The shale gas company, Cuadrilla, spent $900,000 in six months last year mostly on strategies to lift the fracking moratorium and administer its UK licences, it emerged today.
In accounts for the first half of 2021, Cuadrilla’s Australian parent, Lucas Group, said it had “significantly scaled back operations” in the UK.
This was a response, it said, to the moratorium on fracking in England announced in November 2019 and still in force.
But in a statement to the Australian stock market, Lucas Group said:
“During the first half, the UK operations incurred administration and other expenses of $0.9 million, largely to support the maintenance of the Group’s licences and the pursuit of strategies to overturn the moratorium.”
It said:
“Lucas Group, together with other UK shale gas operators, have been working together and collaborating with the UK regulator to address its concerns around induced seismicity, so that the moratorium can be lifted.”
Earlier this month, Lucas Group announced the two horizontal fracked wells at its Preston New Road site in Lancashire would be plugged and abandoned. A well at the nearby gas site at Elswick is also to be abandoned.
This week, residents reported that one of the two flares at Preston New Road was no longer visible above the noise barrier.
Cuadrilla companies operate 10 UK onshore licences. But there are no producing sites in the licence areas and no permissions for exploration.
Lucas Group repeated its view today that UK onshore shale gas could be a “very significant and clean contributor to the UK energy supply”, particularly in the face of increased fuel costs. It said:
“The billions of pounds being spent annually on importing expensive gas from the Middle East, Russia and the US would be better directed on developing the UK’s substantial onshore shale gas resource.
“Exploiting this resource would help provide energy security for the UK, create a significant number of new jobs in the North of England and provide substantial tax revenues for the UK.”
The UK gets about half of its gas from the North Sea. Of gas imports, 55% comes from Norway, 20% from Qatar, 11% from the US and 5% from Russia.
Yesterday, the Climate Change Committee, which advises the UK government, dismissed fracking as an answer to rising fuel bills.
The chair, Lord Deben, said shale gas would cost the world price and would have no effect on reducing bills.
It would take a “serious period” of time to get UK fracked gas out of the ground, he said, by which time demand for gas should be falling significantly.
The CCC has said UK gas consumption would need to fall by about 65% by 2035 and be virtually eliminated by 2050.
DRILL OR DROP? 
With the Ukrainian and Russian situation we need to prospect our own fracked gas for our own targets, and home produce for treasury receipts, export home use and cooking and heating at a £1 a therm!
If individuals own and spend their own money to prospect this fracked gas, who cares if they are not investing?! It is a no brainer!
Let the frackers frack, if you are opposed you are bitter and ignorant!
Gas is a transition Fuel, Period!
[Typo corrected at poster’s request]
So there we have it ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. As far as EG is concerned, it’s not about lives and health, it’s only about money? No responsibility. No accountability. Just money for personal profit and gain at any cost. And nothing, anyone else.
“If individuals own and spend their own money to prospect this fracked gas, who cares if they are not investing?! It is a no brainier!”
I said it wouldn’t be long before the fossil fuel industry protagonists attempted to use the Ukrainian/Russia/3rd/4th world war to promote the further extraction of fossil fuels in spite of the present moratorium and the governments’ declaration that the Government stands firm on the fracking moratorium.
And here it is. No care for the people of Ukraine, no care or concern for the destruction of their houses, their way of life, their peace and security, the destruction of their infrastructure which will certainly lead to lack of food, water, and the all their living necessities.
No, the only thing they see, is to just push for more private profiteering, greed and corruption and to jam even more money into their digital wallets. What would you call that? Blood money? Filthy lucre?
Making private capital from war and the deaths of so many in Ukraine just to get drilling going again, Great Britain to produce oil and gas that will be sold off abroad at enormous profit.
Would any of that oil and gas be used to reduce the imminent cost of fossil fuels in Great Britain, and to help working families to heat their homes and feed their children and themselves?
No, it wont do that ate all, because the greed profiteering and corruption of the fossil fuel industry and its puppet protagonists, is primarily selfish and entirely ignorant of any care for the lives of those it feeds off and profits by.
No morals, no ethics, just “drill baby drill”. Well, there are babies in Great Britain and Ukraine that need your profits to help them through this political insanity.
With all the trillions of profits of the fossil fuel industry hidden in “shell companies” in complex offshore tax havens for tax avoidance purposes, companies like the shale gas company, Cuadrilla, who spent $900,000 in six months last year mostly on strategies to lift the fracking moratorium and administer its UK licences, having spent so much on “lobbying” can easily afford to willingly give up a windfall tax to support the people in Great Britain and also to help support the people in Ukraine can’t they?
