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Kaliningrad Zoopark Now and Then Then and Now

Going zoolally at Kaliningrad Zoopark

30 October 2025 – Kaliningrad Zoopark Now and Then Then and Now

On Kaliningrad’s Prospekt Mira, across the road from the city’s foremost Soviet hotel, a great imposing slab of a place called the Moscow, geometrically flanked by two curvilinear buildings, the one on the left containing the exemplar restaurant Patisson Markt, stands the beckoning entrance to one of Kaliningrad’s more exotic, historic attractions, known today as the Kaliningrad Zoopark.

Kaliningrad has had a zoo for years, even before it was Kaliningrad. The zoo came into being, took shape and became a permanent fixture exactly where it is today when Kaliningrad was Königsberg in the 1890s.

It would have to wait for more than a century, however, before Mick Hart would come along and bless it with his presence.

Königsberg Zoo entrance early 20th century

^ The entrance to Königsberg Zoo. How it was in 1913.

^ The entrance to Kaliningrad Zoopark. How it was in 2025.

Kaliningrad Zoopark 2001

My first visit to Kaliningrad Zoo took place in May 2001. My exact recollection of it is what you might call hazy (those vodkas the night before!), but I noted in my diary that it was an entertaining, atmospheric but rather rundown and whiffy place. To animal and zoo lovers, my appraisal of this valued institution embedded in the archived history of the ancient city of Königsberg may be considered rather unworthy, but you cannot be a pig farmer, as such was my lot in my youth, without becoming a connoisseur of the pongs of the animal kingdom, in much the same way that you cannot work in the media, as I did in later life, and not become familiar with the pong of humankind.

No longer linked with much affection to either end of the animal chain, the higher or the lower, my enjoyment of the zoo was initially inspired by its unique place in the history books, particularly that of its status as one of the few surviving large-scale landmarks not to be completely destroyed by the intense aerial bombardment and vicious urban fighting that took out most of Königsberg towards the end of the Second World War.

In 2001, the year when I crossed the zoo’s threshold for the first time, the main attraction was its resident hippopotamus. The connection was, and is, a historic, romantic and deeply iconic one. It follows the poignant story of Hans the Hippo, one of only four of the hundreds of animal inmates to survive the devastation wrought by the siege of Königsberg and the vicious hand-to-hand combat that took place in the grounds of the zoo itself.

Monument to WWII battle in Königsberg Zoo

^ It’s difficult to imagine, and you don’t really want to, that a fierce and deadly battle took place here, in what today is one of the most quiet and tranquil spots in Kaliningrad. This memorial commemorating that struggle reads: “On April 8, 1945, Hero of the Soviet Union, Lapshin, and his rifle platoon launched a surprise attack from two sides of the zoo, taking the bridge, killing 30 Nazis and capturing 185 more. This action decided the outcome of the Battle for the Zoo.”

It is not readily known what happened to his fellow survivors, a deer, a donkey and a badger, but Hans, who was found badly shot up in a ditch, was lovingly nursed back to life by a Russian military paramedic using that cure-all of all cure-alls, vodka, which he administered to the wounded hippo in copious amounts.

A hippo, a deere, a donkey and a badger. Statue at Kaliningrad Zoopark

^ A hippo, a deer, a donkey and a badger
This statue, constructed from metal plates and rods by a team of 15 different artisans belonging to the art group San Donato, commemorates the four that survived the wartime battle at Königsberg Zoo.

Having beaten all the odds, Hans went on to symbolize both life’s fragility and durability, becoming and remaining the zoo’s fabled hero and its number-one attraction until his death in 1950.

Since the passing of Hans, Kaliningrad Zoo has always had a hippo. I tried to unearth the name of the hippo residing at the zoo contemporaneous to my visit in 2001. Unsuccessful in this enterprise, I nevertheless have fond memories, all be they rather distant, of an enormous set of open jaws eagerly catching fish tossed between their gaping hinges from a keeper’s plastic bucket.

History of the Zoo
The origins of Kaliningrad Zoo predate my arrival on the scene by something more than a century. Conceptually they occurred in 1895, the year that saw in Königsberg, on the site where the zoo stands today, a German industrial craft exhibition. At the close of this event, it was suggested by the organiser, entrepreneur Herman Claesson, that the wooden pavilions erected for the occasion not be deconstructed but remain where they were in situ and the site that they currently occupied be used in the creation of a zoological garden under the auspices and administration of a group specifically founded for this purpose, which eventually would be known as the Tiergarten Society.

Initially, and throughout the early years of the 20^th century, the zoo became a major attraction and flourished in every sense. But this golden age would end abruptly, as did so many other things, with the outbreak of World War I.

Despite reopening when the hostilities ended, in the depression-riddled years that followed, the zoo never fully recovered the popularity it had once enjoyed. The Tiergarten Society, which had successfully founded and run the zoo from the moment of its inception, was dissolved in 1938, and on its dissolution the administration of the zoo and the future that awaited it passed into the hands of the City of Königsberg.

They loved a zoo and a circus in the late 19th century

The latter years of the 19^th century witnessed international animal trade on an unprecedented level, supplying zoos and circuses with a source of public entertainment, an educational resource for the scientific community and a lucrative business for entrepreneurs.

When Königsberg Zoo first opened its gates, it offered its awestruck audience the opportunity to come face-to-face with something of the order of 900 different kinds of animals curated from no less than 260 global species. Although figures vary from source to source, estimates of the number of animals held by Kaliningrad Zoo today cite something in the region of 2,300, drawn from as many as 300 species, comprising mammals, reptiles, birds, fish, amphibians and invertebrates.

Whilst Königsberg Zoo, based on its animal population, was, at the time of its incorporation, by no means the largest zoo in the world, with 40 acres of land at its disposal, it was no diminutive enterprise. That figure has remained constant, but the increase in its animal populace is matched and superseded by its daily bipedal visitors.

On 11 October 2025, it was announced on a Kaliningrad News* site that the next 956 visitors would take the zoo’s visitor total to an impressive 700,000. The zoo’s director, Svetlana Sokolova, wrote in her Telegram channel that the 700,000th visitor could expect to be a prize winner.

Kaliningrad Zoopark Now and Then Then and Now

Considering the extent to which Kaliningrad itself has evolved over the 25 years that I have known it, it comes as no surprise that in composition and infrastructure the zoo’s improvements are commensurable.

Such development is not solely reflected in the facilities of the animal kingdom but also in the amenities for those people who come to the zoo to be stared at by the animals.

Today’s Kaliningrad Zoopark, as well as showcasing creatures great and small, also presents the perfect habitat in which to unwind and relax. Beyond the city’s hustle and bustle, the secluded grounds of the zoo stand as a parkland haven, a nuanced natural retreat replete with tree- and shrub-lined walkways, quiet meandering paths, quaint historic bridges, green and floral sheltered spaces, and, depending on what time of the year you visit, pumpkins.

^You’ll turn into a …
Either a lot of Cinderella coaches or Stingy Jack’s secret stash; whatever the allusion, who could resist a photograph with so many lovely pumpkins — certainly not our Olga.

Kaliningrad Zoo is a family venue, catering for young and old alike. There are plenty of places to picnic in and, if making sandwiches is not your thing, eateries of various kinds. Plus, in the unlikely event that your offspring should get bored, there are swings, slides and other playground distractions that ought to be more than enough to keep the little darlings occupied and prevent them from behaving like grizzling grizzly bears.

