The West’s economies: autumn storms now, then winter is coming
It doesn’t need saying, really, that he government has been utterly incapable of dealing with inflation and exorbitant energy prices. This was thanks to the PM now leaving and the ensuing ‘election’ theatre produced by the wannabe PMs Sunak and Truss. Meanwhile, as the saying has it, ’time and tide wait for no man’ and thus the latest news from the ‘energy sector’ should be more worrying for the MSM than speculating about Truss going for a snap election.
The disastrous green ideology of Net Zero has already destroyed any chance of this country’s surviving the winter without unimaginable damage. The MSM seem to try to lull us into a false sense of security by hiding news relating to the further destruction of our economy, from agriculture, pubs and breweries to the disruption of supply chains.
However, they know full well whom to blame – I don’t need to use the “R” and “P” words – while still indulging in their blind support for that war regime in Kiev. As far as they’re concerned, any new sanctions imposed by supranational entities like the G7 are simply unavoidable and need to be accepted without grumbling. Thus news on yesterday’s G7’s decision regarding an ‘oil price cap’ are buried well inside the online editions. After using a search engine, I found this report in The Times:
“Finance ministers from the G7 group of advanced economies have backed a price cap on Russian oil in an attempt to curb the country’s revenue from crude exports. The agreement, confirmed after a virtual meeting yesterday, is designed to challenge a key stream of funding for Moscow’s war in Ukraine. While ministers from the G7 nations announced their “joint political intention” to introduce the measure, key practical details around how it would be implemented have yet to be finalised. The price cap’s level per barrel has yet to be determined, according to a statement, and will be based upon “a range of technical inputs” to be agreed by the countries implementing it.” (link, paywalled)
I spare you the puerile summary produced in the DT (paywalled link, if you must). The FT has some details of how the G7 aim to achieve this cap:
“The initiative will hinge on an incentive system whereby importers seeking insurance cover and shipping services from companies based in G7 and EU countries to transport Russian oil would need to observe the price ceiling, […]. “The price cap is specifically designed to reduce Russian revenues and Russia’s ability to fund its war of aggression whilst limiting the impact of Russia’s war on global energy prices,” the G7 ministers said in a joint statement. They added: “The initial price cap will be set at a level based on a range of technical inputs and will be decided by the full coalition in advance of implementation in each jurisdiction.” (link, paywalled)
Yes, this is ‘free trade’, one of those Western values “we” defend in the Ukraine: G7 finance ministers decide how international insurance companies must work, never mind the ludicrous situation of this entity deciding what they would like to pay for a resource. It’s not inconceivable that this mechanism could be used for other resources such as fertilisers or indeed grain. There’s more, and this is the important point (my emphasis):
“The agreement is a political victory for the US, which first privately floated the proposal of a price cap in April as a means to punish Russia for the war in Ukraine. But it has had to overcome scepticism from some EU countries as to its feasibility.” (link, paywalled)
Instead of trying to work for peace the USA has been working full out to ‘punish Russia’, come what may. Prices for oil imports for G7 countries who don’t happen to sit on some own oil fields will remain stratospheric because, as is already happening, Russia will sell oil to e.g. India or China who will then re-sell it to the West, with a surcharge. TASS has details which seem to have slipped between the cracks of reports in the Westminster MSM:
“Finance ministers of the G7 group […] announced the intention of introduce the price cap on Russian oil in their statement on Friday. For doing this they “seek to establish a broad coalition” and “urge all countries that still seek to import Russian oil and petroleum products to commit to doing so only at prices at or below the price cap.” (link)
They, or rather: the USA want non-G7 countries to join this ‘coalition’. Expect some more and severe arm-twisting by the USA going on en coulisse. I wonder if these countries will do so in the face of this statement:
“Russia would halt oil and petroleum products supplies to countries deciding to cap the Russian oil price, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Thursday.” (link)
I wonder moreover if the G7 countries will be happy to forego buying ‘oil and petroleum products’ as well. I wonder if they still think that Russia will creep away, tail between their legs, and accept yon punishment which the USA is so keen on.
