Vaguely sounds like the Russian army. Little care for their troops…
After all Pete’s macho BS, my mind immediately went to Monty Python. “Run away! Run away!”
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Insurance Premiums in the London Market are also about 5x normal as well.
Oil tanker captains in the Gulf are being paid rates equivalent to $100,000 a month for travelling through the Strait of Hormuz, along with a $50,000 bonus for each trip, as Iran steps up its assaults on vessels.
Shipowners were offering the bumper “danger money” to persuade seafarers to stay on vessels as Gulf countries try to keep crude flowing through the crucial strait, according to three people close to tanker owners and crew.
Regular sailors, whose normal monthly salaries can start as low as $1,500, and their captains, whose regular pay is about $15,000 a month, receive double pay while they are in the southern Red Sea and Gulf of Oman.
Houthi rebels hit Riyadh airport yesterday killing 18, got another shot at it today. US considering joining fight against them.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/saudi-arabia-extends-airport-closure-after-attack-9.7377486
Can’t see Trump launching attacks before mid-terms.
Depends what the Saudis are threatening to do to the price of gas imo
https://giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/actions/redeem/a67f0e65-fbb0-4ec2-ae11-f4148e708740
What a world we find ourselves in. The US has become propaganda heaven…while we now rely on Iran to be the factual and credible counterparty in negotiations.
While Iran is firmly committed to seeking a dignified peaceful resolution to the conflict, we are also fully prepared to defend ourselves. President Donald Trump entered this war on the basis of fundamentally erroneous assumptions about Iran’s fortitude. It appears that he continues to be wrongly told that our armed forces are unprepared to defend the homeland, despite all evidence to the contrary. Instead, our fearless military has learnt valuable lessons from the acts of aggression committed by Israel and America since 2025.
To state the obvious, we have no trust whatsoever in the sincerity of the US administration’s professed desire for peace with Iran. The evidence is there for all to see: in June 2025 and February 2026, they bombed us while we were actively engaged in negotiations. And in June of this year, shortly after an agreement was signed by President Masoud Pezeshkian and President Trump, we were attacked for a third time. How can we trust a US president again?
Given that the White House has shown no willingness to reach an understanding on the way forward, while also threatening more violence, there is little reason to expect progress now. The recent escalation across the region, which shows how quickly this conflict can spread and how far its consequences can reach, is evidence of the major risk to international peace and security. In spite of all this, as a career diplomat, I am obliged to do my utmost to give diplomacy a chance, even when hope of success is scant.
It’s not so much that the Iranian regime has a new found admiration of the truth. It’s that they no longer need to lie.
I’m really not sure Iran is any more or less credible than they were before the war. But American credibility has fallen so far under Trump that they seem more credible than they used to be by comparison.
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The price of the distilled petroleum used in boilers and furnaces has jumped 50 per cent since the closure of the Strait of Hormuz in February — prompting the region to rethink its opposition to natural gas. Prices, at $6.14 per gallon, are the highest on record, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Heating oil prices closely track diesel.
According to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, low-income households in the north-east will face an extra $1.1bn in heating costs this winter, a 50 per cent increase.
As someone whose New England home is oil heated, I am very thankful that my wife and I have a mutual preference of keeping the house as cool as we dare in the winter, and that El Niño generally means “warmer than normal” winters around here.
Filling the oil tank in the basement is going to be expen$$$Ive!
(I wonder whether after the election, the Governor might somehow get some of the state taxes on heating oil suspended. I know it won’t happen before, as I assume there’s no desire to turn down public outrage over high fuel prices. It think the masses have forgotten that the state did that during the fuel price spike a few years ago…)
Canadian PM announced a 2billion dollar grant to get people to switch to heat pumps - grants of up to $10k. So almost the full cost of a new installation.
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Well that’s nice…
I don’t see the price of energy coming down anytime soon (as Trump will keep the Iran conflict up as it benefits Oil and Gas interests back in the US).
Makes sense to increase funding for the transition now (and get ahead of the consumer pain that is going to hit people over the next few years). UK is also in the same boat but has little spare cash (Canada is doing much better financially vs UK).
Was booking some flights for later this year/next year, and the price increases have become noticeable. They are going to hammer demand if they keep increasing.
My flight back to BC at Christmas was painfully high and i suspect prices will continue to go up.
I booked a flight to Minneapolis for a meeting.
I was annoyed, but not terribly surprised, by the thought that going to Minneapolis was going to be more expensive than going to London (with the fare for my trip to LHR in May in mind).
Then I took a look at what fares to London are like now, and I was a lot less annoyed.
(I did see, however, that Swissair offers a BOS-ZRH-LCY routing with an A340 for the transatlantic leg that appeals to my avgeek and love of unorthodox itineraries, and which might be more viable than my prior thought that I might do an open-jaw intinerary, flying BOS-EDI / LON-BOS, on my next trip to the office.)
Did you look into airfares for Detroit as well??? 