On the subject of bears, grizzled or docile, a series of dramatic declivities sloping down to the winding channels that follow the flow of the Pregolya River are an invitation to explore the zoo on foot. They provide the route to the bear enclosures, a rugged quarter of rock and gullies, mined with caves and passages in which, should the fancy take them, the bears can take refuge and hide (bears can be self-conscious too, you know). There are also plateaus at different levels where they can lounge, lie, preen and pose quietly to their bear hearts’ content.

A little further on this descent, at a point where the path zigs left at a zag of 90 degrees, a large compound presents itself for inspection by the curious. It is about the size of a football pitch but asymmetrical by design, and on all but one of its four sides has steep, overhanging cliffs. The side where it is cliffless has, in place of a wall of rock, a natural tree-trunk frame containing a viewing window, presumably made of reinforced glass. It explains itself in an instant. Lying but a few feet away on the other side of the glass is a lazy, lounging lioness. She is staring away from the window, seemingly oblivious to the meaty snacks observing her, but the thing to remember with predators, be they animal or human, is that though the eye of instinct may be closed, it rarely ever sleeps.

It is quite a walk, this walk to the base of the valley, but once you’ve hit rock bottom, there is space enough to catch one’s breath on any one of the Zoopark’s little curved bridges. Here, you can rest for a while, and gazing into the trickling water, ask yourself the question, because it is so tranquil, did a desperate, violent struggle for life, a dreadful and bloody war, really take place where I am standing? The answer seems to ricochet across the time that’s spent, tearing a piece of complacency from your tiny moment of living consciousness, making life all at once both undeniably precious and, should you dwell too deeply on it, undeniably senseless.

Now that you are where you are, all you need to do is climb back up to where you were. With 40 acres to traverse, the way to spare your legs is to hop aboard the zoo park’s train. This little colourful engine, with its open-sided flatbed platform, doesn’t rely on tracks for navigation. It trundles along on a nice set of wheels, effortlessly transporting effort-avoiding paying passengers around the park from A to B and to almost every other letter in the Zoopark’s personal alphabet.

The Kaliningrad Zoo, the one that I knew back in 2001, is not the zoo that I know today. On reprising my visit last autumn, in September of 2024, I was, I admit, quite frankly surprised by the extent to which I enjoyed the experience, both the animal exhibits and the off-the-beaten-track sojourn in the idyllic parkland gardens. However, had Hans the hippo’s ghost been present, I am sure he would have been less than amused by the greeting proffered by his modern successor. It really was a case of “Do you think my bum looks big in this Zoo?”

Kaliningrad Zoo. It's bottoms up from the hippo!

^ I genuinely believe that they are trying to tell us something?
I wasn’t sure if I had missed the notice on the way into the zoo which explained that today was a special themed event run by the animals entitled ‘Turn the other cheek’, or whether their unified display of wildly, and sometimes widely, differing sized posteriors was a planned act of concerted cheekiness. My first prize goes to the cuddly bears; my second to the bare-arsed cheek with which we were presented. As the zoo is billed as a family experience, please feel free to ignore this remark.

^Are you looking at me?!

Aquarium at Kaliningrad Zoopark — Tanked up

Big fish at Kaliningrad Zoopark — Tanked up

^Something fishy going on
Some fish can be quite frightening, can’t they? There are so many fishermen in Kaliningrad, I was rather surprised on entering the aquarium that there weren’t some in here dangling their rods.

Capturing the past. The architecture at Kaliningrad Zoopark

^ Refreshments
Kaliningrad Zoopark is not a refreshment-free zone. Unless you have eaten alreday in Patisson Markt, you will find no excuse not to take some sort of refreshment during your stay in the park. I like the way in which the zoo’s serveries, such as the one shown here, echo the distinctive architectural style that once was Königsberg’s signature.

Königsberg style restored at Kaliningrad Zoopark — Gorgeous Gothic finials

A natural habitat at Kaliningrad Zoo — Gorgeous Gothic finials

^Last two photographs
If your Russian is not as rusty as mine, and your eyesight younger, you may be able to make out from the photographed information board what exactly this building, reconstructed as a faithful replica to its lost 19^th century origina,l was. You can’t? Well, take a look at the pictures. The original was constructed in 1903.

^ It’s green and it’s woody
No prizes for guessing why Kaliningrad Zoo is called Kaliningrad Zoopark. It’s green; it’s woody. There are lots of benches on which to sit and lots of trees to sit next to and under and lots of shrubs to admire. Kaliningrad Zoopark sits where it does; a quiet, natural, leisurely retreat in the middle of a modern city teeming with life and traffic. The zoo takes you off the streets and keeps you out of mischief.

The main thing

Kaliningrad Zoopark, Prospekt Mira, 26, Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, 236022

Tel: (8) 401 221-89=14

Opening times
Monday to Sunday 9am to 5pm

Admission
https://kldzoo.ru/visit-and-tickets/prices-and-tickets/

Kaliningrad Zoopark Website
https://kldzoo.ru/

Reference
*There are 956 people left before the record 700 thousand visitors to the Kaliningrad Zoo – Kaliningrad News

Image attribution:
Konigsberg Zoo entrance with carriages c.1913: https://picryl.com/media/tiergarten-konigsberg-eingang-e8aeb3

Life in Kaliningrad Russia under threats and sanctions

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Do I detect an air of Pofik!?

Edited 30 September 2025 | First published: 3 July 2022 ~ Life in Kaliningrad Russia under threats and sanctions

It cannot be pleasant being the least liked prime minister in British history, but it should be remembered that Kier Starmer and his crew are only where they are today as a result of 14 years of Tory ineptitude, non-stop party infighting and off-the-chart bungling and incompetence. If the Cons hadn’t been so obsessed in beating Labour at its own wokist game, and Badenoch is a symptom of this absurdity, the foundations that they laid which paved the way for Labour’s accession would never have lost us our country.

This post, originally published in July of 2022, was a response to two inseparable misconceptions: first, that with work Boris Johnson could overcome himself and somehow run the country; and second, that Western sanctions would critically undermine Russia’s economic stability, which has proven to be far more resilient than the UK and its allies evidently anticipated. Here is that retrospective.

With Lithuania threatening to blockade Kaliningrad by restricting transit of goods from mainland Russia by train, the Latvian interior minister gleefully announcing that this proved that the West was poised to ‘take Kaliningrad away from Russia’¹ and the prime minister of Poland making so much noise that it is difficult to tell whether it is his sabre rattling, his teeth chattering or something more personal knocking together, it looked as though once again the storm clouds had begun to gather over the former region of the Teutonic Order.

I cannot, however, say with any semblance of sincerity that, as the shadow slowly dispersed, the Kaliningrad populace breathed a sigh of relief, for, quite frankly, and not flippantly, but wanting as always to tell it exactly as it is, nobody — meaning nobody with whom in Kaliningrad I am acquainted — seemed to give a flying f*ck!

You can put it down to whatever you like: the Russian penchant for c’est la vie, faith in themselves and their country, a growing immunity to the West’s mouth and trousers or perhaps the absence of a corporate media that makes its fortune by pedalling fear, but, whatever you attribute it to, if the residents of Kaliningrad were supposed to feel concerned by the slew of sanctions and the threat of isolation, then think again, as it didn’t happen.

