Headline from The Daily Telegraph:
Why British house prices will suffer side effects from Russia's invasion of Ukraine
The British property market is already grappling with rapidly rising inflation, successive interest rate rises and the cost of living crisis. There could also be further pressure on British house prices thanks to the conflict in Ukraine and the resulting economic fallout.
Do these people have no sense of perspective? Even if house prices were to fall by 20%, that's only wiped out the last two or three years' worth of gains. Meanwhile, a few thousand miles away, people are being bombed and killed in a pointless invasion by a mad dictatorship.
Friday, 25 February 2022
Home-Owner-Ism is the British national religion.
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15 comments:
Mark, there's no point in trying to debunk one carefully cultivated myth if you are only going to follow it up with another. Putin is neither mad nor a dictator (except to the extent that all heads of state are dictators, whether elected or not, after all there's not much we can do to get rid of Boris until 2024, whatever stupid things he does, nor does he seem very accountable to anyone), however there are a large number of people in powerful positions that have a vested interest in you thinking that he is. Sounds familiar?
I think Putin probably has lost the plot. Elected or not, they all do after half a dozen years in charge.
B, what earthly advantage does Putin hope to gain for 'Russia' or himself personally from invading Ukraine?
The only thing I can think of is that it is a publicity stunt like Argentinian junta invading Falklands (or indeed, Thatcher re-invading) in order to divert his potential voters from more pressing domestic issues (or his own criminality).
Sure, Ukraine is charging Russia a few billion a year as rent for the pipelines to Europe, but Nordstream 2 was going to circumvent that.
Ph, yes. Putin accused Ukrainian leaders of being Nazis. Ukraine's PM pointed out that he was himself Jewish.
B, and slag off UK politicians as you will, but they do not routinely murder and imprison their opponents. And sure, the party of government in the UK tries to rig seat boundaries a bit, and both big parties oppose PR, but UK elections are not complete shams and frauds like in Russia
So UK pol's are not dictators in the normal meaning of the word.
B, this is bugging me. Putin says he needs a NATO-free buffer zone to protect the Russian Homeland and all this bollocks. Who in their right mind is going to attack Russia? They sell us oil and gas and we turn a blind eye to the internal horrors, same as Saudi.
I suppose he is pandering to the remaining Stalinists in Russia who hark back to the Warsaw Pact and the Iron Curtain (which did them more harm than it did to the West, if truth be told).
The value of most people's house does not change. It is refuge to relax in. Presumably a bearable distance from work.Where families and memories are created.
It is the value of money that goes up and down. Mostly down. You have no control over that, unless you are in government.
The money you can get for your house only matters in that period between selling your current and buying a new.
Or when your heirs are flogging it off. But by then you do not care.
"B, what earthly advantage does Putin hope to gain for 'Russia' or himself personally from invading Ukraine?"
Stopping Ukraine once again having nuclear armaments? Stopping them killing ethnically Russian civilians in Donetsk and Luhansk (13000 dead and counting)?
"B, and slag off UK politicians as you will, but they do not routinely murder and imprison their opponents. And sure, the party of government in the UK tries to rig seat boundaries a bit, and both big parties oppose PR, but UK elections are not complete shams and frauds like in Russia"
Oh no? Julian Assange, who has been locked up for years and he hasn't even been found guilty of any crime? Craig Murray? What about Nicola Sturgeon's attempt to fit up Alex Salmond? You are giving a dog a bad name and beating it here. We are told that Russia's elections are complete shams and frauds and we believe it, because we can't believe that any politician could be as popular as Putin is with the Russians, because ours are so crap. In any case, I wasn't slagging off UK politicians, I was just pointing out that they were elected dictators, neither removable nor accountable.
"Putin says he needs a NATO-free buffer zone to protect the Russian Homeland and all this bollocks. Who in their right mind is going to attack Russia?"
NATO. NATO is an organisation that was set up by the US to ally the West against Russia. That was its purpose and that is still its purpose. Russia was promised after the end of communism, that NATO would not expand eastwards beyond Germany. It is now almost at the Russian border. Russia is doing exactly what any country would do if a hostile foreign alliance threatened to place missiles on its borders, what the US did when Russia placed missiles in Cuba. Do you really think the coup in 2014 in Ukraine that started all of this and ousted a democratically elected government in favour of one controlled by the US was the Ukranians acting entirely on their own initiative? It's not as if NATO, which is effectively the USA, has a good track record in this area, having invaded or destroyed four countries just since the millennium.
Dh, agreed.
B, thanks for the history lesson, but that was then, this is now.
Will Russia and its citizens be freer, wealthier, happier, safer as a result of this madness? Methinks not.
