BOOJUM!: A Force To Work Is Not A Workforce

Ha! Do You See What I Did There?

No! This Intro is not about South Canadian manglement, though you could call what follows manglement at the national level, if you like. For Lo! we are back on the endlessly entertaining - and, to be honest, just endless - subject matter of how badly messed up things are in the land of the Ruffians, how they're actually getting worse and where this may lead. Art!

You may be forgiven for thinking this is a live broadcast of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. Nope, it's actually part of the Moscow residential district going up in flames, a bit of a metaphor one feels. I cannot find the relevant photograph, for one canny Twitter observer pointed out fire-fighters not fire-fighting in one picture and wondered, caustically, if the water pressure had fallen too low for them to be able to use hoses. Art!

This population pyramid is the one thing that stops Putinpot Dictator from sleeping at night, because it is grievously mis-shapen and is one of the reasons Peter The Average is havering about Ruffian women having eighteen children. He wants a bigger population of slaves when he hits his 89th birthday.

"But Conrad, O aging savant, what should a population pyramid look like?" I hear you say. O I thought you'd never ask! Art?

Thanks to Joe Blogs and his explanatory vlogs for the following breakdown, which, he and I both emphasise, come from official Rosstat data, not guesswork or clairvoyancy.

RUSSIAN WORKFORCE: Both Tinpot and Elvira Nabiullina, head of the Russian Central Bank, have admitted that there's a significant shortage of labour in Ruffia. Nabby - whom is much too important to fall out of a window or accidentally lick the venom from a toad's skin - has warned that significant labour shortages will drive up salaries and thus inflation. It's noted that salaries have been rising 10% month on month since April 2023, which is storing up trouble for the near future. Ruffian unemployment stands at 3%, not for any positive reason, merely because there aren't any more workers left. Unemployment dropped from 3.6% in 2023 to 3.0%, the lowest it's ever been, and it's stayed at that level ever since. There are, once again, no more workers left. Art!

Nabby

RUSSIAN RESEARCH PAPER: Composed by one Maria Stroiteleva, who is a mere minion who had better stay on the ground floor and away from windows, this paper states that there is a shortfall of 4.8 million workers in Ruffia, data that comes from the Ruffian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Economics. This percentage translates into 6.8% of the payroll, and 91% of all employers across Ruffia complain about a shortage of personnel. Critical areas include salespeople, drivers, welders and other fields, principally in manufacturing, transport and construction.

The end result of this is a notable reduction in goods and services, which drive up inflation and restricts GDP. As you can see above one part of the problem is demographics, which cannot be amended or resolved in anything short of decades. Then there is migration, as people flee Soviet Union 2.0. The migrant workers who would traditionally have bridged this employment gap are staying away in droves, as the weak ruble makes Ruffian an unenticing prospect, as does also the high risk of being conscripted and sent to Ukraine. Art!

"Thanks for all volunteering!"

THAT DEMOGRAPHIC: Since 1990 the Ruffian birth rate has been falling, a factor that means here and now, a generation later after the Sinister Union went toes-up, there are fewer in the workforce. Retirement ages in Ruffia are also a bit barmy: men retire at 61.5 and women at 56.5 and if you cross-check this with the demographic 'pyramid' there's an immediate 0.8% drop for both - or, in other words, there are fewer replacements, meaning even less workers. O dearie me!

THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT: Ruffia needs more people, and lots of them, to keep their economy ticking over. Emigration and mobilisation have permanently reduced the workforce by millions, which is a problem that will endure for decades. Demographic changes, you see, are positively glacial, and whilst suicide and vodka are both endemic, don't expect to see a solution to this anytime soon.

I don't think the Angry Little Man likes this subject matter. Conrad better stay away from windows!

Reds And Deads

I did warn you that we were going to be seeing more of the Maunsell Forts, specifically the Redsands Fort, the only one of the wartime edifices still standing, albeit a little shakily. Your Humble Scribe came across a website constructed by enthusiasts, so here's some more pictures from the fortification's heyday. Art!

Here we see each fortlet (?) equipped with the mighty 3.7" anti-aircraft gun, weaponry credited with downing 22 Teuton aircraft, 30 flying bombs and a U-Boat. Note the gangways here, long since lost to wind, weather and the briny North Sea air. Art!

Here you can see them being assembled at Gravesend, from where they would be towed by barge out to the Thames Estuary and then 'hand-winched' (it says here) into position, a process that took eight hours. One presumes from a horizontal position? I've not come across any pictures of this hand-winching being done, so you'll have to resort to Trusty Imagination.

"City In The Sky"

The cold hard fact that "Pangolin" no longer has supplies of air sufficient to carry out it's job and safely get back to Arc One is concentrating minds wonderfully.

‘About your alternative - ’ began Kurt.

‘How were we going to put that rock into a deceleration to hit off the Bight?’ asked Barclay, immediately answering his own question. ‘By using Pangolin’s ballistics computer and plotting where to drill holes in the rock, then drilling them, then placing the fuel boosters, then rigging a remote to ignite them in sequence.’

‘We don’t have time,’ added Mona. ‘You worked it out. We don’t have the air or the time.’

‘Correct. So we use an alternative method, one that uses an on-board computer to make real-time alterations and adjustments to the boosters.’

Kurt shook his head.

‘Dismounting the computer equipment would take hours, as would setting it up.’

Ace realised where this euphemistically-phrased alternative led.

‘He’s not talking about an electronic computer. He means one of us has to ride that rock down.’ She looked directly at him. ‘Right?’

‘Correct. We need only three boosters that way. One person fewer extends the air in here by a quarter and the spare booster is going to be attached to Pangolin to accelerate you back towards Arc One. With suit air I calculate a safety margin of about twenty to thirty minutes.’

‘And how do we choose who gets to go out riding a comet?’ asked Ace.

Good question!

Your Offer Is Appreciated But Not Needed

Conrad came across a sidebar promotion on his feed, and if we can prod Art into a semblance of life and wakefulness with this sword-pattern bayonet -

Your Humble Scribe has absolutely no problems with passing time. I have yet to do my brace of crosswords, the daily Codeword, annotate two separate military history works, read more of "The Ockers Walk On Water In The Middle East" and play the next scenario in "Siege". I'm guessing that still above is from "The Seven Samurai". Come back when you've seen Sergei Bondarchuk's "War And Peace", matey. 422 minutes loooooong. Though the blood and thunder helps make it pass a little quicker.

Hobnobbing With The - Well, Not Famous Yet

As you should surely know by now, Conrad is ever a one to buy military history books, and had heard good things about "Jocks, Dragons And Sospans" by Jonathan Ware.

Problem is, you can't get hold of it. Conrad presumed this meant the hardback had long sold out, without a new paperback edition.

I pestered the great man himself on Twitter and we had a brief interaction. Art!