Perhaps the intended fallout never occurred because we were all too busy laughing at Boris Johnson’s jokes. For example, the one about the conflict in Ukraine, which, says Boris, would never have happened had Vladimir Putin been a woman. Woked the Downing Street clown, It’s the “perfect example of toxic masculinity,” causing me to ask myself what exactly is masculinity when it is detoxified? Is it where you rove around without wearing any pants with your gonads painted rainbow colours, or when you go into hiding like President Turdeau does whenever he hears a trucker’s horn?

To increase his chances of success in obtaining future employment with Robert Brothers’ Circus, Boris jocularly suggested during the G7 Summit that the leaders of the ‘free’ world (free with every packet of neoliberal dictatorship) should, to equal the manliness of Vladimir Putin, take off all their clothes, to which President Putin replied, and I think this is something we all can agree on, “I don’t know how they wanted to undress, waist-high or not, but I think it would be a disgusting sight …”² It certainly conjured up an image far more frightful than any threat that the collective West had yet devised and had a far more psychologically damaging impact than the predictability of waging war with the globalist weapon of choice — sanctions.

Alack-a-day, as unthinkable as it is, if Boris wasn’t joking, then his latest remarks well might be some of the most stupid things he has ever said. However, it doesn’t necessarily follow. Occasionally, but seldomly, and most likely accidentally, Boris proves to himself, and others who care to listen to him, that if he tries, really tries, he is capable of utterances that seem at face value to make some sense, not much and not often, granted, but like miracles and wishes that sometimes can come true, the fantastic has been known to happen, which is more than can be said for anyone in the Labour party ~ or about any and all of the Labour party’s supporters.

Nevertheless, Boris old boy, you must admit that some of the things that you have been blurting out of late do have a rather silly public schoolboy wheeze about them. Now, were you the current President of the United States at least you could plead senility or, failing that, insanity. But be careful and beware! Keep on behaving in this childish manner and you’ll make yourself the perfect candidate for filling Biden’s boots when in a not long time from now Biden’s booted out.

Life in Kaliningrad Russia under threats and sanctions

I suppose that in moments like these, those of us who are old enough to remember, should simply take a step backwards and give thanks that we lived in the England of old, in the days of pre-gender bending. And though for most Winston Churchill has passed from living memory into history, note that the great man himself was endowed with more than his fair share of so-called ‘toxic masculinity’, even more, perhaps, than that which queerly circulates among whatever it is that charges around playing women’s rugby. And heaven be praised that Winston Churchill was such a toxically manly man, for had it not been so, we’d all be speaking German now. Mein Gott!

We don’t. And the dark clouds over Kaliningrad, like all the threats and nonsense leaching out from the G7 Summit, were nothing but storms in a teacup. The only positive outcome for those of us in the West who are rapidly losing faith in ever being blessed again with a real man for prime minister is that Boris kept his trousers on.

And yet, so as not to be accused of having been economical with the truth, I can confirm that a storm did break. After a glorious week of glorious weather, Kaliningrad and its region were suddenly plunged headlong into the most frightful and persistent series of electric storms imaginable.

For three days and as many nights, the firmament’s guts growled flatulently. Sheets of livid light flashed across the sky and, lying there in bed unable to sleep because of it, it was easy to imagine that the entire world was forked ~ forked, that is, with lightning!

Olga was in a right old tizz. To her it was a celestial sign, unequivocal confirmation that her tarot-card readers, crystal-ball gazers, soothsayers and the like, whose predictions she believes implicitly and to whom she refers collectively and in glowing terms as esoterics, whom I call snake-oil salesmen, had got it bang to rights: change was in the air; portentous and tumultuous change; a new bright dawn was coming.

Life in Kaliningrad Russia under threats and sanctions

As strange as it may seem, our normally vocal cat Gin-Ginsky had nothing to say on the matter, or if he did, he was keeping it to himself. He is a rather diplomatic cat. He doesn’t make jokes like Boris Johnson, which means he remains in favour and, unlike Boris Johnson, makes him rather easy to live with.

Considering him to be a little less slim than once he probably was, Ginger, not Boris Johnson, we recently changed his food to a brand called ‘Food for Fat Cats’, as recommended by those in the West who keep their clothes on at G7 Summits.

The word ‘light’ on the packet implies this food has dietary benefit. Ginger seems to love it. He scoffs it twice as fast as he did when eating his former brand and in ever-increasing quantities. Every now and again he will look up from his bowl and fix you with his ginger eyes as if to say, “Fat cat, indeed, I’ll show you!” Perhaps, the meaning of ‘Food for Fat Cats’ is ‘Food to make cats fatter’? I must remember to warn him that if he ever attends a G7 Summit not to take his shirt off!

Those of you who in the West, especially those among you who changed your Arsebook avatars to the colours of the Ukrainian flag and are now ashamed you did but never will admit it, are dying to hear, I know, how badly the sanctions are biting in Kaliningrad. That’s why I mentioned the cat: he’s biting into his grub. But I would be Boris Johnson should I lie and say that the price of cat food has not increased incrementally since the waving of the magic wand of sanctions. What other things have gone up recently (ooerr Mrs)? Have all of us in Kaliningrad been forced to change our diet? Are we all eating cheaper brands of cat food?

I know that an interest in this topic exists because lately a lot of people have been tuning into my post Panic Buying Shelves Empty. I can only presume that this is down to Brits kerb-crawling the internet in search of hopeful signs that western sanctions don’t lack teeth.

Instances exist, I will admit, when we, like our cat, are biting these days into different brand-named foods than those in which we used to sink our gnashers before sanctions were pulled from the hat. The reason being, I suppose, because the brands that we used to buy belong to manufacturers who have been forced into playing Biden’s game, Exodus & Lose Your Money.

Price increases in some food categories have been duly noted. Pheew, what a relief, I hear you say. If this was not the case, then the sanctions’ ideology would be more embarrassing than it already is for leaders of western countries who are ruining their own economies by having introduced them.

Were we talking beer? If we weren’t then, we are now.

With the advent of the sanctions, some beer brands are noticeably absent, although the earlier gaps in shelves have since been filled with different brands from different brewers from different parts of the world. Those brands untouched by sanctimonies, which is to say those that still remain, do reflect a hike in price, but as prices fluctuate wildly here during the best of times, it is simply a matter of shopping around as one always does, sanctions or no sanctions, for products that do not mug your pocket.

So, there in essence you have it. Not from the bought and paid for UK corporate media, agenda-led by globalist moguls, but from an honest-to-goodness sanctioned Englishman reporting from Russia’s Kaliningrad, who is willing to swear on a stack of ale casks, with one hand on his heart and the other on his beer glass, that life in Russia’s exclave under threat and sanctions has changed so little as to be negligibly different to life as it was in the days when sanctions were but an evil twinkle in the eyes of those whose machinations have ultimately let them down.

If you wanted to hear that the sanctions are working, I’m sorry I disappointed you.

References
1. Russia threatened NATO with a “meat grinder” when trying to take Kaliningrad Russian news EN (lenta-ru.translate.goog)
2. https://www.rt.com/russia/558107-putin-boris-johnson-response/

Image attributions
Thunderbolt: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Mr-Thunderbolt-cloud-vector-image/31288.html
Fat man: http://clipart-library.com/clipart/fat-man-clipart_4.htm

Palestine What a State! By the UK in a State!