Sooner or later, Ukraine will be independent again, and do you think it is then more or less likely that Ukraine will be keen to join NATO* and/or the EU? *And waverers like Finland?
The Poles still collectively hate Russia for centuries of on/off invasions, occupations and partitions. Ireland hates 'Britain' (whatever that means) but with less venom. That's how people are.
On the topic of why Putin accuses Ukraine of being ruled by Neonazis, even though the current Russian government fits that description a lot better than the Ukrainian government does, I thought that this Twitter thread made a lot of sense.
D, thanks, most excellent thread.
"B, thanks for the history lesson, but that was then, this is now."
“Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it” as George Santanya said, and Winston Churchill quoted.
This, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4 , gives some perspective on how this all started and this, https://shadowrunners.substack.com/p/whats-really-going-on-in-ukraine?utm_source=url on why it all kicked off when it did. Like Iraq, it's all about WMDs.
B, "history" is several things:
a) Working out and remembering what actually, inarguably happened.
b) Trying to guess people's motives for doing what they did.
c) Interpreting history in such a way as to justify what you are doing and/or putting yourself in a favourable light = propaganda.
The twitter thread that D linked to is a good example of c) whereby Russian leaders from Breshnev all the way to Putin are coasting on the "we defend(ed) Russia against Nazis and Neo-Nazis therefore we can do what we like" myth, which seems very plausible to me.
So this is an example of (c) repeating itself. The fact that (a) is repeating itself is a follow-on from (c) and not the precursor.
Meanwhile, I am wondering about (b), why the heck is Putin doing it? What advantage does this bring him, his mates or the Russian people generally? He must have known how 'the west' would respond. And as at this morning, the Russian economy is a bit fucked in such a way that every poor innocent Russian will be suffering.
And he is pushing Ukraine and other nearby states further into the EU/NATO fold, the opposite of what he claims to want, so an epic fail on all counts.
If Putin is toppled in a palace coup soon, I will not be surprised.
"Meanwhile, I am wondering about (b), why the heck is Putin doing it?"
If you read the second article I linked to, it explains why. NATO is an anti-Russian organisation. That's what it was set up to do and nothing has changed much, as we see. As far as the Russians were concerned, NATO was proposing to place nuclear WMDs hard up against Russia's border in Ukraine. As John Mearsheimer points out, what was the US's response when Russia did the same in Cuba? it was the same, invasion. Heck, you don't even need to host Russian missiles, you just need to get on the wrong side of the US to get invaded by them as Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria have found out the hard way and many other countries before them.
"And as at this morning, the Russian economy is a bit fucked in such a way that every poor innocent Russian will be suffering."
This is another carefully prepared myth. Have a look at this, from the Telegraph, https://txtify.it/www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/02/15/putin-close-winning-ukraine/ . Russia is a net exporter, so the collapse of the rouble will make them a lot richer, especially if they are kicked out of SWIFT and demand payment in roubles for the gas, oil and grain. The poor innocent Russians won't be suffering half as much as the poor innocent Germans who will have to be paying a lot more for their gas, now that they are not buying it from Russia any more, nor the poor innocent rest of the world who will be paying a lot more for their petrol, diesel and heating fuel. Sanctions are very much an own goal. They have to be. Every trade stopped by them must have a Western party to it as well as a Russian one. Since neither of the parties are in it for reasons of philanthropy, both are going to lose out when the trade is stopped.
B, yes, NATO, whatever. But does it matter to Russians whether the US launches nukes from north America or Europe? Dead is dead.
Re sanctions, of course there is a loss to both sides. But a £1 billion loss shared between a billion westerners is £1 each; shared between 100 million Russians it's £10 each.
There's a big difference between having five minutes reaction time and twenty minutes. Also if your enemy is right on your border, they can be in your country before you know it, whereas if they are several hundred miles away, with a neutral country to cross, you get a lot more warning. That's why NATO wants to be in Ukraine and the Russians don't want it there. You have to ask what non-hostile reason NATO have for muscling in to Ukraine in the first place.
Re sanctions, it's not like that, the billion westerners all pay the same higher prices for gas and oil, it's not reduced by the fact that there's more of them, if anything it's increased. Nearly all the sanctions will only hit those small minority of largely rich Russians who trade internationally. Most ordinary Russians' needs are satisfied by the domestic market, which will be unaffected by sanctions. If anything, food, gas and oil will become cheaper for them. In the West, the rich and powerful will be making damn sure that the sanctions don't affect them, which is why they will largely affect the ordinary people. You only have to look at what's being sanctioned to see that it's all theatre.
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