Salford Manor near Bath, dates from approx. 1150 and is still inhabited today - probably the oldest complete inhabited dwelling in the UK.
There is a complete, inhabited house in Averyon France that dates from the 13fh Century.
The oldest surviving inhabited house in America was built in Massachusetts around 1641.
Which begs the question - What did builders know back then, that we don’t know now?
BBC News - Classified Ministry of Defence documents found at bus stop
I would like to note that you should read up on what the Russians have in that theater if you think that. We are talking about Crimea here, which is extensively fortified by exactly state of the art anti-ship batteries in high profile deployments. HMS Defender, well within Bastion umbrella, would have barely any warning time what so ever and would be destroyed in any theoretical engagement with absolutely anything straight outside Crimea.
The HMS Defender, state of art area denial (specialized against air threats I remind you) ship as it is, would not be engaged by low flying SU-27 if shit hit the fan. It would be engaged point blank, by Russia’s most formidable Anti-Ship system and the HMS Defender was alone, with no logistical support.
And Bastion is just one system the Russians have in that very militarized theater. They don’t allow a NATO ship into the Black Sea without stalking it with submarines, and the HMS Defender has no real means to defend against that. And so on, because the Russians also have deployed several land to land ballistic missiles in the theatre that could also engage a ship, as well as other cruise missiles. Not that it would be needed, one salvo from Bastion would kill any single ship within 100 km of Crimea in any case.
The I sail to contest your claim on territory, you send out fighters to confirm your claim is nice standard diplomacy with Hard Power. And I support the UK sending Defender there to challenge the Russians, but any theoretical engagement outside Crimea would end very, very badly for the valiant Defender. That is just Realpolitik with hard numbers and efficiency of Russian weapon systems and the absolute massive amount of weapon systems pointed at (or could be pointed at the Defender very quickly, if it some how by means I don’t understand, take out the Bastion) the Defender at very short range.
So what I am essentially saying, is that the HMS Defender is an Area Denial ship, state of the art, amongst the best there is. However, it is already inside the Russian umbrella set up by their various Area Denial systems (and they have significantly longer range, even though this is some what of a moot point when you are at point blank range of the Bastion). This part of the Black Sea, is 100% militarily controlled by Russia and it would take a very large fleet to contest that (not sure it is even technically possible, all would be sitting ducks nicely confined in the Black Sea, within range of Russian air bases from which to launch bomb runs and to launch missiles from while far away from such bases of ones own).
It is an amusing read this. “Operation Poke the Bear” comes to mind. I had lots of fun reading it.
Some excerpts:
*The documents relating to the Royal Navy’s Type 45 destroyer, HMS Defender, show that a mission described by the MoD as an “innocent passage through Ukrainian territorial waters”, with guns covered and the ship’s helicopter stowed in its hangar, was conducted in the expectation that Russia might respond aggressively."
On Wednesday more than 20 Russian aircraft and two coastguard ships shadowed the warship as it sailed about 12 miles (19km) off Crimea’s coast.
Recent interactions in the eastern Mediterranean between Russian forces and a Carrier Strike Group led by HMS Queen Elizabeth had been unremarkable and “in line with expectations”, the document said.
But officials knew this was about to change.
“Following the transition from defence engagement activity to operational activity, it is highly likely that RFN (Russian navy) and VKS (Russian air force) interactions will become more frequent and assertive,” one presentation warned.
A series of slides prepared at PJHQ shows two routeing options, one described as “a safe and professional direct transit from Odessa to Batumi”, including a short stretch through a “Traffic Separation Scheme” (TSS) close to the south-west tip of Crimea.
This route, one slide concluded, would “provide an opportunity to engage with the Ukrainian government… in what the UK recognises as Ukrainian territorial waters.”
Three potential Russian responses were outlined, from “safe and professional” to “neither safe nor professional”.
In the event, Russia chose to react aggressively, with radio warnings, coastguard vessels closing to within 100 metres and repeated buzzing by warplanes.
An alternative route was considered, which would have kept HMS Defender well away from contested waters.
This would have avoided confrontation, the presentation noted, but ran the risk of being portrayed by Russia as evidence of “the UK being scared/running away”, allowing Russia to claim that the UK had belatedly accepted Moscow’s claim to Crimean territorial waters.*
Interesting theoretical and very well put as well. I’d like to counter that the Russian Bastion is by no means underestimated by me but going purely on the numbers readily available to my limited information gathering I think the HMS Defender would be able to handle it, point plank or not. The Sea Viper system is designed to handle saturation attacks and is also an anti missile system that can launch something like 10 missiles in 8 seconds or 8 in 10 (something crazily fast in any case) combined with a fire control system that can track hundreds of targets simultaneously. A single Bastion battery with one salvo, as you say, does not have the missile numbers to decisely destroy a Type 45. Bastion alone against HMS Defender and she’d be able to withdraw in good order if not necessarily be able to engage the battery directly. A Type 45 does also have anti - sub capability although whether the chopper would be able to survive in that environment is debatable, I’ll give you that.
A combined action featuring a land battery or multiple land batteries, aircraft as well as submarine in all likelihood wins by sheer number of assailants on a single vessel (I did say a majorly significant barrage of anti-ship missiles in my first post) but even so, I think HMS Defender with a superb crew well trained with the system automations that remained calm under pressure would be able to break off the initial engagement and live to fight another day. This is all theoretical anyway as an actual theater engagement by the UK or its allies would not involve a single Type 45, we’re just shooting the shit about what could have happened last week 
I don’t believe that the Defender was on its own either, even if it may have appeared that way on the surface…
Massive fire at Elephant & Castle. Best avoid the area if you can
Outside Crimea, because it was only a few kilometres from Sevastapol, that doesn’t matter much to change the tacitical picture. In my post, I only mentioned Bastion defense, which is Russia’s inner most point defense that they only deploy around, well, fortified bastions. Their layered defense is much greater and involves other weapon batteries. There are around 25 000 Russian troops stationed in Crimea with some of the most advanced electronic warfare capacity in the world.