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*The UK in a state recognises a state as a state

Not to understate it too much, but, I say, Sir Kier, is that armada of boats steaming towards the UK from Palestine?

25 September 2025 – Palestine What a State! By the UK in a State!

If you are a liberal lefty, a member of a certain ethnic group embedded in the UK or part of the applaud-everything topsy-turvy left-wing press, you are most likely celebrating Starmer’s decision to recognise Palestine as a state. There are many others, however, which include, not surprisingly, Israel’s Netanyahu, who regard this latest suspect move by Starmer as hoisting up the white flag to terrorists and their aims. ‘Netanyahu slams Starmer as ‘rewarding terrorism’ — The Sun.

Now, see here!
Brits told to be vigilant as boats sail in on tide of terror
Reform Mass Deportation Bill is the Way to Save UK
Elon Musk Violence Speech Hits a Raw Liberal Nerve

Palestine What a State!

The left-wing governments of France, Australia and Canada would argue differently. They are not recognising Palestine as a virtue-signalling gesture to consolidate the leftist vote or to appease ethnic groups of whom they are frightened shitless (it’s much easier to pick on and intimidate ‘unprotected groups’, ie white British); neither are they doing such to win votes in the future from this rapidly expanding ethnic tribe. Their message to the world is, ‘We are doing this for humanity.’ It’s very much the same message as one we are more familiar with: we are standing with Ukraine in the name of sovereign democracy.

Their now follows a small, but significant cough, ‘Ah, hem!’ Not to be confused with Amen, because that’s something in the West that very soon we will not, along with a whole lot of other things, be permitted to say, although now we have started to say what we should have said but didn’t a long, long time ago, of course, we’ll go on saying it.

Here’s a man who knows his onions!

“Britain only recognised Palestine because it is ‘flooded with foreigners’” — Marc Rubio, The Telegraph

My concern is that shortly after Starmer’s announcement, I heard what I thought was an ill wind, or was it the sound of dinghies inflating somewhere in the desert?

Excuse me, Mr Starmer, sir, does your recognition of Palestine mean that we can expect to see in the not-too-distant future a flotilla of refugee boats crammed with Palestinians bearing down on Dover?

Palestine What a State!

Everybody knows what the UK corporate media wants them to know about this momentous conferment, but has anyone asked the terrorists living and thriving in the UK what they make of it all? Are they eternally grateful for the fair play and moral decency exhibited by Keir Starmer and his western cohorts? “What jolly good fellows they are! Time to play the white man!” Or are they much too busy patting each other on their backs for what they regard as a job well done, celebrating the rewards of terrorism, and interpreting Palestine’s new-found statehood as a reassuring sign of weakness, of Starmer and the Labour Government’s willingness to bottle it, back down, capitulate and ultimately surrender?

This toilet roll symbolises Britain going down the pan as we surrender all to mass immigration.

And if perchance this is their reaction, and there’s a good chance that it is, to what extent, I ask myself, has this latest leftist folly empowered and emboldened those who choose the path of terrorism to threaten our existence?

Hang on in there, Britons! It looks like it’s going to get a whole lot worse before it, if ever, gets better.

Thought for the day … and every day from now on
Headline: ‘Sir Sadiq Khan has lashed out at Donald Trump, calling him “racist, sexist, misogynistic and Islamophobic”.’ — GB News

Comment: Apart from saying how original was that (I bet you’ve never heard those words before [lefty in a tantrum]), in this day and age, as things stand and are about to fall in the UK, being called any or all of these things must be treated as a badge of honour, provided they are directed at you by someone who thinks they are liberal, and particularly if that someone is the Mayor of Londistan, Sadiq Khan.

Something to remember
The liberal media is at pains to argue in its defence of Khan and immigration that crime rates in London, although they have increased, are significantly lower than those in most major cities in the U.S. This is a meretricious comparison, because crime rates in US cities have always been significantly higher than in their UK counterparts. If you don’t believe me, ask Al Capone.

The comparison that needs to be made is that of crime rates not only in London but also across the UK in the decade preceding the year 1997, which is the year when that nice Mr Blair opened the floodgates to mass immigration, and the incidence of crime since, and, where London is concerned, the crime rates in the capital before Mr Khan took office and the levels of criminality under his stewardship as mayor of London. It would also be of interest to gain access to official records showing serious crimes committed in London and the UK as a whole, broken down by ethnicity. A similar breakdown of criminal acts committed at public events like rallies, demonstrations and riots based on the same criteria, with an additional reference to political groups, would also be a useful indicator of the direction Britain is going in terms of nationwide law and disorder, although due to political bias and partisan reporting, a statistical record of this type would have questionable validity.

Now here’s a good idea!

US President tells PM to use military to stop the boats – Daily Mail

And now something from Migration Watch Newsletter:

Small Boat Migrants Now Outnumber British Military

The Great God AI tells us:
Migration Watch UK is an independent, non-profit think tank and campaign group founded in 2001 that advocates for lower, more controlled immigration levels in the UK, arguing that current levels are unsustainable and put excessive demand on resources. The organisation conducts research, provides analysis, makes policy recommendations, and engages with the public and policymakers to reduce net migration and ensure it is properly managed.

Here is their website > Migration Watch UK
You can read candid and authoritative news here about Britain’s mass immigration fiasco and sign up for Migration Watch newsletters to keep track of the lunacy as it unfolds and escalates. It may help you to plan your escape!

*Epilogue: The humanitarian motives for recognising Palestine as a state are, of course, quite laudable. However, even though the significance is purely symbolic, it’s how your more-than-average terrorist chooses to interpret the reasons behind the UK government’s actions, and the influence it brings to bear on the terrorist mindset going forward, particularly in its ramifications for future terrorist attacks perpetrated on British soil, that remains the worrying factor.

Image attributions

White feather: https://stockcake.com/i/elegant-white-feather_293405_59625
White Boxer Shorts: http://www.clker.com/cliparts/G/z/X/k/z/1/white-boxer-shorts-hi.png
Flag: http://www.clker.com/clipart-drapeau.html
Toilet roll: https://vectorportal.com/download-vector/roll-of-toilet-paper.ai/23375

Elon Musk Violence Speech Hits a Raw Liberal Nerve

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We thought it. Elon Musk said it. He said it at the Unite the Kingdom Rally

21 September 2025 – Elon Musk Violence Speech Hits a Raw Liberal Nerve

The British establishment and its leftist media were clearly stunned by the huge number of British patriots who gathered in London last week to voice disquiet, dismay and disgust at the political elite’s indifference to, or perceived complicity in, the erasure of the UK’s culture by the immigrant tsunami. They were also mortified when Tommy Robinson, recently released from what some have described as Britain’s Gulag, bounced back into the limelight to be joined on stage by Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, who, guested in by satellite link, warned the British nation in no uncertain terms that their once revered and illustrious country is on the verge of collapse and that every Briton should be prepared for the violence that is coming.

Unite the Kingdom Rally

Unite the Kingdom was without question the largest and the most successful anti-immigrant rally ever to hit Britain’s streets. Both the liberal political elite and their media cronies were caught with their pants down, most likely in the same room.

Usually, over-vocal and brimming with far-right cliches, on this auspicious occasion, the shell-shocked liberal media seemed to be having difficulty in deciding what ammunition to use.

