Here’s a thread to discuss BBC coverage of the Government’s pre-budget statement. Worth saying I think that it was Labour who introduced the pre-budget statement. This junket that nowadays occurs is in many ways midwife to valuable pro-Government spin. Thanks to Paul S for highlighting Fraser Nelson’s helpful list of Gordon’s spin – how many of these points will the BBC promote in its coverage? Look out for action contrasted with passivity (Gordon v Dave)- especially how Gordon is leading the world in action- and the recession that “came from America”, as well as plenty of party politicals harking back to the “heartless Tories” using false or misleading comparisons with previous recessions. Maybe you’d like to consider counterpunches, since the BBC probably won’t allow for any or properly cover any Conservative rebuttal…
Brown’s Darling to the rescue
Bookmark the permalink.
jesus h christ – i’m watching newsnight now and i’m burying my head in the sand .. conservative guy just waffled a load of crap rather than ATTACKING.
well, there you have it. paxman seems to be asking the questions that the tories arent…
what a fucking joke.
(and thats a compliment to paxo)
paxo asks a simple question to the tory – “do you oppose these vat cut”
instead we get endless fucking waffle from the tory rather than saying the bloody obvious – WE CANT REDUCE VAT TO ZERO BECAUSE THE EU WONT LET US!!!
minimum vat rate is 15 per cent. we cant go lower thanks to the eu.
watched ITVs news at 10 –much more balanced than the BBC Soviet version–and no Peston –a bargain for 1 set of adverts
god – its amazing watching all these “politicans” squirming under paxman whilst we all know that they all have as much power as a parish councillor.
come on paxo – why cant we just ABOLISH vat? oh wait – we cant…because of the EU..
what is the point of voting for these fuckers?
Archduke—you need to try relaxation techniques or you’ll end up doing yourself an injury –I find kicking local councillors to death is a good one.
swear to god – i’m beginning to understand why folks might turn BNP..
hello UKIP or LPUK – i want to vote for you guys . dont make me vote BNP cos i dont have an alternative.
some business angle needs to get the libetarian view out there. it worked in ireland with the lisbon vote.
it might work in england if only YOU fund it.
frankos | 24.11.08 – 11:10 pm
agree
calm down, take deep deep breath and recite japanese karate kata poems…
and relax.. and breath out.
why is that socialist Finkelstein on newsnight right now? he’s so left wing that he’s eager prey for the leftist vultures surrounding him.
its all a cosy argument – amongst friends…
fuck that … these left wingers are dragging our country into fucking zimbabwe territory. they dont have a clue.
and the finkel tories are all ok with their big fat 500k contracts…
yeah… wow.. thats a great impression of what conservatism is. some rich media fucker agreeing with socialism.
Fink’s a prick (no relation). But Michael Crick is even worse.
the tories need to get this message out – why the fuck should people who have saved and built wealth pay for the scroungers?
wow – here’s your rescue – some rich guy. lets tax him.
welcome to labour about 1910.
heres hoping that we dont have a 1914 ahead of us.
George R | 24.11.08 – 10:21 pm |
Robert Peston’s blog on PBR:
“End of Thatcher’s Tax Incentives”
[Extract]:
“Tonight, the British economy has taken on a Scandinavian, left-wing tinge.
So, mass immigration and subservience to the E.U. will continue.
Does Peston mean this sort of Scandanavian ‘socialism’?
Peston is both happy and unhappy with Mr. Brown right now, and it’s amusing to watch him squirm. But I think his post should count as another interpretation of either #7 or #8 on Fraser Nelson’s list.
He doesn’t really like all that nationalization, and especially doesn’t like all that debt, but he absolutely loves the 45p tax rise. He’s not happy that he was left out of the loop on the VAT cut, so he’s going to be sarcastic about the NI payment increase. Of course, he has to blow a kiss to Mr. Brown somehow, so he still tries to say the FTSE went up because of the report, and not just because of Citigroup’s rescue (curiously, a slight step back from what he was saying on air earlier today).
But the worst thing – and this is why I think this should count as ticking one of the boxes – is his total misrepresentation of “the cornerstone of Thatcherism”: that everyone benefits if the wealthiest people keep more of their money. In my view that’s more or less the same thing as:
7) “The Conservative idea is do nothing now, leave people to face the storm, refuse to help them.”
