Grain Pain

Or, Even, 'Gain Pain'

You'll see.  For Lo! we are looking at the economic impact of the war in Ukraine on Mordorvia, so if that doesn't interest you THE EXIT DOOR IS THAT WAY.  

     Overall, the Ruffian economy has been amazingly resilient, but it was never structured to be able to withstand a wartime status that ought to have been over in a couple of months at the longest.  Here we are over four and a half years later, and the strain is showing.  Art!

     That's Georgijs of 'Ukraine Matters', whom is fluent in Ruffian, Ukrainian, English and Danish.  If you think the latter a little odd, it's because he's Danish, like 'Anders Puck Nielsen'.  His most recent vlog concerns the Ruffian economy and how unwell it is.  One person he doesn't mention is Elvira Nabuillina, head of the Ruffian Bank and whom has been moving heaven and earth to keep their economy going, but who admitted a few months ago that everything is exhausted.  Art!

    The gold reserves of Mordorvia are at their lowest for 7 years, to a total of 2,260 tons, after selling off 62 tons of gold this year.  They are being used to fund the war, keep the economy alive and make up for deficits in oil and gas revenue, in the biggest sell-off in almost 30 years.  

     Even having Agent Krasnov in the White House isn't sufficient to prop up the Ruffian economy, although it has rebounded thanks to his lifting sanctions and buying Ruffian diesel.  Art!

     Oil revenue is falling as exports are hit thanks to Kozaky kinetic sanctions, down by $380 million, with crude production falling in September to 8.64 million Barrels Per Day, down from a pre-war total of 11 million BPD.  Down by a third is not an appealing metric and is the tenth month of falling output, despite what Agent Krasnov blusters about.

     Ruffian businesses are now loaded with debt and taxes, so much so that they are taking out loans to be able to pay the interest on their previous loans.  Putin is also going to be imposing 'one-off' taxes on businesses to raise money for the war effort.  Art!

     Everything else will be cut, to - you may be ahead of me here - pay for the war.  Art!

    Here's where we get onto the title matter.  The Ruffian ports on the Sea Of Azov and the Black Sea are looking at a total loss of marine traffic, thanks again to Ukrainian sanctions.  The Kozaky aren't publicising it, since it offends Agent Krasnov, but their drones have almost eliminated orc shipping from these zones, which used to carry 25% of orc grain exports.  Exports from the port of Novorossiysk, the primary export hub for grain, have fallen from 1.7 million tons to 60,000, a decrease to 1/28 of the original.  Wowsers.

     The cost of this drastic reduction in grain shipments is estimated at $2.2 billion per month, so swingeing that the ports are all clamouring for state subsidies and support to pay for wages, maintenance, keeping warehouse and port infrastructure going and paying for utilities.  Good luck with that.

     This cut-off reminds me of Ukraine's grain shipments at the start of the war, when Odesa was blockaded.  There was talk of moving grain from the port via rail to the Adriatic Sea, which, according to pundits, would have taken 18 months thanks to the sheer bulk of grain involved.  Art!

Preston Stewart

     'Prez' as I like to call him, was dealing with the other end of the war, on the battlefield itself.  Art!

     Remember, if you will, that it took the orcs two wars and an ocean of blood to conquer Chechnya, which is a flyspeck when compared to Ukraine.  Prez illustrated how little progress the orcs have made with a graphic from the ISW (Institute for the Study of War).  Art!

     As you can see, the Ruffian pace of advance has been glacial, barely moving the needle across four years.  The red line, on the other hand, has been accumulating ceaselessly as it's their casualty marker, and has only been accelerating.  Indeed, October 2026 has already proven to be the most deadly month of the war for the orcs.

     Prez also put up another metric from the ISW, which shows the painful contrast between Ruffian lies and cold hard reality.  Art!

     Conrad is not an expert but this is, frankly, pathetic.  You can see how the Kozaky 'Operation Vivaldi' removed an entire Ruffian salient and completely scuppered their plans to cut off the Ukrainian 'Fortress Belt'.  To get that 73 square kilometres has cost the orcs something like 400,000 casualties, or 5,479 casualties for every square kilometre.  Not only that, as I've explained before, they cannot replace their losses per month and haven't been able to do so since December 2025.  Wait until 'Madyar's Birds' hit their target of inflicting 50,000 orc casualties per month.