I will certainly do what I can to help both here and in the Ukraine. Will you?
Have a Nice Sunday!
Well, it’s Sunday 27th of February 2022 folks.
Considering the terrible news about war in Ukraine by Russia, and the likely implications for us all, no matter how far everyone is from that needless wasteful of human life and the totally inhumane political insanity on all sides. I thought I would resurrect what used to be a regular thing for me to do, which is to find something in a song or poem, or anything to perhaps illustrate the depth and meaning of the time.
And that of course can’t be to avoid the present war situation in Ukraine. I wish there was something happier to talk about, but it’s better to extend our hopes and wishes to those in Ukraine and to give them our love and respect for an early and relatively peaceful outcome.
Each time I looked for something to help illustrate how this present war insanity is impacting people in Ukraine, and is going to impact us all, the songs and poetry of Leonard Cohen kept popping out to be the most honest and stark.
So here is, with apologies to the estate and relatives of Leonard Cohen, who is much missed:
Leonard Cohen Lyrics
“Anthem”
The birds they sang
At the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don’t dwell on what
Has passed away
Or what is yet to be.
Ah the wars they will
Be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
Bought and sold
And bought again
The dove is never free.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
We asked for signs
The signs were sent:
The birth betrayed
The marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
Of every government
Signs for all to see.
I can run no more
With that lawless crowd
While the killers in high places
Say their prayers out loud.
But they’ve summoned, they’ve summoned up
A thundercloud
They’re gonna hear from me.
Ring ring ring ring ring
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in
You can add up the parts
But you won’t have the sum
You can strike up the march,
There is no drum
Every heart, every heart
To love will come
But like a refugee.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
That’s how the light gets in.
That’s how the light gets in.
Have a good Sunday with family and friends in these mad times. And I wish every one of you a better, peaceful, caring, loving future than those megalomaniacs will ever be able to provide.
Lives and Health?, Past innovations and Inventions were enhanced and created through the past energy history:
CFC and Leaded fuels not good! But you still hit your fingers on a device derived from? and enjoy the NHS medical care derived from?,
Shopping for daily produce which has arrived on those shelves by??
WHAT? Ironic isn’t it!
Nope, my “device” is not derived from fossil fuel derived plastic. However, no doubt, yours is. The NHS is run by people who preserve lives and health of others. Shelves are filled by living people who require a healthy life to exist at all. Whereas life on Earth is poisoned by fossil fuels, and choked by plastics which kills and poisons humans and animals worldwide.
It is healthy people who are the basis for everything. Fossil fuels are merely inconvenient temporary expedient tools. And tools can be changed.
Without the healthy lives of people, nothing would be done, nothing would be built, and no reason to build them, fossil fuelled machines would be idle and useless. The prime mover of everything that the fossil fuel industry would like to claim for themselves, as if it was self-servicing, is healthy people. Nothing more, nothing less. Given extensive developed renewable energy, fossil fuels would be dropped like the proverbial hot toxic brick, and healthy humans would move on to repair all the damage done by toxic fossil fuel polluting monopolies.
Still no substantiated fact checked peer reviewed proof that anything I said is not true? Why is that not a surprise?
The irony is all yours, EG……
Whatever…,
device is not derived from ff !, still living in that cave and cooking with ‘manure’?
‘a’ don’t think so!!
Oil and gas to be sold off abroad? Well, if it was, then taxation would be gained to fund health care and to help those in energy poverty.
What gain of taxation is achieved from imported gas and oil to help pay for such? Zilch, nothing. Only a decline in the balance of payments which will add to the need to borrow and to pay interest on that borrowing to others, instead of the NHS and those in need. Borrowing is cheap? No more. If it continues at recent levels, annual interest costs on debt would be around £100b.
So, for those companies willing to invest in UK with the intention that they will grow and make a profit, good on you. For those who actively try and stop that happening, shame on you. No morals, no ethics.
According to you old thing, morals and ethics are only “academic”. So that hardly qualifies you as judge and jury, does it?
Oh dear, hoist by your own petard again!
I can consider whether individuals qualify to be either a judge or jury on morals and ethics, Phil C, based upon their own statements. You certainly do not. If you did, you would not require previous comments to be obscured.
