# Russia vs. England
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-vs-england/382445
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [December 1, 2006, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-vs-england/382445 "2006-12-01T04:55:25Z")
**Posts on this page:** 13
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)
#### Post date: [December 1, 2006, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-vs-england/382445/21 "2006-12-01T14:07:45Z")
[QUOTE=Gary Kumquat]
If Putin did it, then I wouldn’t be surprised if both governments had already discussed it prior to the event.
“Yo Blair, I need to whack this shithead who’s pissing me off”
“no problem Vlad. We can always say it’s rogue agents.”
[/QUOTE]
I’m certain you are right. Blind eyes will be turned and ‘try and be a little more subtle’ messages passed.
I’m waiting for the ‘entirely independent’ decision of the Serious Fraud Office to abandon its Saudi-British Aerospace corruption investigation.
This government hasn’t the courage to stand up to a goose with a mean-looking squint.
---
### Author:  [@Gary\_Kumquat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Kumquat)
#### Post date: [December 1, 2006, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-vs-england/382445/22 "2006-12-01T14:14:46Z")
[QUOTE=tagos]
This government hasn’t the courage to stand up to a goose with a mean-looking squint.
[/QUOTE]
Oh, it’s not a lack of courage. After all, this is the government that flat out defied over a million protestors in Britain’s [largest ever demonstration](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2765215.stm). Why this government is as courageous as a lion - when fighting for it’s own nasty little causes.
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### Author:  [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)
#### Post date: [December 1, 2006, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-vs-england/382445/23 "2006-12-01T14:20:21Z")
[QUOTE=Gary Kumquat]
Oh, it’s not a lack of courage. After all, this is the government that flat out defied over a million protestors in Britain’s [largest ever demonstration](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2765215.stm). Why this government is as courageous as a lion - when fighting for it’s own nasty little causes.
[/QUOTE]
True - but that would have meant standing up to the Americans. Bunch of lying gutless incompetents. And I speak as a lifelong Labour voter.
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### Author:  [@PoorYorick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PoorYorick)
#### Post date: [December 1, 2006, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-vs-england/382445/24 "2006-12-01T16:09:28Z")
[QUOTE=FRDE]
There was quite a lot about P210
It seems that it emits only Alpha particles and they are extremely weak, they can be stopped by a paper bag - so a small glass phial or even something made of metal would make it totally undetectable.
Also the required quantities are minute.
One could stick enough to kill 1000 people inside a wristwatch and it would be totally undetectable. Well that is what I heard on the radio.
[/QUOTE]
[We both must have been listening to NPR yesterday evening.](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6561759) This is what might make it a particularly good assassin’s tool: It’s essentially harmless unless ingested. Then, it only takes about the equivalent of a couple of grains of salt to kill someone since it can shut down whatever organ it happens to affect.
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### Author:  [@Arch\_Trout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arch_Trout)
#### Post date: [December 1, 2006, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-vs-england/382445/25 "2006-12-01T16:55:38Z")
[QUOTE=furlibusea]
\ for killing on their soil in a manner which is designed to cause terror among the general population.
[/QUOTE]
Terror among the general population 😕
From where I’m sitting (which, admittedly, is a good few hundred miles away) nobody actually cares.
Everyone one in my office is sick of hearing it on the news every night.
I can’t imagine the government really cares either. As long as no-one British got harmed who cares? We all assume ex-spys get killed all the time just generally not in Britain which is why the newspapers are getting all excited and the government will have to be seen to do some investigation to keep them happy.
Or maybe we’ve been watching James Bond too much and assume what happened is run of the mill spy stuff.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [December 1, 2006, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-vs-england/382445/26 "2006-12-01T19:26:31Z")
[QUOTE=furlibusea]
**Russia vs. England**
[/QUOTE]
England. If it’s prepared.
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### Author:  [@chowder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chowder)
#### Post date: [December 2, 2006, 8:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-vs-england/382445/27 "2006-12-02T08:01:15Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
England. If it’s prepared.
[/QUOTE]
4-4-2 system?
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### Author:  [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)
#### Post date: [December 2, 2006, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-vs-england/382445/28 "2006-12-02T14:19:38Z")
[QUOTE=chowder]
4-4-2 system?
[/QUOTE]
No, the 17/23 Correlation.
All Hail The Illuminati!
FNORD!
😃
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### Author:  [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)
#### Post date: [December 2, 2006, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-vs-england/382445/29 "2006-12-02T14:30:02Z")
[QUOTE=tagos]
… the Americans. Bunch of lying gutless incompetents.
[/QUOTE]
Hey. Even though it’s true, you shouldn’t write about the Bush administration like that. 😉
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### Author:  [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)
#### Post date: [December 2, 2006, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-vs-england/382445/30 "2006-12-02T18:13:04Z")
Hey, now, let’s be fair. The current Administration are clearly lying _gutsy_ incompetants.
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### Author:  [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)
#### Post date: [December 2, 2006, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-vs-england/382445/31 "2006-12-02T20:53:03Z")
I read elsewhere the suggestion that the use of Polonium meant that his death was deliberately prolonged and painful as a message and warning to others.
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### Author:  [@FRDE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FRDE)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2006, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-vs-england/382445/32 "2006-12-03T12:03:50Z")
In the UK Observer it says that he was trying to use FSB files to blackmail people
- they also have a very recent photo of him in a Scottish bonnet, holding a Chechen sword with some peculiar gauntlets in front of a Union Jack
He also gave a Russian woman a photo of him with Anna Politkovskaya and a Chechen leader who lives next door to him. That photo sure looks Photoshopped to me.
It sounds as if the guy was plain barking mad
- a couple of eggs short of an omelette
- they also suggest that he might have poisoned himself while making a ‘dirty bomb’ for the Chechens
The UK and the Russians are actually quite friendly, since we both have problems with fundamentalist terrorists, I don’t think that this is some official or unofficial FSB stunt.
Sure, in Russia we have stones to talk to, and London is supposed to be heaving with Russian agents - but such meaningless activity helps keep down the unemployment rate.
---
### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [December 13, 2006, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-vs-england/382445/33 "2006-12-13T01:48:15Z")
From [_The Nation’s_ website,](http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut?bid=7&pid=147021) 12/10/06:
> [@](#):
>
> But what is also emerging, as the investigation and radioactivity spread to Germany, is an alternative hypothesis, a counter-story–focusing on the business dealings of members of Russia’s private security industry and the security (and health) risks posed by trafficking of the dangerous (and extremely valuable) radioactive isotope polonium 210.
>
> (To its credit, the New York Times’s William Broad–in two stories, “Polonium, $22.50 Plus tax,” Dec. 3, 2006, and “US and Foreign Regulators Consider Tightening Controls on Deadly Polonium 210,” Dec. 10–debunked the conventional media line that only the Kremlin had the wherewithal to administer a lethal dose. Broad writes that “public and private inquiries have shown that it proliferated quite widely during the nuclear era, of late as an industrial commodity.”)
See also [Edward J. Epstein’s blog.](http://edjayepstein.blogspot.com/)
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