The rally’s composition alone, full of happy, cheerful British folk, including mums and families, many bedecked from head to toe with colourful Union Jacks, and the carnival atmosphere of it all, tossed the media’s only grenade, the one that goes off with a far-right phut, squarely back into the lap of the propaganda arsenal from whence it had been half-heartedly thrown.

A re-arming exercise would take place later, but during the rally’s opening salvos, the biased UK media and London’s leftist hordes were hopping around on a lame back foot.

Naturally, once the crowds had dispersed, it was time for the usual roll call of how many law-enforcement officers had been injured in the line of duty. Correct me if I am mistaken, I think it was 26. (How can anyone do that job, bound and hamstrung as they are by our insufferable climate of woke?!)

Britain’s poor, old, beleaguered bobby
Sympathy where it’s due, please. Unlike our police force of old, today’s police are as much victims of a dysfunctional ideology as the rest of us. They have a very difficult job to do under the cosh and jackboot of woke. The coppers that I have talked to cannot wait for the day when the force becomes a force again instead of being a cross between a public relations bureau and a branch of the social services. The UK police force like the UK education system urgently needs to be rescued from the weed-ridden liberal landscape that Britain has become, pruned downwards from its political top and replanted in unpolluted soil. The police that I have talked to are as desperate for change as you and I.

In the days following the most successful anti-immigration rally in British history, much would be made of the injuries sustained by the boys who were once in blue but who, like most of us in the UK today, would feel considerably safer on Britain’s streets if permanently clad in full body armour.

The injuries that the police sustained at the Unite the Kingdom rally are, of course, deeply regrettable, but they pall into insignificance compared to the year-on-year assaults which occur as regular as clockwork at that vicious, vile, stab-happy fest, the murderous Notting Hill Carnival — the public disorder event of the year, which carries on regardless for reasons that must be obvious to you.

The Villains and the Victorious

The biggest villain at the Unite the Kingdom rally was not the odds on favourites, Tommy Robinson, nor Katie Hopkins, who with customary zeal and vigour delivered to the establishment the kind of resounding kick in the nuts which the establishment having duly received would like to pass on to Elon Musk. Yes, you’ve got it, children, the naughtiest man at the rally was Uncle Elon.

It is, however, one thing, to put the ideological boot into a working-class lad like Tommy Robinson and to threaten and intimidate a woman (although, I, for one, would not want to try to intimidate Katie Hopkins!), but quite another altogether to attempt to muzzle and bring to the liberal heel one of the world’s most prominent figures.

Apart from daring to show his face at a media-proscribed ‘far right’ rally, speak candidly with its attendees and on their terms, understand the fears that bind them and align himself with their noble cause, Elon had the brazen temerity to vocalise in public what every Briton thinks but many are afraid to say — such is the yoke of liberal woke — that racial-religious-leftist violence is coming to Britain’s streets big time and that something like a civil war is imminent.

The UK media were quick to twist the words of Mr Musk, disparaging him for inciting violence, when all he said, in fact, was that given the state of Britain today violence seems inevitable, and when that violence comes all one can do to survive is respond to it in kind. Elon said nothing more than any self-defence instructor tells his practitioners every day: when there’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, when your backs against the wall, fight or die are your only options.

Elon Musk Violence Speech Hits a Raw Liberal Nerve

Elon Musk’s prediction of violence coming to Britain because of deep and divisive cultural changes inflicted by mass immigration, in which the UK’s political elite are regarded by some, by many, to be both instigative and supportive, are by no means uncorroborated. In 2023, David Betz, Professor of War in the Modern World at King’s College London’s Department of War Studies, published an essay in two parts called Civil War Comes to the West¹. In this disturbing treatise, he identifies mass immigration and the multifaceted cultural malaise derived from its imposition as principal flashpoint factors in the causation of an internal conflict that will be violent, intense, widespread, sustained and tragic.

This is the ‘violence’ that’s on its way as defined by Elon Musk. Nothing more; nothing less. He may have had the balls to say it, but I bet you thought it first.

“Western governments under increasing structural civilisational distress and having squandered their legitimacy are losing the ability to peacefully manage multicultural societies that are terminally fractured by ethnic identity politics. The initial result is an accelerating descent of multiple major cities into marginally ‘feral’ status …” – David Betz, Professor of War in the Modern World, King’s College London

“Things are manifestly worsening right now. They are, however, going to get very much worse—I would estimate over not more than five years. That is because of the combination of two other vital factors. The first is the urban versus rural dimension of the coming conflicts which, in turn, is a result of migrant settlement dynamics. Simply put, the major cities are radically more diverse and have a growing mutually hostile political relationship with the country in which they are embedded.” – David Betz, Professor of War in the Modern World, King’s College London

A couple discuss on the phone Elon Musk Violence Speech

On 16 September 2025, the headlines screaming from your TV screens, emblazoned across the front of newspapers and cluttering up the internet, when not just parroting the words ‘far right’, were obsessing, touchy-feely-like, about the disconcerting way in which the Unite the Kingdom rally had ricocheted detrimentally like a bullet in a cowboy film across the length and breadth of Britain’s normally happy, fully assimilated, interethnic communities.

A new dramatic word, along the sensational lines of ‘slammed’ and ‘blasted’, entered the liberal media’s lexicon, as PM Starmer proclaimed that the Unite the Kingdom rally had sent a shiver through communities.

Yes, that’s right folks, ‘shiver’.

“Plastic patriots”, said our plastic prime minister, by openly voicing their desire to preserve their country’s cultural integrity [he didn’t say the latter bit] had sent shivers through Britain’s colonised land [he didn’t use the word ‘colonised’]. He also did not state specifically whether this shiver was felt elsewhere or was exclusive to liberal-left circles, including the seat of government.

Sounding more like Captain Mainwaring than he has ever done before, and believe me that’s quite difficult, The Standard cites the plastic PM as saying, through his official spokesman of course (shouldn’t that be his ‘official spokesperson’!) that the words of Mr Musk “threatened ‘violence and intimidation on [the streets of Britain].” Adding, “I don’t think the British public will have any truck with that kind of language.²”

But, Mr Prime Minister, Mr Spokesman and your mealy-mouthed media mouthpiece, that is exactly one of the major issues that the rally was addressing: the violence and intimidation that is already on our streets. It is a language we could well do without, but, alas, it is all around us. It needs to be addressed, now, or has that slipped your notice?

Perhaps what Musk should have said was not that ‘violence is coming’ but that the violence which is already here is going to get a damn sight worse unless something effective is done about it and done about it quickly. Or, he simply could have said, ‘You ‘aint seen nothing yet!’

That same Standard article quotes Mr Miliband, who is Labour’s Energy Secretary (now, he’s doing a grand job, isn’t he!), as winging away on LBC, “Who the hell is this guy?” Ed, if you weren’t referring to Starmer, Elon’s the man whose got more money and more respect than you’ll ever have. Ed went on to say, according to the article, that “Just because you’re a billionaire, it doesn’t give you a right to … tell us how to run our country.”

Well, I hate to be a far-right fly in the liberal left’s hypocritical ointment, but billionaire or no billionaire, he has as much right as anyone else to voice his opinion openly.