But, I also note that addressing the substance of my remarks that corrected a fairly significant gap in knowledge, was not even attempted. Obviously too difficult.
Meanwhile, I note on the news that notification is arriving with those paying their utility bills that their energy prices are causing an increase in payments of up to £1000/year. And, no, someone else will not pay that. It really is an abject failure that when the effluent hits the fan the best that can be suggested by those usual suspects, is that someone else will pay.
Going back to the headline, Cuadrilla spend $900k of their own money. Going back to Wressle, antis waste over £400k of someone else’s money. I can see where the morals and ethics rest, others need to visit Specsavers.
Nope. You quite clearly stated that morals and ethics are only “academic” and therefore of no practical value. If you want to retract that statement, then go ahead.
Nope, again. It’s the fossil fuel corporations that have manipulated the price rise of fossil fuels up as far as it can go on the basis of a few relatively minor situations. The war in Ukraine will exacerbate that price rise even further, adding to the vast profits made by the fossil fuel organisations to be salted away in offshore and onshore tax havens and moved around between shell companies and trusts in order to hide the paper trail away from the taxman.
That is all off the backs and out of the pockets of the working families in Great Britain, and those worldwide. To refuse to help the very same people who will have to pay the massive increase in power costs in April, and it is predicted many more increases after that. For the fossil fuel corporations to salt away as much of their profits as possible away from the tax collector while watching working families who are unable to heat and power their homes or feed their children and themselves is unethical and immoral.
Try to twist and squirm away from those facts any way you want to. But it doesn’t alter the truth. If Cuadrilla can afford to lobby government and influence the media with $900k, which is a mere fraction of the money that the fossil fuel corporations like BP, Shell, Exxon etc. spend on similar government lobbying and media propaganda.
Then those very same corporations and companies can easily afford a windfall tax to help and assist the working families of Great Britain and not even notice it.
That is the only moral and ethical way for the fossil fuel corporations to help to solve this attempt at the ransom of monopolistic power mongering they are engaged upon, and to help all those people who will be in energy poverty due to greed and profiteering of the fossil fuel corporations.
If you no longer wish to claim that morals and ethics of the fossil fuel corporations are merely “academic”, but are a real responsibility for the fossil fuel corporations and that they should act accordingly, then just say so here. And then you can agree that the polluter should pay a windfall tax in order to reduce the impact on working families in Great Britain.
Otherwise, what you say here is all just empty rhetoric to attempt to score a political and fossil fuel point.
By the way, when will you answer the 16+ and climbing questions about the fact that 1 in 5 deaths worldwide per year are due to fossil fuel pollution? There seems to be a silence from your “colleagues” so far.
Oh, yes…. And…. Have A Nice Day…..
[Edited by moderator] I happen to believe that the fossil fuel industry has been extremely beneficial to myself and billions of others in many respects, so have support for that to continue until there are coherent alternatives that do the same. I certainly came across no one in the NHS suggesting Mrs. C should not receive life saving treatment that involved fossil fuel derived products. Indeed, all the recommendations were if she did not receive that treatment she would not live. I await a paper from the BMA on that. [Edited by moderator]
Manipulated on the basis of a few relatively minor situations? What tosh. It is called the demand/supply/price equation. When it becomes evident, then shock/horror, but “we” must not accept that it was always the case and will be for fossil fuel for decades to come. Why? Because “we” have been arguing against for so long “we” can not admit reality, even though millions can.
Windfall tax? More tosh. Like a starving vegetarian spotting a golden goose and wanting to kill it for his lunch! Perhaps, just feed off the eggs by keeping the golden goose alive and laying? Too sensible for those where their dogma against golden geese blinds them, but goose eggs are very nutritious and great effort should be made to support the goose to lay a few more. (Somewhere there is a paper on goose husbandry written by a certain Martin Collyer-so it must be true!)
Not to worry. I notice on Reuters that Saudi Aramco have announced discovery of new gas finds in four regions, with some of them “unconventional”. So, instead of local UK production there will be some other source for UK to import fracked gas from, rack up more debt and pay more interest on that debt. Chelsea FC to get a new owner as a result, maybe. Although Sir Jim was interested.
I have already answered your assertion about 1 in 5 deaths. I also noticed you simply deflected from my answer, so why should anyone else bother?
I see lots of denial and defection there, but no facts about the 1 in 5 deaths caused by fossil fuel pollution per year worldwide, no substantiated verified and linked documents referred to. Nothing at all in fact to answer anything that I clearly laid down before as substantiated verified and linked documents.