It’s also another way of saying Peston’s favorite aspect of Mr. Brown’s economic vision: social justice and fairness.
8) “We will do something that was never done in the 1980s and 1990s and that’s help people stay in jobs” • again, at every turn, he peddles myths about the Bad Old Tory Days.
Peston uses one of BBC’s and Leftoid’s favorite shibboleths – Mrs. Thatcher – and in referring to the ’97 election, makes an obvious partisan point. Although, as I commented last week, these days he’s being careful to do it like Jeremy Clarkson describing The Stig: “Some say….”
Interestingly, Nick Robinson isn’t so excited about the new “fairness”. Maybe the Stockholm Syndrome is wearing off finally.
immigration to canada or america is on the cards in archduke family circles.
mrs archduke , who is a solid english patriot – is giving up…
and it takes a LOT to make her give up on her country
i think we’ll end up in canada. mrs archduke is a bit of a monarchist.
(not into the republican thing…)
Disgusting.
As of 22:04, the video of the ‘full’ Osborne response is FINALLY on the BBC news website. But guess what?
It’s broken and mysteriously won’t play.
They really have no shame.
Works for me. Osborne did good. I measure that by Brown’s reaction. And through most of it, he’s doing that affected smile of his and – get this! – talking to himself. If it weren’t for the fact that he’s the mad man who designed this unprecedented fuck up, one could almost feel sorry for him.
I’m no psychiatrist (despite what my CV says), but in my opinion, the man is quite, quite mad and needs to be taken outside and shot for his own and our wellbeing.
George B
For many the rise in petrol duty will wipe out and gains from lowering VAT a miserable 2.5%.
This VAT cut is all a con. They were not going to get many people buying anything so 17.5% of nothing is nothing, best to cut to 15% and hope enough people would buy something. They were going to take a hit in VAT revenues anyway so they might as well dress it up as a tax cut meanwhile introducing tax increases to ‘pay for it’. I’ld go out and get drunk only I would not be saving any money on it.
Problem is taxing the rich more will raise about 2.5 billion. What the leftist BBC igoned is the fact We will all be paying more. Nice trick by Brown to dodge the fact national insurance is going up, he gets the BBC to concentrate on the taxing the rich crap.
Brown is a twat.
The VAT drop is a joke –most retailers will have to alter all their bloody tickets and prices, computer systems and bugger about for a tiny reward –but the chancellor insists the reduction is passed on. Spot the clowns who have never been in retail sales.
Robert S. McNamara | 24.11.08 – 11:29 pm | #
It works for me.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7745994.stm
Works for me. Osborne did good. I measure that by Brown’s reaction. And through most of it, he’s doing that affected smile of his and – get this! – talking to himself. If it weren’t for the fact that he’s the mad man who designed this unprecedented fuck up, one could almost feel sorry for him.
Power freaks are only happy when they are in control –hence Browns ups and downs in mood –and the polls
As a small but highly successful British manufacturer, I can assure you that a 8.5% reduction in VAT is not going to make any difference whatsoever to my companies profitability, or indeed its viability. If it did it would have been best I gave up the simply enormous effort, many years ago.
It could in theory increase sales by a possible 1-2% but as most in my industry are currently 70-80% down on last year, which was also 30-40% down of the year before, which was also 20-30% down on the year before that. 1-2% increase will be completely lost in the panic filled rush to the bankruptcy lawyers, rope, poison, revolver, or the nearest box of Swan Vestas.
( I however plan on making an absolute killing next year, as I have done this, whatever Gordon Brown does to try to stop me again. Simply because I virtually have no serious competition left, in the entire country.)
The only thing this government can do to save this once free countries economy in this ‘its well past terminal stage,’ is to publicly slaughter themselves in the most horrific manner imaginable. Preferably on prime time BBC TV.
Not that this will save most if not all of my competitors. But it is possibly the only way to act as a true disincentive for utterly dishonest highly COMPETENT criminals, seeking high public office, ever again in the future. We can only hope.
It would also help the soon to be repossessed, cold, hungry, hard trying and forever now hopelessly skint, feel a little better for a short while.
Even this type of bloody death is far too quick and painless for Gordon Brown. For him in particular there is no punishment that exists in the horrifically nasty history of mankind on this planet, that befits his personal degree of unadulterated EVIL. The Spanish Inquisition, even it its most seriously sadistic, and unhurried of moods, could not possibly even come close.