We may not have much of one left, but at least we like to go on pretending that we live in a democracy, and that the cornerstone of this pretence is the right to say what we want to say, the strategic erosion of which, in case it escapes your two-tier notice, is another major reason why the Unite the Kingdom rally took place and why it is universally regarded as such a towering success.

It can’t happen here!!!

Now look here, liberal lefties, what is difficult to understand? The comments made by Mr Musk were neither ‘dangerous’ nor ‘inflammatory’; he was not inciting violence; all he did was merely reiterate what Professor David Betz has said, which the Mirror also echoed, that Britain’s ‘feral cities’ are bringing us closer to civil war³.

Readers’ comments at the close of the Mirror’s article hit the proverbial immigrant nail fairly and squarely on its boat-landed head (just a metaphor, you understand; no intention of inciting violence):

Marod June 3, 2025: “It would not be Civil War as it does not fit the description: ‘A civil war is a war in which parties within the same culture, society, or nationality fight against each other for the control of political power’.

Townsrwt June 4, 2025: “Not a civil war. Drugs gangs taking over citys … towns even villages [which will] be like Haiti or parts of South America.”

Let it be known, therefore, that the ‘violence coming to Britain’ will not be a ‘civil war’ but a war to preserve or destroy our culture. Let it be known as a cultural war (er, hypothetically speaking)

Getting back to Starmer’s shiver, whatever fallacious ripple is said to have run through Britain’s communities, it is nothing compared to the seismic tremor caused in recent years by bad political actors and their inadvertent or planned bad management of the immigrant-multicult fiasco. I am sure that legacy Britons shiver with far more credibility at the heinous changes in our society that are turning our towns and cities into worse than third-world no-go areas. I don’t recall a time in my youth of exploding vests and rucksacks, summary knifing and machete attacks, young girls stabbed in community halls, lorries driven into crowds, assaults on police at airports and nationwide grooming paedo gangs conducting rape on an industrial scale whilst those in authority turn their heads and look the other way. This is not the Britain that used to be. It’s not the Britain we want today. It cannot be the future Britain or Britain will have no future.

Elon Musk Violence Speech Hits a Raw Liberal Nerve

I do hope that those of you who have condescended to read this post will not, as the PM’s spokesman said, ‘have any truck with my language’. Whether they come in trucks or by boat, let’s hope and pray they are dealt with swiftly. At present, we cannot stop them from coming, we cannot get them out, but what we can do, and what we do do, is to put them up in expensive hotels and give them free housing and benefits. The far right, who are not far right but every-day, ordinary British folk, are tired of political gimmicks and games that have no hope of succeeding. They no longer buy the Blairist line ‘diversity is good for you’. They know what it is; they’ve got it; most of them wish they hadn’t and would like to turn the clocks back. Enough migrants are more than enough. We don’t want more, full stop.

This is not the time to vote for the parties your fathers and grandfathers voted for; then was then, now is now. Stop the migrant invasion. Save Britain from the hideous future that Elon Musk et al envisage.
Vote Reform and save your country.

References
1. https://www.militarystrategymagazine.com/article/civil-war-comes-to-the-west/ https://www.militarystrategymagazine.com/article/civil-war-comes-to-the-west-part-ii-strategic-realities/
2. https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/keir-starmer-prime-minister-tommy-robinson-nigel-farage-elon-musk-b1247863.html
3. ‘Military expert gives chilling British ‘civil war’ warning over ‘feral cities’ – Mirror,3 June 2025

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Woman on phone: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Woman-on-the-phone/41314.html
Boats coming in: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/People-ride-banana-boat/88891.html

In answer to Elon Musk violence speech, woman tells her hubby, 'You knew it would happen sooner or later'

Reform Mass Deportation Bill is the Way to Save UK

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As Starmer does the hokey cokey with one migrant in and one migrant out, Nigel Farage has a better solution: Mass Deportation

14 September 2025 – Reform Mass Deportation Bill is the Way to Save UK

Vote Reform UK

Fabulous news. When the UK’s Reform Party, with Nigel Farage at its helm, wins the keys to Number 10 in the next general election, and be sure to vote for them because the old Labour-Cons duopoly is well past its sell-by date and has nothing left to offer, then not only will you get a patriotic government that puts British people and their interests first, but, as a cornerstone of this assurance, you will also receive the bonus prize of the Mass Deportation Bill.

A Migrant-free hotel in the UK after Reform UK come to power

According to Reform, more than 180,000 illegal migrants have crossed the English Channel since 2018, bringing the number of people with no lawful right to remain in the UK to approximately 1,000,000, and the boats just keep on coming! Pause a while and think about that.

Responsible British people are not happy:
110,000 join anti-migrant London protest | Reuters

Farage gets it right:
Nigel Farage vows to deport 600,000 illegal migrants

Starmer’s vow to ‘smash the migrant smuggling gangs’ sounded good when he said it (a bit like beating on an empty oil drum with a rolled-up manifesto), but, when all is said and done, it’s all been said, but nothing’s been done. The only thing that Starmer has smashed is the final remnant of trust in him and the clunky, past-it, inadequate party that he represents.

Keir Starmer is on the side of international treaties and foreign courts. We are on the side of the British people — Nigel Farage

Reform Mass Deportation Bill

Clues as to why the migrant invasion will never be stopped at Britain’s shores, at least not by Labour or their bedfellows, the Cons, are detectable in the importance that Farage attaches to leaving the ECHR (European Court of Human Rights) and in repealing and replacing the manipulative Human Rights Act. These two institutions more than any other are used by our elected officials, by liberal-lefty lobby groups and self-serving immigration solicitors to keep the third world flowing unobstructed into our country whilst at the same time frustrating attempts to fast-track them out again.

What does it all add up to? Although confusing for the left, for those of us who are not self-delusional, the outcome is elementary:

EU + Human Rights = Never-Ending Flow of Migrants = Loss of cultural Identity = Loss of Cultural Cohesion = More Woke Enforcement = More Rochdale-style Cover-ups = More Vicious and Unsafe Streets = More acts of Terrorism.

We’ll stop short of the net conclusion, which is indigenous population cleansing, although this is not an illogical step after relegation as second-class citizens.

Reform Mass Deportation Bill

With the implementation of the Mass Deportation Bill, swanning across Europe to get into soft-touch Britain will immediately lose its appeal, and once the boats have been stopped, we can then begin the second phase of getting rid of those illegals who never should have been allowed to pollute the streets of our country. “Who are you? And what are you doing here? Papers, if you please!”

Conspiracy theories

Those of you who pride yourselves on your ability to join the dots whenever anyone mentions ‘progressive liberalism’ might be inclined to believe that a link exists between the existential need for mass deportation and the recent call by President Trump to prosecute George Soros, the doyen of the left, the man that their media loves to refer to as that ‘philanthropic billionaire’. You can read about it here: https://www.rt.com/news/623582-trump-calls-soros-criminal-prosecution/
[Note: The UK establishment has blocked RT News, so in order to read this article, you will need to resort to that VPN, which you recently and very wisely installed 😉]

Soros’ Open Society Foundations (OSF) has also provided funding to civil rights and activist groups across the US, including organizations involved in Black Lives Matter and other protest movements, some of which have been linked to violence – RT News

George Soros is not directly involved in mass migration to the West, but rather funds humanitarian organizations and pro-democracy groups through his Open Society Foundations (OSF). Claims that Soros orchestrated migration flows are part of conspiracy theories – Google’s AI Overview

There are those, naturally all to a man far right and all to a man conspiracy theorists (no gender bias here), who regard Soros and Soros junior as instrumental kingpin proponents, fanatical supporters and principal bankrollers of the West’s ongoing migrant crisis. The less charitable among these theorists, or, depending upon your personal bias, you might define them as enlightened factions, tend to concur with Trump, leading some to hypothesise that ‘billionaire philanthropy’ is an anagram for anarchy, with broader subversive undertones involving weapons of mass migration.

