Posts by Lars

"Opium Wars where "the west"".

Please that was all the Empire and damned dirty too.

@MBrunberg

In the link you provided is mentioned that an estimated 22,000 Ukrainians have applied for temporary protection status in Finland.

That is 4000 per I million inhabitants, how successfull has Priti and Boris been, 67 * 4000 would make for 268.000 Ukrainians in Britain.

Re: Fight back / ramp down

@Danny 2

First of all I studied in England and I, and my wife, have never been so cold in winter ever.

For us It was the single glass windows, some odd night heating, and not enough warm water for a single bathtube.

Warming homes with gas was skipped in the 50s in Finland.

I have an old house and oil is needed for warm water and heating (with warm water). My cottage in the archipelago is heated with electricity and the occasional wood stove. All my neighbours have similar systems some in addition with sunpower and air source heat pumps.

One neighbour got rid of his oil burning and has air source heat pumps and of course electricity.

One neighbour has a 90m deep hole in the granit and gets all the heat he needs that way.

Towns are maily heated by district heating, every second Finn live in a house/flat heated like that.

Then there is the question of howto heat all that water, and there is of course gas and oil and some peat and even trash.

And never stuff like this:

https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/17/microsoft_datacenter_finland/

The use of natural gas for energy in Finland is less than 6%. Nuclear +40%. Renewable +30%.

Then for that explanation you seem to need.

Think Lipton, no tea was grown in England, so what you do is to buy in bulk and then sell the refined products.

One company good at that is Neste.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neste

Re: Fight back / ramp down

@Kabukiwookie

That depends on what you mean by "when things cool down again?".

Relations between India and Britain cooled down eventually too.

Re: Fight back / ramp down

"It will be interesting to see how many Western businesses will dip a toe back into Russian waters once all this is over. ".

Each and everyone without any doubt if there is business to do, however, being dependent on Russia is a totally different matter and I think responsibility regarding that should lie with governments not companies alone.

I still think a great majority of Russians would like Russia to develop into a decent prosperous democracy, but I am also well aware of the Finnish experience with Russia during hundreds of years and the old saying - " a Russian is a Russian even if you fry him in butter".

Some knowledge of fried fish is needed to understand that.

Regarding the ridiculous finger pointing about Russian energy lets not forget that had it been the cheapest choice for say Britain then it would be used without any doubt.

Re: Fight back / ramp down

"Finland discussing whether they join NATO, they get 90% of their gas from Russia. ".

Oil import will end this summer and luckily Finland is next only to France in the percentage of electricity from nuclear power they get.

PS. not that poor, Finns earn more per capita than poor Britain.

PPS. we all lose something due to the war, Finland for instance is a oil exporting country having no oil of its own. How that works you will for sure work out.

Re: Using waste heat

About the waste water heat at Olkiluoto in Finland.

"The waste heat, an output common to all thermal power plants, which heats the cooling water (at 13 °C) is utilized for small-scale agriculture before being pumped back to the sea. The power plant hosts the northernmost vineyard in the world, a 0.1 ha experimental plot that yields 850 kg Zilga grapes annually.[57] Another use is a pond for growing crabs, whitefish and sturgeon for caviar.[58]".

Re: Amazing

"the Finns were colonised first by the Swedes and later by the Russians after the 1809 war.".

That is rather silly, then again trying to tell the history of one country in one sentence is not possible.

The "colonisation" by the Swedes happened when there was no Finland and hardly no Sweden either.

It was more about Christianity moving north and north east in Europe.

Sweden had some 40 wars with both Norway and Denmark and a few with Russia but none with Finland.

Nor was the Russian much of an colonisation either in 1809.

Finland become Finland in 1809 with, for the first time, borders both with Sweden and Russia and a government.

But the Russians did loot the country much earlier, for instance, as described here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjFglWuwn6g&t=119s

Greater Wrath

Re: Great idea...

"But how will they deal with valves".

What valves? They are not pulled that far into houses I would guess.

Re: "It increasingly looks like Putin has massively misjudged the situation"

@Mike 137

Reassuring perhaps, but lets not forget the good guys, the Russians, took Berlin all the same.

And I am afraid the war about Ukraine is far from over, sadly.

I am not convinced Putin can afford to give up just yet.

There is a big difference between defending one's own home and country to running around in a foreign country with no great enthusiasm for any of it.

The Finn against the Russians in WW2 and why not the Americans in Vietnam prove it well.

A typical result when the big guy has problems is his willingness to go for the big guns and terror bombing.

We should try not look at this as an interesting computer game.

Re: I assume

@Wellyboot

"You'll notice he never came remotely close to winning an MPs seat in the UK."

I assume you don't grasp that he won no MPs seat due to a very undemocratic "first past the post" in a two party system while he become a MEP in a very democratic system.

Yes I know it's hard to admit.

Re: Not a first for Finland

Yes, Fortum is one of the biggest Finnish companies and operate in 40 countries, also in the UK.

https://www.fortum.com/about-us/our-company/fortum-worldwide

Re: Baths

@tonique

Regarding Lerwick, Shetland Islands (60.155°N 1.145°W) and Espoo, Finland (60°12′20″N 024°39′20″E).

The thing to remember is that the Golf Stream doesn't enter the Baltic and the Bay of Finland.

Re: “Fist past the post”

@Jonathon Green

Perhaps it was subconscious.

Re: All parties

@lglethal

Don't fool yourself, when was Britain run by some other party than either the Conservatives or Labour, and don't give me the Lib.dems, when did they run the country alone.

A country should never be run by a government of just one party, those systems are for countries like North Korea and China, and sadly for most English speaking countries due to the English.

A shame, Britain is the only west European country that is still a class society unable to get rid of a outdated ridiculous political system with idiotic undemocratic features like "fist past the post".

Democratic countries are run by coalition governments from several parties, 2/3 of the world.

The American system is slightly better in that both houses have power, and I suppose you cannot buy or inherent a "chair" in that "other house", but all the gerrymandering is there and nothing divides a country like a two party system.

OMG how can you not see it, or perhaps you can, but you cannot admit it.

Shit is shit even if it's one owns shit.

Re: All parties

"It's called hypocrisy"

No, it's called a two party system, and I wonder if Americans actually understand how unlucky they are having copied that shit from the British.

Re: No ASML or Imec

I think it's just, in addition, that the big customers are in France and Germany, cars and aviation and so forth.

"we lost out on at least as much as we gained whilst within the EU".

No, I don't think so. When Britain joined the British economy was behind not only Germany but France and Italy too.

And that changed due to membership of the EU.

Now with brexit we will see Britain falling behind France again.

No country can be good at everything and now Britain is destroying even the stronger parts like London.

It's damned hard to understand how you ended up in this mess. The two party system is no doubt one big reason but I think more or less everything can be explained by this one sentence by Nick Clegg from many years ago.

".. a misplaced sense of superiority, sustained by delusions of grandeur and a tenacious obsession with the last war".

"The UK doesn't have a monopoly on English and how it's used".

In my books they lost that right due to the English teachers they sent to India then long ago.

Re: as long as it is not next to Tesla Berlin

@Len

"I think that's because they wanted to be close to customers, not competitors.".

Are they not different states too, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt, and that could make a difference.

"Plow"??? More american illiteracy!

British and Australian writers always use plough, along with ploughed and ploughing; American and Canadian writers always use plow, plowed, and plowing. Both spellings are pronounced the same.

Intel is American, perhaps Agam Shah is also.