This terrifying and deliberately caused bullshit has been planned for many years, right down to the finest of details. If this is not as clear as the nose on your face by now, nothing ever will be.
Gordon is only so happy at present, simply because he has escaped the assassins bullet for now, and also finally got the worst bit of ‘the show’ behind him.
But he will without doubt still forever burn in the same hell he escaped from, and his infinitely black hole of an excuse for an eternal soul, finally destroyed without trace.
Which is indeed a fitting end to extremely EVIL rubbish.
Derek Draper that most truthful of all the New Labour wideboys has been on the Guido site –not sure he was too welcome judging by the angry ant swarming conversation
Did I imagine it or was there some small sign that the BBC commentators etc seem a little uneasy at pushing the government’s lies at us?
After all the sight of the truly awful Yvette Balls going on and on and on and on is enough to give anyone who retains some independence of thought a degree of doubt.
This is a banking crisis first and last which now threatens the major industrial concerns here and in the US.
Tinkering with VAT is pointless.
All their projections are absurd and they know it. Nobody knows what is going to happen next week. It may be that even the BBC has realised this. I hope so as a deceived population will not be appreciate being misled.
As far as every gay politicians wet dream Osbourn,is concerned, which as we know is virtually all of them. I have this to state.
I beg your indulgence.
There is ABSOLUTELY no materially useful point in telling someone their stable door is wide open.
After the expensively bred race horse has well and truly bolted. Been systematically humiliated to death in a traveling circus for the last 11 years, and is now an unwanted pot of glue sitting on a dusty shelf in a bankrupt iron mongers, somewhere in Iceland.
But I suppose it is better late then never as far a potential Conservative Party MP’s or ministers fortunes are concerned.
However you can kiss your personal small, hard earned stash good-by, for…….Well, lets face it forever.
Forget retirement, and especially an adequate state pension. Because that was never going to be allowed to happen, for the ONLY generation that actually payed all their working lives for one.
They only pay pensions to the people left still standing or breathing, after world wars and/or vastly murderous flu viruses.
Please try to understand your true reality. Which is the horribly nasty and well documented historical fact, that your own establishment HATES YOU, quite literally to DEATH. It always has and always will. The only enemy of the establishment, is its own common people, mostly its middle class, not so much its poorer classes.
Worst still, the pathologically insane habitual buggers are going to get rid of you soon, one way or another. Preferably in a manner that will not give you the slightest clue it is in fact your own establishment that is doing the murdering and metaphorically and literally melting down your gold teeth.
It is not your tin cans the system wants to re cycle, IT IS YOU and most of your children.
The system does not bother worrying its collective power crazed psychopathic mind, on how it is going to pay your pension ANYMORE, in fact it never has. Because IMO it never did have any intention of letting most of you live that long.
Did you know; that more allied troops died after the end of WW1 from FLU and disease deliberately spreed among them by our own establishment. Then died from riffle shot during the entire war?
Did you also know; that thousands more Elizabethan sailors died from disease while being confined on their ships for over a year in port, without pay. Then died during the attempted invasion of this place by the Popes Spanish Armada.
Both of these simply massive crimes against this places brave loyal population committed simply because the establishment could not or did not want to pay our war veterans wages.
If you believe that the people that run the world now, care more about the people they RULE then the same sort of power mad psychopaths did back then. May I ask you a very serious question?
Do you wish to purchase some double glazing or a second hand car? Because I am quite happy, to say the least, to sell you in particular just about anything you think you need.
Call it paranoia if you wish, but it will not change the facts and certainly not the truth either.
However being aware of very possible possibilities, which must therefore result in perfectly justifiable and reasonable paranoia, could with a bit of luck, save the life of you and/or your family.
Mailman @10:35 Please check your facts ref the EU and VAT. You are wrong. Do you need me to drag up exact chapter and verse?
Under the 6th VAT Directive zero-rating remains in some Member States, most notably us as a legacy of pre-EU legislation. We have a derogation to continue existing zero-rating but we cannot add any new goods or services. Any EU country who has a VAT level on certain goods below 15% can keep it at that level for the moment, but any increase cannot be reversed unless it is only down to the floor of 15%.