In contrast, our MSM present us with ‘outrage’ articles this morning, on Gazprom stopping supplies through Nordstream1 ‘indefinitely’. The DM’s headlines, as always, provide the summary of the news:
“Nord Stream gas supply pipeline from Russia will be closed INDEFINITELY after ‘oil leak was found’… just hours after G7 nations decided to cap payments in bid to defund Kremlin war machine – Russian energy giant Gazprom cuts off all Nord Stream supplies to Europe following three day maintenance” (link)
This seems to have come as a huge surprise to our MSM’s political correspondents. Here is The Times’ headline for the record: “Putin hits West with fresh gas shutdown – Indefinite closure threatens to push up prices” (link, paywalled). Oh really, gas prices will rise even more? Who’da thunk! Similarly, the DT writes:
“Vladimir Putin has imposed an indefinite shutdown of the Nord Stream pipeline supplying gas to Europe, as a proxy energy war between the Kremlin and the West escalates.” (paywalled link)
Note the coy expression: ‘market data earlier suggesting’. It was Gazprom who announced this maintenance would last for two days, not ‘market data’. But then again, any statement coming out of Russia is not to be believed. Note also that none of our MSM write “Biden has imposed [fill in your economic data of choice]”, as if to hide the USA’s political aims scubas ‘punishing Putin’.
The elected leaders of the G7, our Chancellor included, are following the US Playbook slavishly even unto the destruction of our economies. With a ‘new PM’ installed on Monday, we’ll keep on this path because she has already declared that “we” will ‘fight’ Russia come what may.
Since it’s Saturday, I leave you with a ‘must-read’. It’s the latest interview given by Jacques Baud who again explains why this war is unwinnable for the Ukraine, peppered with outstanding criticism of the Western MSM and ‘experts’. It is a very long piece, but extremely worthwhile spending time and effort on reading it. Enjoy the weekend as best you can.
Hope you are alright Debbie as news hasn’t been posted yet. Don’t blame you if you’re having a lie in or break from it.
Sorry for the delay Lisa. Yes, I had a lie-in. News is up now.
Sorry Viv, no way can I enjoy the weekend.
My cat seems to have disappeared and I’ve had a stupid letter from the council telling me to do nearly impossible things to get the £100 cash help, they have been deputised, to give me.
I’m so sorry to hear about your cat – hopefully by the time you read this he or she will have come back.
As for the council – at the weekend there’ll be nobody there to help, but perhaps on Monday you might find someone on whom to play the ‘victim’ card. It grates, but it does bring success because those council hippies feel proud when they can show us oldies how clever they are!
Yes, she is back, safe and sound.
And yes I did think of ringing the council. Actually it is no great problem for me but I considered telling a fib and really laying it on about how out of touch with reality they are.
For instance:-
Not everyone has a driving licence at all, let alone a current one.
Not every one has a valid passport.
How many people, nowadays receive printed utility bills? Let alone 2 of them within a month. And how many would keep them safe to produce at the council’s unexpected whim?
How many of the poor, old, disabled, pensioners, in a rural area can take these documents into a post office?
Is the post office really going to hand me REAL MONEY?
I also considered walking through to the local shop today. They have a ‘post office counter’. I do have a current driving licence and I could have kept eyes and ears open for Pumpkin.
But it is not easy to walk that far, and I hesitate to drive round because parking space is virtually non existent round here.
Anyway, a friend will land tomorrow so I will see whether the P.O. counter will hand him my money. They do know him and they are very good in that Spar shop.
I have a feeling Viv, that you felt as cross as me about that letter!
Oh yes – I certainly would have! At least they didn’t demand proof that you’re truly yourself by asking for access to your smartphone!
I’m glad Pumpkin is back – it’s wet down here, not exactly weather suitable for cats staying outdoors …
Too right Pauline, I’m also more than rather cross about how ‘free’ money was handed out during the pandemonium to M.Ps and Civil Servants , Fraudsters and our new found friends who arrive without any ‘ papers’ and get everything freely given to them while tens of thousands of legitimate small business people received nothing. I note that our district council most of whom were working from home until quite recently and are unable even to keep the street clean ( not swept for two and a half years plus here) , don’t ask for residents to identify rhemselves when asking for local people to ‘welcome’ our latest 180 plus guests. ‘Chuckie’ had better have some answers by Tuesday or the people let down by the last incumbant of the ‘post’ won’t be at all happy to say the least.
Thank goodness. My cat Pumpkin has just walked in.