     Gain pain indeed.

Stand Up Agent Krasnov

This is the nickname Mister Mashed Potato Brain has amongst the capitals of Europe, reflecting the urban legend that he was kompromatted back in the Eighties when he visited Mordorvia.  Here's another terrible photo of The Snarling Walnut.  Art!

     The news item seemed a bit coy about matters until I noticed that the dateline was June, four months ago.  Matters have not improved for the Wizard Lizard Gizzard party since then, in case you've been living in the Gobi Desert for the past two years.  I did notice that they mentioned Nate Silver, who I am aware of thanks to Chris Cilliza using his graphs to illustrate points, under the title 'Silver Bulletin'.  Art!

The Snarling Walnut himself*

More Of Those Classics

I'm being quite good, I feel, in not ordering a tranche of these works on the ancient world and staying away from Abebooks.  Art

     NO! I cannot simply go to the library and see if they have a copy, that would be cheating, unsporting and un-British.  Art!

     Brother of the more famous James, in case you were unaware, and I've got one of his works knocking around somewhere - the clash of Greece and Persia, I think.  It's probably not strictly about the ancient world as it deals with Rome post-500 AD and leads up to the first millenium, hence the title, but the blurb recommends it.  One day, one day.

Still Pursued By Pans

Yes, Your Humble Scribe is still being hotly pursued over the media landscape by metal cooking utensils, not Polish men.  Just to be clear.  

In Polish, pan means "Sir", "Mr.", or a formal way of saying "you" to a man. [1, 2]

     Art!

 

     We already have two large frying pans and a medium and a miniature one, why on earth would I need another?  I bet it's hideously expensive as well.  Hang on - Art!

     Conrad cannot explain the extraordinary lack of interest he has in pans.  But, having looked this one up, it will probably keep the loop going.

     I have a better idea.  Art!

     I've dug this up on Youtube and Saved To Watch Later as the whole thing is 12 minutes long and I'm currently on minute 21 of my 30 minute lunch break.

Going Out With A Bang

One thing that sends the vatniks and fellow travellers into a frothing rage is when Ukraine uses British-supplied weaponry to smite them hip and thigh.  Initially their bete noir was the M777 howitzer; they now have another thing to hate and fear.  Art!

Storm Shadow

     STORMZY FOR THE WIN!

     Art!

     To quote 'Chuck Pfarrer' over on Twitter "On Sunday, British made Storm Shadow cruise missiles targeted Russia’s Energia factory. The facility manufactures thermal batteries providing power to Pantsir air defense systems, Iskander ballistic missiles and various glide bombs."

     As Prof Gerdes puts it, this is shooting the archer not the arrows.  Smart strategy, as the Kozaky don't have many STORMZIES. 

Finally -

*  Possibly my favourite ghastly photo of Billy Bonespurs.

Maggie, Indeed, May

Or She May Not

This Intro may take a while to get going, thanks to Conrad and his brains.  Not to mind 'Raindrops' from Basmentxx Trax going on in the background.  An absolutely banger of a track!

     <short clip of an old man trying to bop and gearing his hip>

     ER WELL I was regarding back to the Seventies, and way back when Rod Stewart had a rather gender-busting hit for the times, about one of his  gay bandmates.  Instead of that, here's John Peel pretending to play mandolin on 'Top Of The Pops' in September 1971, as Rod Stewart and The Faces performed 'Maggie May'.  Art!

     It was Rod's way of thumbing his nose at the Beeb, and he made certain to perform directly in front of John so that the cameras had no choice but to cover him.

     AND I come back to this the next day with no idea what thread I was pursuing here.  Gin and old age, gentle reader.

     Still, now that I've introduced both the Seventies and music I think we can continue with Part Three of that Top 40 chart dated December 1979.  Art!

     Conrad is ancient enough and listened to the radio enough at the time that I recall a few of these.  Including -

21 'Working For The Yankee Dollar' by The Skids.  The band originated in Scotland, where men are men and cows are shaggy, and I kind of recall the video for this song having men in uniform and Brodie-pattern helmets?  Implying something deep and intellectual.  Perhaps.  Art!