So, let’s break it all down odd paragraph by bizarre paragraph, shall we?
The Real World issue is to do with the vast profits of the fossil fuel industry and the windfall tax they should be paying to those who will not be able to pay their enormous hiked up energy bills or feed themselves and their children come April. From recent predictions of the implications of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the prospects of even greater price increases are imminent. So at least one windfall tax on the fossil fuel industry is even more vital to the poor working families in Great Britain, isn’t it.
The attempt to avoid the moral and ethical responsibilities of the fossil fuel industry whilst making greedy profits over the lives and the health of people who will be forced to pay for the privilege of adding to vast coffers hidden in offshore and onshore tax haven shell companies and convoluted untraceable obscured trusts, is an unacceptable prospect in any terms.
Yes, the price increase of fossil fuels was indeed manipulated on the basis of a few relatively minor situations, and the price of oil and gas was speculated upon in the markets to do the same. (I will provide links if you will)
The worldwide image of fossil fuels monopoly on energy production and use was being damaged by the COP26 conference, in spite of the politician’s empty words.
So the fossil fuel corporation’s answer to that was to artificially manipulate the prices by various complex corporate accountants devices behind closed doors. That in turn was an attempt to make fossil fuels a scarce, high-priced commodity.
Just as the 1973-1975 oil crisis did, so for the OPEC countries in the Middle East and beyond. Which made an embargo over exports to the West. Hardly a new tactic. But it works when the victims minds are diverted elsewhere.
Scarcity, like in the diamond market, is purely artificial and designed to maintain a high price for a common commodity. That is the dark side of your oft repeated “supply and demand” excuse. Therefore, supply can be, has been, and is being manipulated to increase the cost of fossil fuel demand. Make the supply increase the cost of demand, and the supplier runs away with the profits to offshore and onshore tax havens. Simple.
Continued on next page below:
Continued from page above:
Your third paragraph is bizarre to say the least! The proffered example of a “golden goose”, is pure fantasy. Since, for one thing, it reveals that you think that the fossil fuel industry is your personal “golden goose” and you don’t want it transformed into a lead balloon or a dead duck.
However, a windfall tax, would not transform the goose or the eggs, husbanded or not, into lead balloons or dead ducks. A windfall tax, would be used to redistribute” the hoarded “golden eggs” that would otherwise be stashed away in offshore and onshore tax havens. In order to share out to others less “privileged % in society”!
That is the moral and ethical responsibility of the “hoarders” and the “golden geese”. Except, of course, as is demonstrated above, some would be more than happy to operate no such morals or ethics, and to apply “goose smuggling” away to some hidden tax haven or others wouldn’t they? Oops!
Your 4th paragraph is only empty rhetoric.
Your 5th paragraph however is more revealing:
Nope. Where have you answered any of my questions about the proof I gave you that 1 in 5 deaths? I see denial and deflection, apocryphal stories and just plain irrelevances. But no substantiated verified and document linked proofs that anything I have said isn’t in any way true.
No, nothing at all. (like your colleague, you didn’t complete the inconvenient sentence, so I will do it for you here) That the BMJ have provided a fact checked peer reviewed document that 1 in 5 deaths worldwide per year are due to fossil fuel pollution. Here is the link yet again. There are more substantiated proofs that I have supplied earlier for you to explore. The mathematics I have provided are all fact checkable and verified too. I see nothing like that from you at all.
Fossil fuel air pollution blamed for 1 in 5 deaths worldwide (.pdf download link on page)
https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n406
Just saying you have answered the question that 1 in 5 deaths worldwide per year are due to fossil fuel pollution, doesn’t mean that you have answered them in any way but mere denial. Nice try, but no fossil fuel gas flare bird roaster.
Have you decided to withdraw your comment that morals and ethics are just “academic” and are of no practical value to the fossil fuel industry and their protagonists?
If so, a windfall tax on the fossil fuel industries profits is entirely acceptable to you on moral and ethical responsibility terms, isn’t it.
Have a nice….whatever…..
If 1 in 5 deaths worldwide per year are due to fossil fuel pollution?
How many are due to energy poverty, lack of food, medicines, bad hygiene and clean drinking water?
There are very few natural minerals in the world which offer more… that thing which spins on land in a windy day or when offshore on behalf of the crown estates? Enriching already rich landowners licences, and not contributing financially to the public purse?!