Pauline……next time your cat tries on this ruse and walks out and disappears, you could try what Sir Winston Churchill did once when one of his cats called ‘Kat’ walked or should I say ran out of the front door and didn’t return for a few days. The background to this story which is apparently true, is that Churchill came down the main stairs and saw Kat washing herself in the hallway. He said ‘good morning Kat’ to which the cat made no reply and then repeated ‘good morning Kat’ to which again there was no response. Churchill then threw the pile of papers he had in his hand at the time at Kat, and she ran out of the front door. No problem there you might think, except Kat didn’t return, and Churchill was so concerned at this that he brought the subject up during a House of Commons debate and was admonished probably by the Speaker, who accused him of bringing up trivialities. Suffice to say, Churchill spoke to his private secretary (Sir John Colville) about the disappearance of Kat, and he suggested that Churchill put a note up in one of the front windows requesting that Kat return home and that he was sorry for his behaviour. So, Churchill took the said advice and wrote out a note to the effect ‘Dear Kat please come home your master and mistress is missing you and hope you forgive me’. The following day Kat returned home, and Churchill fed Kat salmon and cream every day from that day on. Now I am not suggesting that you attend the House of Commons and mention this in a debate or seek advice from your personal secretary if you have one, but you could put up a note in the front window asking for Pumpkin’s return. Anyway, a bit of light relief….
Just read the “must read”
Will not attempt to comment on all or any of it except to say God Help Us
There does not appear to be any way to solve or even halt this headlong dash to the destruction of our civilisation or democracy as we know it
Does nobody these days ever stop and take a look at themselves or even “listen” to their friend or neighbours?
I’ve sat and read the Baud article all the way through and realise that I may be one of a limited number who will ever get to read his “truths” and realise they should be read universally to have any effect.
Perhaps we have overvalued the word ‘CRISIS’ and attributed so many minor disturbances to the description that we are failing collectively to recognise the “perfect permanent Storm” which is surely coming to affect the whole of mankind.
( Of course we peasants will feel it first)
Thank you for the Jacques Baud link, Viv.
Roger. Fiona Hill reveals that Russia and the Ukraine tentatively came to a peace deal in April…until Boris started to throw his weight around.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/09/02/diplomacy-watch-why-did-the-west-stop-a-peace-deal-in-ukraine/
Interesting article opposing the Green Nonsense with links to many others:
https://www.naturalnews.com/2022-08-28-climate-change-death-cult-declares-war-essential-elements-of-life.html
Effective rebellion against government requires social solidarity over a common cause, but in a multicultural, identity organised society, that is less and less likely to occur. It may be that by January when the cost of living (apt term) and energy crisis really hit, that society’s centrifugal forces are overcome and we unite against the ruling establishment. Except it will probably be a contagion of non bill payment rather then anything well organised based on common sympathy and feelings of solidarity. It will be the deplorable masses against the middle class. A revolt won’t include Katherine Viner, editor-in-chief of the Guardian, who received a 42% pay rise of £150K in July of this year taking her salary to over half a million a year, nor will it include BBC executives on six figure salaries or the many managers in Transport for London also on six figure salaries. Everyone who matters in the establishment can afford to heat and eat and the media will be saturated with virtue signalling concern for ‘hard working families’, but the fundamentals of what is wrong will not change. Instead, energy rationing will be used to support a narrative of we are all in this together to disguise and forestall awareness (and reaction against) that we have not all been in this together for decades.
Tony Benn once remarked that populations are controlled in two ways: through fear or through demoralisation. 2016, when 2 million or so people who normally do not vote suddenly did, their votes actually mattering for once, marks the last hurrah of the masses because all we achieved was to move control from fear or demoralisation to fear and demoralisation, the pandemic proving that fear works with inflation and energy rationing to now demoralise us. I doubt anyone will be put up against the wall – do we have one long enough? – but there will be some anxiety among the elite over the next 12 months about how much we can take. But, once it is seen that we just take it, they will slowly grind us back to a more secure future for them and their extractive government, yet another crisis, at great cost to the masses, weathered.
It is just possible Truss, Badenock et al will stop us becoming the next Venezuela, but if a red-green coalition takes over, as is all too possible if Truss fails or succumns to the Blob, then we and the rest of Europe, where socialist narratives also prevail, may turn us into another Venezuala. See you on the rubbish tips as we try and eke out a living in our failed state.
Too many are simply not interested in even inquiring into what is going on in the real world but are content to isolate themselves in their own little bubble.
An example:
My landlord, whilst I am in the UK, is a well educated teacher but is completely disinterested in the news and any other source which might reveal what is really going on with government and their supporters. All his spare time is spent on watching TV comedies / fantasy and reading religious books with not the slightest interest in the present reality.
However many articles of interest I try to draw his attention to they are just ignored even though not openly dismissed as “conspiracy theory”.
