free access to the EU Single Market?

Freedom for EU workers to come to the UK to work - 15%
A market access fee of about £5 billion a year - 8%
Both - 2%
Either/or but not both - 1%
Neither. I prefer Hard Brexit - 72%
Other, please specify - 2%


Good, that's that settled then. I hope the government is on message. Exactly 100 people took part (thanks all) so no 'differences due to rounding' this week either :-)
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A strange quandary again today. From the BBC:

Spain has said it will review the permit for refuelling it gave to Russian warships expected to support a bombing campaign against rebel-held eastern Aleppo, in Syria.

The decision to allow the use of the port of Ceuta was criticised. Nato expressed concern that the ships could be used to bomb civilians...


That's more than a tad hypocritical of 'Nato' (when did it stop being called 'NATO'?) if you ask me, and it  serves the Russians right for not having seen this coming and built a nuclear powered aircraft carrier (lack of easy access to the oceans was always the Russian Navy's Achilles' Heel), but hey.

The whole concept of allowing foreign warships to use your ports has always puzzled me, there is a very strange legal status to all these things and it's always surrounded with diplomatic flummery, but AFAIAA, Spain is not in any way at war with Russia and it's entirely up to Spain whether they want to allow it or not.

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll: "Would it particularly bother you if Spain allowed a Russian warship to refuel in a Spanish-controlled port?"

Vote HERE or use the widget in the side bar.

4 comments:

MikeW said...

Interesting question this one. Even without much effort you can see the Russian Navy, all three fleets, is mostly teeth with no tail. (Unlike the British Navy for example.)Moreover,I cannot find any future Russian 'auxilary ships' on order with the French builders: tankers, supply, logistics, etc, that will make it, even at some future date, a 'Blue Water' fighter. So the Russian surface fleet is where is was in the cold war. A military force that has a life expectancy of about 24 hours before American/nato hunt every single surface unit down.Then the trouble would really start of course, and we will all be dead, so will never know how many subs the Americans went on and found!!!

Got to respect the Russian's for doing so much: political/military, with so little. So you need to dig around on a hardcore, intel sight to find out how many weeks/sorties the Russian carrier group has on station when it gets there.

Just coming in: Result from English Channel dash last week. Russian Navy 0 British Fishing Boats 0. Russian signals indicate that they thought they may well have had to spend their entire mission in the Channel trying to find a British owned fishing boat to shoot at this time.

MikeW said...

Update, looking at the current BBC picture on the left of the carrier there looks to be a tanker.Wouldn't we have a good chuckle if that has been hired/leased out by a British, American owned firm. And insured against war damage by, errr, Lloyds of London.

So never mind the 'on station' bit above. Poll: How many Nato country owned ships/insurance companies, etc, etc, are making the Russian cruise possible in the first place?

Mark Wadsworth said...

MW, good idea for a poll but I'd have to spend ages researching the answer.

Bayard said...

Mike W, when have British or US businesses let politics stand in the way of making money?