Proof I am not raving.  Yet.

     It seems to be a tad critical of South Canadian capitalism and military action.  Kind of like today, in fact.

     HOWEVER I would like to highlight the album that this song was from.  Art!

     Deffo trying to give a 'Berlin Olympics 1936' vibe without actually saying 'Berlin Olympics 1936'.  The group took quite a bit of flak for this cover design, being bashed about their pro-Nazi stance, although Conrad presumes their record label's legal counsel had at least approved it.  Richard Jobson, their singer, countered that the writing here is actually Jewish, which is kind of half-right.  It's called 'Fraktur' and to Your Humble Scribe's eye is wickedly difficult to both write and read.  The Nazis did indeed ban it in 1941 as having <gasp the horror the horror!> 'Jewish roots'.
     Note that The Skids guitarist was Stuart Adamson, the talented yet troubled chap who went on to form Big Country.

     Conrad Approves.

22 'My Feet Keep Dancing' by Chic.  O really?  Even when severed from the rest of your body?  SORRY I meant to write 'Another hideous disco sonic swill back in the days before disco had been shot, stabbed, decapitated, set alight and buried at midnight under an oak tree at an intersection'.  Art!

     Conrad not keen on disco.  You may be able to tell.

     Conrad Does Not Approve.

23 'Union City Blue' by Blondie.  Another one I recall, back when all the boys were slobbering over Debbie Harry.  Fair enough, she was quite the looker.  Also with talent, as she co-wrote the song, which seems to be anchored in her experience of growing up in New Jersey.  Art!

     Conrad Approves.

24 'It Won't Seem Like Christmas Without You' by Pelvis Parsley NO! SORRY! Elvis Presley, I meant Elvis Presley.  I think Pelvis Parsley is from a 'Pink Panther' cartoon*.

     Hmmmm given that he was long dead when this was released, Conrad The Cynic believes this to be the record label's Christmas-Cash-In attempt.  I hope they lost money on it.

     Conrad Does Not Approve.  Plus, since I'm feeling liverish, NO PICTURE.

25 'Off The Wall' by Michael Jackson.  Back in the days when he was talented, not tedious, and did not consort with chimpanzees.  Conrad prefers the stuff he did on 'Thriller' three years later, because zombies.  Art!

ART!

     There will be Tazers.

     Conrad Is Ambivalent.

26 'Green Onions' by Booker T And The MGs.  A instrumental!  Conrad Automatically Approves.  Corking track, and I have a double CD of this group's musical opus.  'Time Is Tight' is an even better track and I'm going to go off and Youtube it right now.  Art!

27 'One Step Beyond' by Madness.  From their debut album of the same name, back when British music had a bit of an crush on ska and reggae.  Already covered under 'My Girl'.  Conrad Approves.

28 'Spacer' by Sheila B Devotion.  No idea.  Bit of a dull idea, one feels.  Art!

Many, many spacers

29 'No More Tears' by Donna Summer and Barbara Streisand.  An ode to the Singer sewing machine?  Art!

30 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand' by Dollar.  One of Conrad's best-kept secrets is that he has a weakness for lightweight pop music, having all Keane's albums as an admission or confession.  So too with Dollar, who were very much of their time and will never have a music archive named after them.  Art!

     As long as it's just a hand - okay.  Nothing more NSFW than that, please.

Pursued By Pans

Conrad is rather regretting looking up a 'Hand-Hammered Pan' on teh Interwebz, as the results seem to have cemented in the algorithm's digital brain that I want to know ALL ABOUT THE PANS ALL THE TIME EVERYWHERE.  Art!

     Pan replacement at The Mansion is of the order of a single very large pan once every five years.  These people imply that it needs to be done every nine days.

     Go away!

A Week To Go

Sorry if you're not interested in the upcoming South Canadian mid-term elections, since Conrad finds them fascinating, in terms of procedure and outcome.  In a population of 350 million, the only person who is incapable of understanding how utterly loathed his is - you may be ahead of me here - is Donold Judas Trump.  Art!