I suspect far too many of those we need on our side have the same closed minds.
Jack T. I’ve just read somewhere, can’t remember where, that Sunak read history at ‘Uni’ and wrote a PhD on the ‘Effect of the Napoleonic Wars on Lancashire’s Cotton Mills’.
! ! ! Words fail me.
“…government has been utterly incapable of dealing with inflation…”
Or doesn’t want to? All part of the agenda? they know that the end of the current fiat currency is coming and they hope to bring in Britcoin or CBDC.
Maybe however events will hopefully conspire to thwart them.
Net zero can’t be avoided. The longer we put it off , the worse the final cataclysm will be. We should have started decades ago. Now our hand is forced and we have a shambles.
All this has been predicted by myself and others.
You are like a broken record. Net zero can’t be achieved and is a complete fantasy solution to a non-problem, conjured to destabilise the Western world for a totalitarian reset. And it is being facilitated by useful idiots like you.
Phil O’S. at 10.22am.
Yes I agree about the broken record.
Oddly enough (can’t think why!) it reminds me of a certain Harry Again who kept saying how lock downs were unavoidable and masks and vaccines.
And that’ Labour is useless bloke on TCW ‘ very similar in tone.
Indeed Phil.
Alex Epstein, author of “Fossil Future”, disagrees as would, by implication, Steven Koonin, author of “Unsettled”. One should always read outside one’s echo chamber and these two carefully researched books, along with Christopher Booker’s “Global Warming: A Study in Groupthink” shoud be considered before alleging original sin for human kind.
Harryagain………..you’re boring and predictable. Give it a rest please. Nobody cares what you think, as you’ve been sussed out. Just enjoy your ‘free’ electricity whilst it lasts and trips to the coast in your Sinclair C5, and spare us your Johnson supporting dictats.
Russia’s aggression cannot be tolerated. We ignored the invasion of Crimea, the invasion of the rest of Ukraine followed.
If we left him be Putin would invading elsewhere next.
He clearly wants in re-invent the borders of the old USSR.
We have another Hitler on our hands.
Crimea voted to become Russian, as it was historically, and the takeover was mostly by their own regional troops; like the Donbas. What about Ukranian aggression not being tolerated, waging war on its own people in the Donbas for eight years.
There is no evidence of Putin wanting to invade elsewhere, but plenty that NATO, in breach of agreements, creeps ever closer to the Russian border.
Phil O’S 10.34am. Totally agree.
Indeed Phil but the truth must be hidden when it goes against the globalist narrative.
Harryagain…….another load of old bunkum straight out of Johnson’s and Truss’s political handbook. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has nothing to do with re-inventing the borders of the old USSR, but everything to do with NATO and the European Union going back on its word to a previous Russian administration that they would not embark upon an eastward expansion of influence, which is in fact what they have done. This situation in Ukraine could have been avoided. I am pretty sure you were around in 1962 when Russia located Nuclear missiles in Communist Cuba, well this present situation mirrors the Cuban crisis but in reverse. What part of it don’t you understand, I mean it beggar’s belief that you come on here spouting absolute rubbish. Surely you are not that naive. And as far Putin being another Hitler, just goes to prove that you have no understanding of history at all. Hitler invaded the whole of western Europe whereas Russia has invaded part of Ukraine. And Hitler’s regime set up a concentration camp system to imprison and subjugate those he regarded as undesirables and eventually killed them in Extermination Camps. So Harryagain, where are Putin’s Concentration Camps and Extermination Camps?
Hitler annexed Austria and then invaded Czechoslovakia.
He was emboldened by the inaction of Britain and France. Exactly paralleling today’s situation.
He then invaded Poland.
You don’t seem to have the slightest knowledge of history.
You never heard of the Gulags?
https://www.eurozine.com/the-gulag-is-still-alive/
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-backed-separatists-start-using-death-penalty-2025-criminal-code-2022-07-01/
Harold It is the West that is funding a country that glories the symbols and regalia of Nazism.
Oh, suddenly you’ve become a fan of the BBC?
Oho, they seemed to have changed their tune since eight years ago!sincehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gNp0PfK0CI
Colin regarding Putin`s Concentration Camps.
I don`t think Stalin`s `Gulags` in Siberia were regarded as extermination camps, they were awful forced labour affairs and i understand over a million died but that was out of a total of 18 million, most of whom were released into Soviet society or even stayed on and populated Siberia.