Soros’s name has also recently resurfaced in connection with the 2016 “Russiagate” smear campaign. Earlier this month, the US Senate Judiciary Committee released a report alleging that OSF had links to the Clinton campaign’s efforts to promote the debunked claims of collusion between Trump and Russia – RT News

Mr Soros has a son – you may call him Sonny Soros — who, according to ‘far-right conspiracy theorists’, is a chip off the old, chip-on-the-shoulder block. Presumably, this heir apparent is waiting in the wings to take up the yoke of absolute power if and when old pappy ever decides the time is right to leave this wicked world. The devil may not look after his own, but who is to say that the Deep State doesn’t? You would have to be a conspiracy theorist to dip your toe into that one.

“I always thought Soros & Son was a wholesale immigrant shipping company.” – a seven-year-old from Pakistan with multiple aunts and uncles

If these terrible ‘right-wing conspiracy theories’ have even a grain of truth in them, then the EU’s special offer of ‘take a third-world migrant and get a million free’ is planned to continue unabated until it reaches the point at which our tiny overcrowded island capsizes into the sea which, as we can see from the White Cliffs of Dover, can be violently black and stormy.

I wonder, hypothetically speaking, what the last words would be of someone who had orchestrated such a philanthropic outcome. Something along the lines, perhaps, of “I’ve f*cked it up good and proper; there’s no world left worth living in; now is the time to say goodbye.”

Bye-bye, Mr Soros, 'philanthropic billionaire'.

Let’s not let that happen. Liberalism is on its way out; Migration needs to follow. Reverse the inward trend. Halt the invasion in its tracks. Return the boats to France complete with unwanted contents. Save yourselves whilst you can from the deplorable fate of second-class citizenship. Save the UK for your children’s sake.

Vote Reform. Vote for Britain. Vote for Mass Deportation.

Reform Mass Deportation Bill is the Way to Save UK. Save our children's future.

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Hotel: https://clipart-library.com/clipart/a-hotel-cliparts_9.htm
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Now see here 👉 Brits told to be vigilant as boats sail in on tide of terror

Palestine What a State! By the UK in a State!
*The UK in a state recognises a state as a state Not to understate it too much, but, I say, Sir Kier, is that armada of boats steaming towards the UK from Palestine? 25 September 2025 – Palestine What a State! By the UK in a State! If you are a liberal lefty, a member… Read more: Palestine What a State! By the UK in a State!
Elon Musk Violence Speech Hits a Raw Liberal Nerve
We thought it. Elon Musk said it. He said it at the Unite the Kingdom Rally 21 September 2025 – Elon Musk Violence Speech Hits a Raw Liberal Nerve The British establishment and its leftist media were clearly stunned by the huge number of British patriots who gathered in London last week to voice disquiet,… Read more: Elon Musk Violence Speech Hits a Raw Liberal Nerve
Reform Mass Deportation Bill is the Way to Save UK
As Starmer does the hokey cokey with one migrant in and one migrant out, Nigel Farage has a better solution: Mass Deportation 14 September 2025 – Reform Mass Deportation Bill is the Way to Save UK Vote Reform UK Fabulous news. When the UK’s Reform Party, with Nigel Farage at its helm, wins the keys… Read more: Reform Mass Deportation Bill is the Way to Save UK
Well Done Reform A Great Week in British Politics
There’s hope for the old country yet! Published 8 May 2025 [VE Day] – Well Done Reform A Great Week in British Politics Congratulations to Nigel Farage and Reform for their spectacular success in the local elections. Reform, led by charismatic leader Nigel Farage, has stunned the British establishment yet again. In last week’s local… Read more: Well Done Reform A Great Week in British Politics
UK Utility Bills Fiasco: What a Gas Freezing is
A swarthy face and a dinghy, the only way left to keep warm in Britain 26 April 2025 – UK Utility Bills Fiasco: What a Gas Freezing is The cost of heating one’s home in the UK is a joke — a sick one. It’s alright if you’re an entitled millennial, as most likely you… Read more: UK Utility Bills Fiasco: What a Gas Freezing is

Three Bears Crystal beer in Kaliningrad, Russia

**Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)**

Article 9: Three Bears Crystal beer

Updated 28 July 2025 | First Published 27 November 2020 – Three Bears Crystal beer in Kaliningrad, Russia

Whenever I see a beer bottle or can in a Russian supermarket with three bears (tree meeshkee) on the label, I am smitten by a wave of nostalgia, as this brand of bottled beer was quite possibly the first I drank on my inaugural trip to Kaliningrad.

Memory is a fallible thing, for mine suggests that my first Three Bears was consumed in the winter of 2000, whereas internet research indicates that Three Bears made their Russian debut later in 2002.

Be this as it may, there is no denying the fact that the brand has successfully established itself as quintessentially Russian, and with bears in name and bears in logo, it could hardly have failed to do otherwise. For example, if the beer had been Russian Hat, they could have achieved a similar effect by using an ushanka label — come now, of course you know what I mean; an ushanka is one of those furry hats with a flap down either side.

Typically Russian in appearance, the Three Bears brand was originally part of the Heineken portfolio but is now produced by United Breweries. [source: AI Google]

Three Bears Crystal beer in Kaliningrad Russia

The Three Bears brand has four exciting variants: Three Bears Classic; Three Bears Light; Three Bears Crystal; and Three Bears Strong. At 8.3% ABV, the Three Bears Strong obviously speaks for itself: it sort of makes a deep ‘Grrrr’ sound; the Classic at 4.9% is not so ‘Grrrr’, but still is ‘Grrr’; the Three Bears Crystal, which is 4.4%, is by no means a purring pussycat; but, as you would expect, Three Bears Light is only 4.7% — er, wait a moment, am I missing something? Perhaps when they use the word ‘Light’, the allusion is to colour?

Three Bears Crystal beer in Kaliningrad, Russia

I chose to buy Three Bears Crystal because whenever I have a session, I will normally drink a couple of 1.5-litre bottles of beer in what is referred to as one sitting. How much of a lush you judge me to be by supping this amount will be predicated entirely on your own consumption criteria, namely, “Woah, that’s far too much!” or “I’d get that down before breakfast!” The difference in definition lies somewhere between one’s understanding of the difference between broadcast and boast, prohibition and politician, and promise and perversion — all three tinged by the maxims ‘men will always be men’ or ‘men will always be boys’. Such connotations could cause a stir of controversy by the time they have reached the end of the UK rainbow but could equally garner butch-like brownie points with feminists on the way.

Sorry, all this has about as much to do with Three Bears Crystal beer as Biden’s implanted view of the world had with facts and reality. My advice to you is, unless you are absolutely sure that Goldilocks is female, don’t go down to the woods today, or you could be in for a big surprise.

I stayed in with Crystal, and was I in for a Big Surprise!