Educate yourself, fool.
well thats me done –I’m off to bed to dream about my new found wealth –thanks Mr Darling –I owe you
Good luck Atlas old bean. I’m hoping i’ve got bags on a food stall at Traitors Gate and it’d be cool if Jools Holland turned up with his big band. Guess we’d need some entertainment for the kiddies too.
The answer to this situation is to rebuild our manufacturing industry and abandon the failed monetarist system.
It is time to expunge the monetarists and their moronic ideas.
I see in the US the crook Paulson is using even more taxpayers money to help his banker friends. Goldman Sachs shitheads seem to be all over the US government.
Between Paulson and Darling, its really a close contest for the “Idiot of the Year”…what a pair of cretins.
It may be that even the BBC has realised this. I hope so as a deceived population will not be appreciate being misled.
True, but not the point, and you seem to imagine that any of them give a damn, what we think.
Which surly it is clear by now, this or any government does not, in any way whatsoever.
They just want the limos, expense accounts, and highly expensive whores. If not these things, one or more 7 year old children, of any sex will do. Criminal psychopaths are not usually fussy about that type of thing, when it comes to there seriously criminal and extremely immoral sexual habits.
In fact when it comes to getting and staying at the top, being ‘controllable’ by having highly suspect sexual preferences is a positive, if not completely essential requirement for high office. The same could also be said about being anywhere near the top of any large corporate pyramid.
If the establishment knows it cant control a politician by having the conclusive MI5 GOODS on file, it drops him/her like a stone. They usually make up some public BBC propagated excuse such as, ‘the Poll Tax was unpopular,’ Then get some establishment stooge inside the politicians own party to stab them in the back. Sometimes literally, but more often metaphorically.
We know that the great mass of the common people would not intentionally lie to harm other people, and certainly not steal, rob or murder.
However these types may get into parliament quite often, but will never get far up the slippery ladder, where any type of real influence exists.
A politicians only gets or stays at the top for long, by being an establishment yes man/woman while taking all the generous bribes/incentives on offer. Preferably with openly greedy or better still needy, seriously sexually perverted and therefore totally compromised hands.
The picture may be black and highly depressing, but it is still a completely realistic picture, all the same.
We have no reason to believe basic reality is any different then when the British Empire condemned several million of its best young men to horrific premature death on the fields of Flanders. It was after all only 90 years ago.
If you do not still understand the absolute evil that is the worlds entire ruling elite, maybe a trip to a Polish or German concentration camp may assist your BBC inspired fuzzy vision.
immigration to canada or america is on the cards in archduke family circles.
mrs archduke , who is a solid english patriot – is giving up…
and it takes a LOT to make her give up on her country
i think we’ll end up in canada. mrs archduke is a bit of a monarchist.
(not into the republican thing…)
archduke | 24.11.08 – 11:29 pm |
Welcome to Canada.
You’ll love it.
Zevilyn
Could you please explain what you exactly mean by a ‘moneterist’ system. Because I for one have no idea.
What we need is SOUND MONEY. In fact it is virtually all we ever actually needed. However a trustworthy and un corrupted executive, backed up by a cast in granite stone constitution, would greatly have helped.
However the utter pain that getting to such a situation NOW would require at least one or two revolutions, followed closely by something that would closely resemble the end of the world as we know it.
It would however end wars, basically because the ruling elite would no longer be able to finance them by borrowing, and inflation followed by vicious taxation. So therefore greatly profit from them, while getting us to ultimately pay for it all, in blood and needless poverty.
Which of course is one very strong reason why we will never again have sound money, or anything like true democracy, which we NEVER have had, at any time in this countries entire history.
Capitalism is simply a method of transferring wealth from where there is an excess, to where it can be more productively used. If my bank had never lent me any money, my company would have never got off the ground. Whats more to the point neither would hardly any other self made company.
Capitalism in itself is not our problem. What is possibly going to end this world for people like me, and many of you is the filthy slime that control virtually all of the wealth of the entire planet, and therefore every democratically elected politician known to mankind, whether they knew it or not. Which also gos without saying, the entire media and especially the BBC, however well qualified and experienced the BBC are at pretending to be anti establishment.
Which I contend with utter and complete confidence, the BBC can not be, or possibly be allowed to be, under any circumstances imaginable.