You consistently bash fracking as the rich man’s game, only for the greedy!, renewables are no different in creating wealth for the very few of us! But without the derivatives of any by products to benefit the masses?, Fact
Oh to be the privileged % in society phil c!
You miss the technique, E-G. Quote a reference and then insist it is gospel. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it is, and has been tried numerous times before, and usually wasn’t then either. [Edited by moderator] such as local oil would increase demand! Nope. Check the price elasticity of vehicle fuel in UK. It is actually very inelastic. Only elastic between competing fuel stations in close proximity. There are a few countries left where that is not the case, but UK is not one of them. The elasticity would change if there was an alternative that was competitive. The fact that it has not is just one more of those inconvenient truths.
[Edited by moderator]
If Phil C wants to lobby a company to do something then he can easily do so through becoming a shareholder! Millions do, although most recognize that killing the golden goose is not the best way forward. Not unless killing golden geese is your objective and others can just simply suffer the consequences.
Dear EG. I see the walls of fossil fuel PR Jericho fracturing under the long trumpet-call of truth and verified substantiated facts! Thank you for admitting that the BMJ have provided verifiable substantiated proof that 1 in 5 deaths worldwide per year, are cased by fossil fuel pollution.
Progress at last, and from such an unexpected source? But welcome nonetheless. Try to spread the truth to your colleague.
As for the rest of your comment, unfortunately, energy poverty goes underprivileged hand in hand with political, financial, environment and ecological poverty. Lack of food and clean water, medicines and any other form of poverty are due to greed and profiteering by corrupt governments, corporations and external influence by other countries and dictatorial regimes.
I don’t see any fossil fuel corporations jumping into the fray in order to correct these massive inequalities where a privileged few live in luxury while the many live in abject poverty.
But there are always those who are brave enough to go to these places and to give their expertise and just plain presence to help these poverty-stricken regions of the planet. Perhaps you have suggested a future purpose for yourself doing just that?
As with every other form of greed and profiteering, the perpetrators are invariably those without morals or ethics in the same countries, however.
Curiously enough, it is often the fossil fuel corporations, who extract fossil fuel resources worldwide, who are certainly placed and in a position of influence to affect those situations for the best for those who do find themselves in energy poverty, and any other form of poverty, all of which tend to merge into the same poverty.
So where would you show me those same fossil fuel corporations working directly for the best interests of the poverty-stricken in those countries? I recall there have been several examples on Drill or Drop, where the exact opposite has been, and is still true, however.
I agree with you that there are examples of renewable forms of energy, such as the wind farms in Sweden, as illustrated by the film “Headwind 21” where greed and profit apparently perpetrated by precisely the same profit motivated corporations is rife in the so-called renewable market. So you see I am not your enemy, I simply see things a little more clearly than the average fossil fuel protagonist. And I am not afraid to say so, even if it does make me unpopular amongst those who do not support the fossil fuel industry.
Yes, fracking is a rich man’s game, as seen in the headline and subject text above. And therefore a windfall tax would not harm them in any way whatsoever. It’s more that the principle of future windfall taxes, having been used in this instance, will be used again and again and again.
My issue, is not to choose one industry and isolate that for being the big scary monster. Even when it is. But my real focus is to point out that it is the Jungian darker human condition of selfish greed and self-interest, profiteering and inhumanity that pervades in places where a monopoly of any commodity, regardless, causes the greatest degree of corruption and hatred of any opposition to their chosen vehicle of power and control.
So there you have the truth in plain sight. Like it or not, fossil fuel pollution does indeed cause 1 in 5 deaths worldwide per year.
Better now?
Regardless of the past benefits of FFs, we frack, (if we are stupid enough), in order to produce a life-extinguishing energy source which enriches us.
We develop renewables in order to produce the energy whilst avoiding the extinction of life. This has not yet produced equivalent quantities of energy, nor have they as yet enriched the same numbers, nor can they be considered 100% safe, but certainly safer than FFs where the preservation of life is concerned.
Both are open to abuse, the first of its nature. This does not change the argument.
Unless the second is furthered at the expense of the first, life extinction will not be preventable.
Nope, 1720. There is no logic that the second should be furthered at the expense of the first. The first are helping to further the second. Squeezing the first before the second is ready will produce a double negative-lower investment and increased energy costs beyond what would have been the case. Transition is a process, not a cliff edge.
That is my view, but also Government policy. Your view is also your own. It is Her Majesty who can use the plural to reflect her own position. That requires a throne, not a self made pedestal.
