Hillonearth

My money's on this c**t.

Scott Ian out of Anthrax clearly has too much downtime between tours:

"Fucks sake, da...it you don't want to buy us birthday presents next year, just SAY..."

That's the reality of the situation unfortunately, although it doesn't make it any easier on the poor b*****ds who got blasted into chuck beef. Sounds like they left it too late to retreat in an orderly manner and were left with one road out which turned into a shooting gallery. The Ukrainians will have taken the view that it's better to kill them now than let them regroup and have to kill them later at a patentially higher cost to themselves...sounds heartless, but after the recent revelations in Izyum and elsewhere, it's unlikely they're in a charitable mood.

Yeah - I watched the thing live. There might have been some salient points in there somewhere, but by and large it felt like getting trapped at the far end of the bar while a drunk you used to know slightly rambles on about the state of his shitty life. It was only missing the part where he mentioned NATO turning the weans against him.

Britain too - a lot of the aircraft the RAF found to be obsolete in the more high-tech Western European theatre ended up in Russia...early marks of the Hurricane, Hampden bombers and so on. As far as the Americans went, if they decided they didn't fancy an aircraft themselves, chances are it would get papped off to the Russians...they produced 8000-odd units of the Bell Airacobra, 5000ish of which ended up in Russian hands, and the majority of the rest given to various co-belligerents like the Free French.

I suppose the two most successful wars Russia has fought that spring to mind are WW2 and against Napoleon - in both cases it was a case of absorbing incredible amounts of punishment, conceding territory .- something they're obviously not short of - while allowing the enemy to over-extend their lines of supply and eventually letting winter finish the job. Eventually their opponents exhausted themselves much in the manner of a boxer punching himself out against an opponent who won't go down. Purely in terms of equipment, the Russian genius in WW2 was to mass-produce low tech but incredibly reliable weapons that minimised potential points of failure...I'm thinking of things like the Sturmovik, the T-34 and the PPSh-41. The German tanks the T-34s faced were much higher tech, but at a cost of requiring much more maintenance at the end of a much longer logistic train. I'm not sure if they possess the Soviet style monolithic industries nowadays that could begin production on that scale, or even if it would be much help to them, as the modern battlefield is so different from 80 years ago.

Pretty sure there is...from what I remember it was made in Denmark in the early 70s going by the state of the bush on show.

Mobilisation's going great, but there's always one c**t that doesn't get the memo about the dress code and comes dressed as John Lennon impersonating Ken Dodd.

I think he was momentarily debating whether to start up his own personal Nordstream all over it.

Couple of blasts from the past:

Been there. I accompanied a mate to Costco once years ago and they had those big catering jars of pickled eggs you get in chippies. I used to love them, so bought one. I got halfway down the jar over the course of maybe a week - was doing that thing where every time I was through making coffee or whatever I'd grab one - and I've never touched one since. After sickening myself with them, even the thought of the gives me the boak.

I actually watched The Trojan Women a while back - BRIAN BLESSED is hilarious in it as always. He plays Talthybius who is meant to be a fairly sympathetic character, but bellows the lines at the bemused women in his usual style: "SORRY WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO KILL YOUR KID, ANDROMACHE...DO NOT HATE ME!!"

Conversely it surged in my street...seemed like everybody chose yesterday to cut their grass for some reason, myself included. In other news, claims that 5.1 billion watched the thing yesterday, which is actually comfortably more than the figure of all the people in the world who actually have access to television.

Defo - although I'll see your Fry's Creams and raise you one of these delicious discontinued motherfuckers: Unbelievably, they stopped making them as far back as 1992 Never liked Topics as a kid, but I do as an adult...probably my other favourite.

I get them, but I think I've lucked out in as much as the ones I get are what they call silent migraines where you don't develop an actual headache. When I get them maybe once every year or two, my head starts feeling a bit fuzzy and my vision gets disturbed - at its worst it can feel that I'm viewing the world through a cracked pane of glass - but that's about it. I know a guy who gets the "suicide" cluster headaches and from what he's told me they sound brutal. In terms of the worst -momentary - pain I've ever experienced, probably getting a bone set without anaesthetic...I'd gone to the hospital with a burst nose and the doctor had said to come back in like ten days to get it set under GA. For reasons best known to myself I'd asked if he could just do it there and then. Big set of tweezer things one up each nostril and the doc basically knelt on me applying a steadily increasing pressure on my beak till there was an almighty "CRUNCH" like a gunshot going off in my head and an instant of blinding intense pain. That was it though - I'd take it again in a minute over the likes of tearing intercostal muscles which I've also done.

Gordounstoun still haunts him.

The game was fairly early. One of the lassies I worked with at the time had said we should all go up and see Rolf Harris at the Garage that night - obviously this was before the revelations and back when he was a draw for punters trying to be ironic - and there was a squad of us watching the game in one of the pubs across the road before going in. Gigs at the Garage always have a 10pm curfew so it was defo early doors. Midway through the second half, someone saw the old reprobate walking along Sauchiehall St so we piled out the boozer and got photos and autographs. The only plus point of the evening is that I can now say from experience I'd rather meet a nonce than watch England win.

Hardly a feat of strength. She was 96 and probably weighed six stone soaking wet. It would be like lifting a deid cat.

Some Russian sources love to talk about a mass mobilisation, but in reality the lack of well-defined and competent NCO and junior officer cadre in their army would make it a difficult project that would take a long time to train the draftees into anything that looks like a remotely competent army. Ironically, the Ukrainians seem to have managed it by being better organised and led in the first first place along with outsourcing large proportions of training to external friendly sources. They've also got the Ingredient X of motivation knowing they're fighting on home soil literally for their lives and those of their families. While they've got obviously got conscription in Russia, it seems to be a half-hearted and badly organised affair where very few learn much. There's a huge pool of Russians who have done a year's national service, but that doesn't equate to being plug and play in a war situation. In Britain for example, some reservists are liable to be called up for active service in extremis but from what I understand they won't bother calling up anyone who's been out of the army for longer than five or six years...the idea being that things will have moved on so much in that period that inherent skill fade means that they might as well train somebody from off the street from scratch.

First day in the office since The Event, and one of the big bosses was actually wandering around asking folk how they were coping with the death of the queen. "Experiencing the requisite level of grief currently mandated by the state, thanks for asking..." "Ah, good. Good. Oh, is THAT the time...?"

Used to go out with a girl in Edinburgh one of whose flatmates was some kind of minor aristocracy and was at that point in time a couple of hundred and somethingth in line to the throne. I remember her saying the only way she'd get a sniff of the top job was if there was a nuclear war.

Don't see Russia being in a position to come to the aid of the few allies they've got left...Lukashenka in Belarus must be sleeping with one eye open right now considering he's only in power as a client of Putin. Even the likes of Georgia could be thinking "Hmmm..."