     The 'Snarling Walnut' himself.  Votes will be cast next Tuesday, actually less than a week away as I'm typing this up for tomorrow's blog today, and 32 million South Canadians have already cast their vote.  'Chris Cilliza', an independent journo I follow on Youtube, has a vlog up already that, to be frank, is not looking good for King Piggy.  Art!

     Fat Caligula's handlers are all busy lying to him about how popular he is and how well his party is doing, so it will be interesting to see the fallout on November 4th.  Expect tantrums and lies.  Also, I need to use up one of my gallery of ghastly photos of BOOH.  Art!

     If a sago pudding were to gain sentience -

     Conrad also notes that Elong Tusk has burned $446 million of his own money to try and tilt the electoral needle.  To absolutely no effect.  Tee hee!

Talking Politically

Which is not at all the same as talking politics.  Art!

     I have actually found this a fascinating look at antiquity and might well be purchasing a few of these works, since the past is a lens we can look at ourselves through and analyse effectively.  Art!

     To be a 'New Man' meant that you got into the Senate without any prior family background, no nepotism involved, which was quite a feat.  The status quo meant that consuls in the Senate were usually scions of an already-present family, whom viewed outsiders with considerable suspicion.  Conservative Establishment versus Exuberant Newcomer and all that.  The blurb explains nothing, so I've no idea if there is any theme to the 'Novo Homus' or not.  BE STRONG CONRAD DO NOT BUY THE BOOK! as wallet squeaks in anguish.  At least not this month as I have 'Swan Song' arriving from South Canada.

*  I checked and this is correct.  From an episode broadcast in 1971 that I haven't seen since, which says something - not quite sure what - about my memory.  Art!

Tail Fail

Relatively, Anyway

For Lo! we are back on the free guided tour of Imperial War Museum Duxford, and at a moment before we move from the external exhibits to the South Canadian Hall.  As our party moved south, there was a line of commercial airliners out in the open that one could observe.  These included what looked like another Gerry Anderson aircraft.  Art!

     This is the 'Vickers VC-10', an aircraft Col had actually flown aboard as a youngster.  As you can see, it has an ENORMOUS tail, to which are attached four engines, because whomever designed this was already thinking about Fireflash.  

     The VC-10 was intended to operate from what are deemed 'Hot and high' airports, out of Africa and the Middle East, where conditions are unlike those in Europe.  It lost out in commercial competition with the <hiss spits> Boeing 707, which is as far as we're going to detail here.  Still a fantastic arse for an aircraft.

     Art!

     Here is a panorama of the South Canadian Hall.  The <thinks hastily> Scans have been exponents of air power since 1941, and have been practitioners ever since.  Art!

     What you're looking at here is the vision into South American planes as they apply to air power, which has been a thing for decades.  Art!

     This is the fuselage and engines of the A10 'Warthog', so named because it's one of the ugliest aircraft to ever take the skies.  It's built around an enormous 30 mm seven-barrel cannon, a 'Vulcan gun' that fires depleted-uranium rounds at a rate of 100 per second.  No, that's not a typo: 100 rounds per second.  Art!

     As visible, each cannon round is the size of a milk-bottle.  They are effective against tanks because, being airborne, they hit the much thinner roof instead of the hull front.  I've seen a rather ghastly video clip of a Taliban 4x4 being strafed by an A10, leaving holes as big as dinner plates in it.  Art!

     Here we have a B-52.  Yes, that's right, the enormous bomber aircraft the Scans are still using to drop enormous quantities of ordnance upon their opponents.  They must have brought this in dismantled and erected it in situ, as it's simply too massive to fit in any other way.  Unless they built the Hall around it?  Nicknamed 'Big Ugly Fat Fella' or BUFF for short.  A real workhorse aircraft that's been around since the Fifties.  Art!

     Yet more B-52 'Stratofortress' for you.  I think we need a full-frame picture of a BUFF.  Art!

     A visit from one of these will most definitely deliver the Bad Hair From Hell Day.  Art!

     Not sure what I was trying to get in shot here.  The BUFF keeps on appearing in frame as it takes up so much space.  Art!

