Sure on a global scale, but on a more macro level, the war on drugs failed because people want to buy and consume drugs… if there is no legal, regulated, safe method to buy them then the black market will fill that gap… same under rationing, same under prohibition, same with drugs and in the future cigarettes…!

Police bust into a building through the windows, swinging from the chandeliers:

“Ha ha! Zis is a raid! En garde naives…!”

Fight music and clashing of swords starts.

From the paper that brought you: “Hurrah for the Blackshirts” an editorial from 1934 reporting on Hitlers blackshirts, by the then editor Viscount Rothermere who’s son the current Viscount Rothermere still owns it… same shite different arsehole…

They do, doctors are still working for emergency cases, pre appointments get pushed…

“If junior doctors are paid so badly wouldn’t a better response to this be to quit and do something else or move to a different country?”

They are, and they have been…? The NHS has been hemorrhaging staff since well before the pandemic, from nurses, senior nursing staff, registrars, junior doctors and consultants… I know at least 5 people myself from various hospital/GP health care trades that have upped sticks and moved to Canada, Australia or New Zealand… because of exactly these problems. They get payed better and have a higher quality of life in the commonwealth than back here…

At what point, if ever, in Russian politics has self-canibalisation been a problem for them?

Putin has thrown down against Prigozhin, brought Alltwen arms of State to bare… and allowed him to walk away…?

If you think he’s blundered I would caution about underestimating him, a brutal, ruthless bastard… for sure, but not a fool…

If he was a fool he wouldn’t have got to the position he has at Wagner in the first place…!

Fair points all in.

The long and the short will hang on wether Prigozhin has loyalists installed at the head of FSB, Ministery of Interior, and Ministery of Defence…

If not, It’ll rank amongst the biggest blunders in Russian political history, and Prigozhin will be dead in short order.

If yes, Prigozhin basically is in control of the Russian Federation in all but name.

“When you play the game of thrones, you either win or you die.”

I am very sceptical of this. Lukashenko brokered a deal? He’s a Putin puppet, why would Prigozhin cut a deal with him? What would that deal look like? Does Prigozhin become head of the MoD or Putins designated successor? He’s right there outside Moscow, he has the leverage, why would he blink?

Putin called him a traitor, an enemy of the state, why would Putin back down from that point, he already looks weak, why look weaker via a U-turn? Prigozhin must know he’s a dead man if he backs down, he knows the play book, why would he trust in the deal?

Was the whole thing a psy-op to give Putin an out? Was the voice recording that is the ultimate source of all this a Russian State propaganda play? Is it a play by Wagner to buy time to consolidate his forces before he moves on Moscow? But then, he has to be the one to move fast and hard…

Whatever is going on, we don’t know. Next 5-24hrs will be key.