The establishments system is as far from the idealism of Adam Smith as it is possible to get and still get away with calling it the free market.
I have spent my entire professional life working in a very free market indeed, and mostly winning.
This is not just hard, it is as good as impossible, in apparently the home of free market capitalism. I spent the first 15 years in business living on scraps, while often paying my employees and out workers far more then myself. I have had to re mortgage my home several times and almost gone bust as often.
I have survived and prospered by intuition and times of truly extreme hard work, no one but a complete sadist would subject a hated rabid dog to.
I know who I can trust and who I can not. No prises for guessing that Banks especially my own, never have entered the trusted list.
I have yet to find a politician I would gladly give more then a £10 worth of credit. However others I would gladly lend half a million , with no more then a scrap of paper as collateral, and often done so.
I am now in a position to finance any business I wish and have not run a overdraft for over five years. The relief of finally stopping crooks like Ba….ys from living off my back, is a truly liberating experience, believe me.
Otherwise I would be shitting my pants right now. As should many of you lot, whoever you have been conned into voting for in the past.
James Bartholomew has a good example of bias – he was on Radio 5 live with John Pienaar yesterday lunchtime.
The BBC political and economics correspondents generally took a view that was sympathetic to the government but it was the political correspondent, John Pienaar, who showed outright pro-Labour bias. I jotted down a couple of his remarks.
He said that a fiscal stimulus “desperately needs to be done”. This is the Labour Party’s view. It is not the Conservative Party’s view. His job, at the BBC, is to be impartial and not to express a personal view either way.
He then referred to the proposal to raise the top rate of tax to 45 per cent as “a bit of fairness”. This was clearly a remark intended to leave the impression that an increase in taxation of the richest was a) fair and b) a good thing. I wonder whether Mr Pienaar has really thought through what “fair” means and how it differs from “re-distributive” or “equalising”. He probably uses the word to mean “makes people’s income closer to equal”. I will leave aside the fact that history shows that this is not necessarily a good idea and merely remark that a 45% tax rate is not, at this moment, the policy of all the major parties and so, again, it is not for Mr Pienaar to say or imply that it is a good thing. He was taking the line of the Labour Party. It was bias, plain and simple.
He repeated this line about “fairness” a second time, later in the discussion. The implication, of course, is that anyone who opposes this rise must be against “fairness”. That is absurd and indeed, unfair.
He also suggested that the government had got the Conservatives in a trap. This was an extraordinary line to take in the circumstances where a Labour government which claimed to have abolished boom and bust is today bursting through its own fiscal rules, facing a deep ‘bust’ and the prospect of an extra million unemployed. It takes a truly prejudiced correspondent at such a time to suggest that it is the opposition which is in trouble.
http://www.thewelfarestatewerein.com/archives/2008/11/bbc_corresponde.php
Not so much ‘kids’ – they are teenagers, and I try SO HARD to persuade them that swearing shows a devastating lack of intellect
But that simply is not the case, encourage appropriate swearing rather than gratuatous and they will become nice rounded adults.
Wouldn’t want them to become like those tiresome bores going around telling everyone to mind their language would we mmm.
Is Britain Going Bankrupt?
As the Chancellor admits to the worst budget deficit of any major country in the world, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard asks should we be worried.
“We face the risk of a rapid downward spiral if we misjudge the threat at this dangerous moment, as we sit poised on the tipping point. Besides, the whole world is now resorting to fiscal stimulus in unison under IMF prodding. Sticking together is imperative. If countries reflate in isolation, they can and will be singled out and punished. That is the lesson of 1931.
We are not yet facing a replay of the 1970s ‘Gilts Strike’, but we are not that far off either.
There is now a palpable fear that global investors may start to shun British debt as the budget deficit rockets to £118bn — 8pc GDP — or charge a much higher price for to cover default risk”.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/ambrose_evans-pritchard/blog/2008/11/24/is_britain_going_bankrupt
.
Excellent link, Anon. Although Pritchard spelt out the causes of our crisis quite well, his advocacy of more of the same puts him beyond reason – just like all other ‘economists’. What do ‘economists’ know now? The engineering analogue to their recent practices is for me as an engineer to design bridges, structures aircraft etc. and just ignore gravity i.e. just come up with a new theory that it isn’t there and doesn’t matter. Economists have been saying just that – the balance of trade doesn’t matter, external debt doesn’t matter. Total f*cking bollox, and most commentators here know that it is.