This, gentle reader, is the SR-71 'Blackbird', a reconnaissance aircraft of rare beauty and power.  It has two gigantic engines, a streamlined fuselage and a tiny, very cramped cockpit for pilot and navigator.  Rated as capable of doing Mach 3, it was reckoned to be able to do Mach 3.3 and was flown to the very limits of the airframe, requiring a lot of maintenance after each flight.  They regularly overflew the Sinister Union, which hated hated hated them as they couldn't be intercepted thanks to their speed.  Art!

     The humble hauler that was the DC-3 or 'Dakota'.  It was built by the thousands and served in every theatre of the Second Unpleasantness as a transport aircraft, in addition to being a paratrooper transport.  The unglamourous but vital workhorse of the skies.  Art!

     The sinister-looking aerial beast is an MQ-1B 'Predator' drone, which has a history of service in Afghanistan, doing 288 sorties and logging over 5,000 hours flight time.  Col wondered why it had such long wings, and it transpires that this configuration provides lots and lots of lift, allowing it to stay aloft longer than a short wing would.  Art!

     Why have a huge piece of rusty steel in the American Air Hall?  Well, what you're looking at here is a piece of scrap recovered from the ruins of the World Trade Centre, dateline September 11th.  You may recall that.  Art!

     What you see here is a Scan (I have contracted 'South Canadian' to 'Scan' for this Intro) cruise missile, the aptly named 'Tomahawk'.  No snivelling nonsense about it having to  be a PC name; this one is going to do harm, in a major way.  Art!

     I am entirely unsure quite what this is.  Modern art?

     I think this is the fuselage of the B-17, as the B-24 Liberator fuselage is unpainted metal.  Art!

    Even MORE B-52!  What you see here is an earlier model of BUFF.  Originally a gunner would have been sat behind these four .50 M2 Brownings; later on the guns were remotely-controlled from the cockpit and in the Nineties they were removed altogether.  Also, look at the height of that tai.  This is a BIG aircraft.  Just to be clear.  Art!

     I read this and must have felt it deserved a photograph, but cannot remember anything about it, and the print is too small to resolve.  Ooops.  Invent a story about it yourself.  Art!

     One of the airfield tractors the Scans used to haul bombs from depot to aircraft because the typical bomb load of a B-17, as an example, could be up to 3 PROUD IMPERIAL tons of bombs, so possibly up to 60 times 100 PROUD IMPERIAL pound bombs.  That's an awful lot of weight to haul around.  Just to be clear, the bombs would only be armed when being loaded onto the bomber, as it was much too dangerous otherwise, and the tractor driver would have the least popular job on site.  Art!

     Here's a shot of the ordnance the tractor is towing, and I believe that's the tail of the B-24 Liberator 'Dugan' in the background.  Art!

     A thing of beauty, the P-51 'Mustang'.  Initially it used an Allison engine, which gave rubbish performance at height.  Canny British engineers then decided to swap over to a super-charged Rolls-Royce engine, which boosted performance to excellence at all heights, and gave it a top speed of 400 PROUD IMPERIAL miles per hour.  Since Rolls-Royce was utterly swamped with war work, Packard produced a licenced version of their engine.

     What appear to be 'bombs' under the wings are nothing of the sort.  They are actually drop tanks, which would be full of fuel.  The pilot would draw fuel from them until they ran dry, then discard them and begin to draw from the aircraft's internal fuel tank, increasing the range the plane could fly.  The Mustang was thus able to escort Scan bombers all the way to targets in Germany and back, increasing their chances of survival immensely.  Art!

     B-17 with puny Col for scale.  We were counting the guns and came up with 13, which is not very lucky if you're a Luftwaffe fighter.  Art!

     The idea was that the B17 could fly into enemy territory and defend itself with all these guns, which proved not to be the case - lots of B17 were shot down by the Luftwaffe after the short-ranged fighter escorts left.  THEN! the long-ranged Mustang arrived and as above.  

     Right, that's the end of the American Air Hall.

Art!

     The Airspeed Oxford you can fly on for £70, which seemed a bit steep for me.

     AND THAT'S DUXFORD ALL DONE!