Reading comments above I have come to the conclusion that you guys may not know the capacity of Russia’s formidable fortified strongholds, such as Moscow, Murmansk, Sevastapol and Kamsjatkha. These areas are bastions in Russian military strategic thinking and they are defended by layers. Bastion Anti Ship batteries (which have far more than 100km range, basically only radars hinders it’s efficiency on longer flights) are point defense.
There is not a theoretical chance that a single Anti-air specialized cruiser, destroyer, battleship, what not, could survive hostile contact outside the gates of Sevastopol. It is like walking into Mordor while dressed like fancy High Elves with shining baubles, not expecting Sauron’s eye to illuminate you.
It would take an entire NATO fleet to contest the Black Sea around Sevastopol, one combatant (sure, Dutch destroyer too) not enough even in theoretical game scenario where absolutely everything possible goes right (which it won’t in a real scenario). And when Russian defenses are on yellow alert or higher ? No chance, not even an extraordinary slim one.
To be honest, I am genuinely surprised to read that some of you seem to be thinking that HMS Defender could have contested what Russia has in that theatre, which happens to be a critical theatre for them . It simply doesn’t work like that. While Sevastopol may be Ukrainian and while I support what the UK did, it is still like a mosquito pestering an elephant. The Black Sea Fleet is full of silent diesel attack submarines. It is their waters (not politically, but in practice and they know the sea-bed area there better than any). There are so many different weapon systems and various kill vehicles that could kill the Defender in an escalation scenario that I view it to be pretty pointless to start listing them up. And logistics ? It was outside Sevastapol, man. Within reach of significant portions of The Southern Military District. It’s base ? Rostov an-Don, a few kilometers from Crimea; basically on the other side of the Kerch strait.
So yes, for the HMS Defender and whatever possible submarine followed it into the jaws of beast (which it pretty much is, penned into the Black Sea outside Savastopol), they would face off against the base defenses of the Southern Military District, a military District that is on relatively high alert since it is responsible for breaking the back of the Ukrainian armed forces in the event of re-escalation.
It would be the same if the Russians for some reason sent unsupported ships to the coast of Britain and things escalated, they would be equally dead in the event of escalation too. Because it really doesn’t matter how good defenses any single surface combatant has, when the theatre is absolutely saturated with threats.
That having been said, a Type-45 Destroyer is an awesome ship, superior to individual ships in Russia’s navy and absolutely State of the Art (better aerial defense system than US Aegies for instance). I wish the UK had more of them, because they are very potent surface ships indeed. But a solo ship without a fleet outside an adversary main base, is still incredibly vulnerable no matter how formidable technologically it is due to the nature of logistics and massive array of threats.
Yeah, lawyers doing that lawyer stuff
What I read seems pretty cut and dry. Apparently he had a no prosecution agreement from a previous prosecutor.
Makes you wonder how it ever came to trial in the first place?
My disdain was for the fact that there even was such a deal. Should not have been countenanced.
so he is released on a process error not because he is found not guilty of the crimes he was accused of, did I understand it correctly?
He’s a dirtball. No question about that. Having said that, I always thought his conviction was spurious. He agreed to be interviewed as part of a civil settlement with the woman he was ultimately convicted of raping. That interview was used to convict him in a criminal court, even though the previous prosecutor had agreed not to charge him, as he was making a financial settlement with the woman.
This is the crux of the matter, but what appears off about this is that the prosecutor does not have the power to unilaterally grant this agreement. The individual prosecutor can make an independent decision to not prosecute in the moment, but that does not take future prosecution off the table or immunize the defendant from anything he does to self-incriminate. Such immunity agreements require a court to grant, and that was never done. However, this court appears to be taking a contemporaneous public statement from Castor that he obtained the original admission in the civil case as part of a non-prosecution agreement, despite the lack of any official agreement being filed.
It’s all dirty as fuck, and it is really difficult to ignore that Castor, the original prosecutor, is another grifter in the Trump orbit. Just like Alex Acosta, using the criminal justice system to protect sexual criminals appears to be a way into Trump’s orbit.
Swan strategy.
Yeah. Two things. It’s strange it took this long to come to this decision. Second, the PA Supreme Court seems to have decided that an agreement is an agreement, even if it’s verbal, which is one of our fundamental legal tenets. Legally correct, probably, but still smelly. There is a statute of limitations on rape and for a good reason, I suppose. However, it does seem when more than 60 women come forward with substantially similar stories there should be some legal path to justice. I do wish and hope that in the future women come forward more quickly with their stories to hold people like him accountable. I know that must be difficult, and he probably also paid some of these to buy their silence.
Anyway, he’s a dirtball and will be hounded in civil court by Gloria Allred moving forward.
It is not legally correct if the person who claimed to grant it does not have the legal authority to do so.
A lawyer friend of mine commented that he could see an avenue for this being grounds for appeal, but that would not quash the conviction as has occurred now. But even that is a big reach given the status of the defendant. To make that argument you’d have to argue that Cosby was inadequately represented and should have been prevented from making any incriminating statements until an official agreement was presented. Supposedly, that sort of argument tends not to hold up well in such high profile cases where the defense lawyers are so expensive.