Sorry for the delay Iaith1720, i’m still finding the best way to help the refugees from Ukraine, The Red Cross seems to be the most reliable way to do that, others seem to be compromised, like gofundme, who stole money from the Canadian Freedom Truckers movement.
As for the “contribution” you received from the usual suspect above. All I can say, is:
Oh, What a tangled web of obfuscation, avoidance and deflection is woven there?
Did you notice the deflection and avoidance technique by the way Iaith1720? One who quotes no references at all, other than vague unlinked and unverified references hidden behind paywalls, and then insists it is gospel. Then seeks to denigrate anyone who does provide such proof of the facts? Odd or what?
But of course, that is while attempting to argue a spurious point by deflection away from acknowledging the Real World questions that have indeed been provided with substantiated, verified, fact checked and precisely linked to documents that prove the case:
That 1 in 5 deaths worldwide per year are due to fossil fuel pollution. The “technique” used, is [edited by moderator] claiming he has answered those questions, when very clearly, he hasn’t. Other than the usual denial of anything, with the odd “Nope” or two or three thrown in for good measure? As I pointed out, that is not an answer, that is merely a contrarian irrelevance.
And then of course there is that curious avoidance of answering the fact that he has stated, quite clearly, that he thinks morals and ethics are merely “academic” and as such, Rules of Professional Moral and Ethical Conduct, do not apply to the fossil fuel Industry or their, almost certainly paid for, protagonists. And then goes on to insult academia as well, as if that has no basis in the fossil fuel Industry either?
But when challenged on those 16+ going on 20 substantiated verified fact checked and document linked facts accompanied by reported mathematical factual statistics.
Then the attempted defence, rather than actually facing up to all the highly relevant issues, is to descend into fantasy.
By introducing such myths and fairy tales as “golden geese” imaginary paranoid “pedestals” and “Ostriches burying their heads in the sand”? And what of “Romulan cloaking devices”…. Seriously? Of course, none of those myths actually exist in the Real World, though, “we” (Hey! I did another “we”!) have seen similar attempts to escape reality and to descend into delusion and fantasy before haven’t “we” (Hey! I did a third “we”!). [Edited by moderator]
As for becoming a shareholder of the very industry that produces fossil fuel pollution that is the cause of the destruction of the Earths ecological systems, environmental systems and is an anathema to all life on the planet, including human beings, I think the phrase is: “in your hypocritical dreams!”
No. the Real World issue, is that the price of fossil fuels has been manipulated as high as it could possibly get by speculation, relatively inconsequential accidents and political expediency in the latest Ukraine/Russia war. All of which somewhat conveniently serve to increase the reliance on the fossil fuel monopolies, who seem to be overjoyed to profiteer off the public in Great Britain and worldwide.
I wish everyone, particularly those refugees and defenders of Ukraine, a good day and hope for a sane and peaceful future, in spite of the present circumstances.
[Comments removed by moderator]
For what it’s worth my suspicion is that Putin is ill hence the distancing from even his allies in the security council on TV. I just would not expect this of the supposedly super-fit judo player. The German President suggests he has changed in the last months. He certainly looks more puffy and unfit. Is this the legacy move? Obviously this has profound implications for those in his pay and beholden to him.
Exactly, E-G.
It is the company’s money. They are investing and taking a business risk. Don’t seem to hear too much about those individuals willing to crowd fund certain activities-which is exactly the same.
For PhilC – reference your comment re Ukraine / Red Cross above:
In my experience in the field, the best charity, and the only relatively large one that I will donate to, is MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières). I have seen them working where the UN organisations / Red Cross / Oxfam etc would not go anywhere near, including in combat zones. They are mobilising to Ukraine. No huge overheads, no fancy cars or offices in places they work, nearly all the money goes where it is needed.
https://www.msf.org/
Thanks Paul, that is good advice.
For people living in the Isle Of Wight:
Dont Drill The Wight website have highlighted the County Press announcement for “Goods for Ukrainian Refugees”
https://www.countypress.co.uk/news/19959075.new-facebook-page-brings-isle-wight-together-help-ukraine/
The website indicates drop off points for specified goods to help refugees from Ukraine.
This website link is for monetary donations for Ukraine refugees from any location:
http://www.mad-aid.org.uk/donate/?fbclid=IwAR0aS5zy3RYqLuFSS4lipSnZmFe6P9h2AoeLiycGzzNt9zcl1JfbYYegTp4