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Doesn't it partly depend on who wins the Canadian election. Conservatives were looking on course for a landslide mere weeks ago - now things are much closer in the polls. And Carnage Carney - now Canadian PM despite having no electoral mandate and not being an elected MP - is no doubt going to pull every trick in the book over the next six months. I didn't think they could have a worse and more self serving sPM than Justin T - I was wrong!

When considering this statement, is it worth comparing how much in percentage points Britain's GDP has increased since 2016 compared to the EU's largest economies Germany, France and Italy?

To a certain extent: basically he has done a good job leading his country and Putin has failed to assassinate him for 3 years. Then there is all that history between Trump and Zelensky (although I do wonder if commentators overdo the significance of that). Its difficult to interpret American officials sent to Ukraine to talk to opposition candidates in a positive light...

----------------- "She noted that this put Trump at a natural disadvantage when the two men talked. "Many times when Putin and Trump were interacting, Putin's actually making fun of him!" she said. "It's just completely lost in the translation. I can give you lots of episodes of this" ------------------ Go on then.

I suspect that Zelenskyy may be the fly in the ointment? He may not last much longer.

It should be - but it does not look 'promising' so far on that count. It sounds a bit like Putin is confident perhaps even arrogant he can manipulate Trump but then Trump does not sound aware that is what Putin intends to do. The split in analysis of Putins response seems illustrative on that count. Did a little 'dyor' on previous encounters and found this: https://www.rawstory.com/trump-putin-2671323455/?link_source=ta_thread_link&taid=67d3407ed5f698000184d9bc&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=threads.net

Or we could just spend hours on the internet saying "Brexit Bad!"? Close escape for your friend though, she sounds very unbalanced (or more realistically was going to break up with him anyway)

You're the one making the denials! British colonial history is so gruesome and depraved that we dare not teach it in our schools. And we’re still at, if only as junior partners. Saxe-Coburg Gotha’s failure to offer a formal apology for Britain’s imperial crimes in Kenya demonstrated an appalling lack of judgement. Yet another attempt by UK parliamentarians to bury the truth and deny the Kenyans justice. Shame on him and shame on them.

You have no knowledge of the Stone Age or Medieval England except what you read in some picture book at school, there are still people alive who were children in the GD, and there were people alive 10 and 20 years ago that could give written and oral accounts of the GD, sitting in a housing scheme in England somewhere smoking weed and watching a big screen colour telly while drawing benefits or running around in a bling car on monthly payments with a big student loan and two credit cards in your back pocket isn`t remotely comparable to the GD.

Putin's saying exactly what I would expect him to say at this stage in the negotiations, now the ball is in Trump's court. Putin's job is to drag it out for as long as he can (for many reasons not worth going into). Trump's job is to up the pressure on Putin to get a quick conclusion.

"On Wednesday morning, as American outlets festooned themselves in Covid retrospectives, two big German newspapers - Zeit and Süddeutsche Zeitung1 -broke some actual news. Turns out in early 2020, Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, took a break from her busy schedule of welcoming knife-wielding Afghan refugees to ask Germany’s intelligence agency, the BND2, to figure out Covid’s origins. You remember early 2020! The Science (TM) was very powerful back then. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci and Peter Daszak — a British zoologist Fauci had never met, except he had — were gently steering their fellow scientists towards a conclusion that Covid’s origins were 100 billion zillion percent natural. By gently steering, I mean accusing anyone who even mentioned the weird coincidence that the epidemic started about 50 feet outside the world’s most prolific coronavirus research lab3 of committing thoughtcrimes against humanity. The Fauci/Daszak campaign proved a success, thanks to the useful idiots in the American media, who were never more useful (to China) or more idiotic than in 2020. — But the BND had its own sources. And the agency concluded with 80 percent to 95 percent certainty that the virus had in fact leaked from a Chinese lab." https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/urgent-they-knew-it-was-a-lab-leak

A depression, like a recession, is a relative measure that charts decline against what came immediately before. Just as it’s meaningless to say the Great Depression was in fact a time of glorious plenty relative to medieval England or the Stone Age so it’s meaningless to say 2025 is great because it’s better than 1930. I mean yes it is IS better than 1930 but why isn’t it better than 2005? It should be shouldn’t it given all the advances we keep making, but it isn’t.

Haha that classic media trick of using different units to spin something. I might just as well multiply it up and say that if £6k is typical then the UKs 40 million adults are collectively £240 billion down by now? Or should I re express that in terms of extra nurses and life saving operations we could have funded to tug further at the heartstrings? And no - that is NOT the total cost. You asked me for the worst personal impact so I gave it. You didn’t ask for the total impact. We could spend hours considering the impact of Brexit on exchange rates and the cost of everything I’ve bought, or on the impact on employment, or the friend I had whose German girlfriend burst into tears the morning after the referendum and went back to Germany on the grounds that Britain didn’t want her here etc etc But it’s all wasted because actually you’re not interested in the impact of Brexit on me. You’re only interested in the impact of it on yourself, and would deem it a success no matter what it cost others.

Wow, what a shocker, Russia isn't desperate for a ceasefire after all. Western media propaganda projection revealed.

tide is going out time to see who's been swimming nude

what about two average people and their grandparents?

Yes. Trump conceded to Russian demands before negotiations started. Putin will now write a longer list. Trump made offers not within his gift. The final decision on peace terms is for Ukraine, not the US. Trump may know real estate deals but discussions like these are on a different level. Both the US and Russia will have people good at this but I doubt US negotiators had much say in the matter, if any. I wonder if blind incompetence rather than pro Russia leanings lies behind the current mess. Trump handed Putin concessions on a plate doubtless expecting compromise. He may have only realised he had been outflanked when Putin failed to budge an inch. To save face, Trump then tried to throw Ukraine under a bus with the staged White House meeting followed by withdrawal of military aid. There was a path to settling the matter because Russia's cash position is deriorating fast. Calculated planning was need not Twitter anouncements 24/7. Trump is out of his depth. I hope Europe can pick up the ball to support Ukraine.

The Rest is Politics 26th February Aid vs Defence An interesting discussion about aid, although it blurs the line a bit between aid spending and development spending. It doesn’t get into whether development spending in some places is a bottomless pit. Also naughty Rory Stewart doesn’t declare an interest that his wife works for an NGO funded by USAID until a commenter calls him out on this at the end.

Without cheap debt the average person can`t afford to buy extra property for rental yield (even with secure employment)

That's not a crash for many people then if it's only a 40% reduction. That feels like skimming off the froth. I bought in 2011 and the property has increased by at least 50% but I've also paid off about 50% of the mortgage. So a 40% decrease would literally have no impact on me. Damn I was very lucky buying when I did now I think about it. Lucky I love oop north.

Well, I think one of us is certainly talking shit. Yes, again.

But only one part of my predicted correlation has been tested (2007) the lack of jobs part is still to come (in an inflationary environment) so it looks like you are just talking sh*it yet again?

No, it's rental yeild

Closing in on $3000 now, when will it cross that threshold?