The key comment in the link to Pritchard was when someone pointed out the size of Japan’s public sector deficit but another mentione d the fact that it is financed by the Japanese themselves through their enormous savings i.e. the Japanese are self-financing. The UK is having to borrow externally, in other people’s currency. And what do we get from the BBC – John Pienaar spouting for Gordon. That says it all.
elBulli for them…
I know it has long BBBC Breakfast ceased to pretend to be anything about news in favour of fluff, but I have to say I found the sequence of stories just now… quaint.
The Chancellor trotting out how tough it’s going to be, the Shadow Chancellor trotting out why… and we’re (well, bar a few favoured souls) going to have to tighten belts/go out and splurge, followed by a several minute long story about the world’s most exclusive overseas restaurant.
At least the guy getting the free commercial for his restaurant and book told the suck-ups gunning for a freebie to take a hike.
So it seems they will join the 99.999999% of the population for which this story had little resonance in the current economic climate. IMHO.
Here’s a recipe for the BBC. First open the wound, then rub salt in it.
I’m off for my breakfast muesli bar, which I can no longer afford to have flown on from Oslo or have sprinkled with truffle shavings. Well, until next year, when it will all be OK again. Apparently.
Cassis 6:06
What idiots like John Pienaar fail to explain is , if the 45% tax is “fair ” , why wasn’t it introduced before this ?
Grant | 25.11.08 – 1:12 pm
Yes…. and it’s so fair that the 1% of taxpayers who already pay 23% of all income tax collected should pay a little more. Not content that one person should pay his own whack plus the whacks of 22 other guys, Mr Pienaar says the one guy should pay for even more free riders. Strewth!
Tom 3:09
And, presumebly, 50% would be even “fairer” !
Grant
Apparently the effective rate will be 50%, not 45%. 45% is just window-dressing.
Boris made a savage attack on NuLabour’s undermining of the rich-of-London, who help keep the whole damn country afloat. Not a single mention on the BBC ?
Punitive taxation – which will raise very little in relation to the total needed, and could well be counter-productive.
But maybe some BBC journalists are getting querulous – they will be well up there in the top tax brackets.
JohnA | 26.11.08 – 1:09 am |
Punitive taxation – which will raise very little in relation to the total needed, and could well be counter-productive.
But maybe some BBC journalists are getting querulous – they will be well up there in the top tax brackets.
I think you’re right. Yesterday there was a Q&A article with some tax expert about how the new tax scheme affects various wage levels. There was a particular obsession with “slices” between (IIRC) £100K and £105K, in which case anyone with that salary will actually be penalized….sorry…taxed at a 60p rate. That seems to have disappeared (I can’t find it today), and replaced by a different Q&A which focuses on how much the scheme will help lower income earners and soak the evil rich.
Then they are forced to report on the statement from the IFS that soaking the evil rich won’t actually raise any of the revenue we were told it would by the government. Oops. But first they focus on how much the new scheme will benefit the poorest 30%. That’s really the most important thing, of course. Screw everyone else.
This is followed by a statement that public spending will only rise 1.1% during the “spending squeeze”. Why isn’t there a total freeze in times of need? Oh, because:
And the biggest cut will be in capital spending, such as building roads and schools, which be frozen and fall by 16.5% in real terms.
This is a big reversal of previous commitments by the government to protect capital spending.
Translation: Mr. Brown’s PFI games will be restricted.
Indeed one of the government’s key fiscal rules exempted capital spending from the same limits that applied to current spending.
Translation: The BBC thinks it’s unfair that Mr. Brown’s PFI games will be restricted, and tries to twist reality.
Never mind, though, because the BBC’s Steve Schiffers (under the direction of the business editor, no doubt) makes sure to end the article not by quoting anyone from the IFS, but by pretending to summarize the director’s words by actually quoting Gordon F’ing Brown:
But he said that on balance, the risk of acting was less than the risk of refusing to act.
Get bent, BBC. We all know that “refusing” is Mr. Brown’s slap at the Tories, not the IFS director’s actual attitude.
Average earners ‘lose out’ in PBR
But hey, a little government propaganda from the national broadcaster never hurt anyone, right? Can’t get too caught up in little details like that during an international crisis.