In the bottle and in the glass, Three Bears Crystal has an attractive amber tone, making it an empathic ale for amber-lands consumption. Its hoppy, bitter fragrance tends to waft away a few minutes after decantation, which was enough in coronavirus times to alarm you with the question, “Am I losing my sense of smell?” but, needing no better excuse to quickly take the taste test, as soon as it hit your tongue, you breathed a sigh of relief: “Aha,” you went. “Worth every rouble!” Of course, during coronavirus, I always wore my face mask whenever I drank Three Bears or anything else.

Three Bears Crystal has, what I like to refer to, as a ‘straw taste’ — and I do not use this term derogatively. I know that it does not sound nearly as chic as shampers or as manly as scotch on the rocks and is probably a rustic hangback from my days as a teenage farmer, but whatever its derivative status, ‘straw’ is a term that captures for me a specific beer experience in which the initial bitter sharpness is offset by a blunting edge, a saturating mellow taste.

This is not to say that Three Bears Crystal does not pack a zing, although I have my suspicions that this is down to its carbonation, which, I also believe, is instrumental in producing the lingering bitter tang, which remains well after the product has been consumed. But for all that zinging and tanging, the essence of this beer is decidedly Matt Monro — an easy-on-the-palate version of easy listening on the ears.

Three Bears Crystal beer is a session beer

In words that every beer-quaffing Englishman will readily understand, Three Bears Crystal is, in my judgement, as sound as a pound (and as right as a rouble). It is what is known in drinking circles as a ‘session’ beer.

It goes down famously well with a traditional packet of crisps and a handful of salted peanuts, neither of which you can currently enjoy in any English pub due to the recent virus curfew laws*. These laws seem to suggest that coronavirus hides in pubs and waits to pounce on people who prefer to snack with their pint rather than eat a “substantial meal,” such as a big plate of greasy burgers, lashings of frozen peas, and a disgusting pile of fatty fries made from reconstituted mashed potatoes.
[*At the time when this post was first published (2020), UK coronavirus laws outlawed drinking in pubs without the coronavirus passport of having purchased a ‘substantial meal’.]

Conclusion: The message is Crystal clear. You don’t need a Vaccine Passport, then fly to the UK to suffer a plate of infamous pub grub just to enjoy a decent beer. Three Bears Crystal beer is sold in most of Kaliningrad’s supermarkets in handy 1.5-litre bottles at a price you cannot growl at. Why not buy two bottles! Should you overdo it, there is always the hair of the bear!

Three Bears Crystal beer in Kaliningrad — Three Bears Crystal beer

😁TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS
Name of Beer: Three Bears Crystal
Brewer: United Breweries
Where it is brewed: St Petersburg and in other Russian locations
Bottle capacity: 1.5 litres
Strength: 4.4%
Price: It cost me about 125 rubles (£1.23) in 2000
Appearance: Light amber
Aroma: Not much
Taste: Light bitterness, the equivalent of a British light or pale ale
Fizz amplitude: 5/10
Label/Marketing: Traditional Russian
Would you buy it again? I have, on several occasions

*Note that the beers that feature in this review series only include bottled beer types that are routinely sold through supermarket outlets and in no way reflect the variety of beer and/or quality available in Kaliningrad from speciality outlets and/or through bars and restaurants.

Proshkola School Kaliningrad Inspiration in Action

We aim to develop the best personal qualities in students, by Olga Korosteleva-Hart, English Teacher

25 May 2025 – Proshkola School Kaliningrad Inspiration in Action

In Proshkola school, Kaliningrad, teachers practise the humane pedagogy of Shalva Amonashvili, the ethos of the school being to evolve free-thinking minds, stimulate imagination and exercise inventiveness.

At Proshkola, teachers strive to establish mutual respect. Each student’s self-esteem is seen as a valued asset, an essential prerequisite for academic success and a foundation on which to build a sense of personal confidence, which will hold them in good stead as they journey from their school life into the adult world beyond.

Towards this end, therefore, there are no clichéd lessons and unproductive moralizing, no stultifying and exhausting homework, no terrifying, fearful tests and checks. At Proshkola, personal development, creativity and the cultivation of spiritual values are encouraged every step of the way. Here, students are given the faith they need to become the best versions of themselves.

For example, recently my seventh-grade students were given the opportunity to cast themselves in the role of island sovereigns, invested with the power to, among other things, legislate laws, promote food production, devise national costumes and establish national symbols with which to express the island’s unique identity.

The holistic nature of this project required students to explore their imaginative resourcefulness, harnessing creativity to the challenging but fun task of designing a fully functional island society with all that this entails, from workable economics to cultural norms and mores.

The results and satisfaction deriving from fun proactive tasks like this transcend mere education. They bring out the best in students. They empower and inspire.

[ProSchool] Proshkola School Kaliningrad

It is this creative spirit, this ethos of mutual engagement that sets our school apart. It is not a school of learning by rote, but a school that places the greatest emphasis on inspiration, interaction and results from collaborative teamwork. Our students’ aspirations and what they go on to achieve is how we, as a school, define ourselves. We never forget as teachers that success is symbiotic.

Olga Hart receives thank you message from student at Proshkola School Kaliningrad

Thank You letter to Olga Hart from her students in Kaliningrad

^During my last lesson with Year 7, I asked students to write a thank you letter to their classmates for something they had done for them during the school year. Two of them wrote to me. I finished the drawing which they had started. It’s times like this that make teaching so worthwhile – Olga Korosteleva-Hart

At ProSchool ~ https://vk.com/proschool39 ~ we strive to develop the best personal qualities in students.

Published with the kind permission of Alyona Pusko, Director, Proshkola School, Kaliningrad

ProSchool Kaliningrad: Can Mick Hart Make the Grade?

> Художник Виктор Рябинин Кёнигсберг

Well Done Reform A Great Week in British Politics

There’s hope for the old country yet!

Published 8 May 2025 [VE Day] – Well Done Reform A Great Week in British Politics

Congratulations to Nigel Farage and Reform for their spectacular success in the local elections.

Reform, led by charismatic leader Nigel Farage, has stunned the British establishment yet again. In last week’s local elections, Britain’s fastest growing political party, Reform, took an impressive 677 seats across all contested councils, won two mayoralties and gained another MP.

Mainstream media could not have got it more wrong when they dubbed Reform the ‘Upstart Party’. ‘The Up-and-Coming Upending Party’, or the ‘Most In-touch with the People Party’, that would have been more like it, with Reform having positioned itself as the leading voice in British politics and a real contender for Number 10.

Tapping into years of deep-seated frustration over the relentless loss of its nation to pro-migrant tub-thumping liberals, Reform is making significant gains on all political fronts as liberalism’s flawed and dismal dictates crumble and disintegrate from one side of the Atlantic to the other.

Well Done Reform A Great Week in British Politics

The big losers on election day were unanimously the Conservatives. It was they, unsurprisingly, that took the hardest hit. After 14 dreadful, shambolic years in office, which opened the door to Labour, the only wonder is that anyone bothered to vote for them at all, and one suspects that those who did were the vote-by-rote fraternity, those who have developed over time a nasty stuck-in-the-rut compulsive kind of voting habit, which they know they ought to quit but, as with any other entrenched addiction, is easier said than done.

The Cons deserve no sympathy; they have reaped what they have sown. Their 14 years of faulty governance were some of the most embarrassing, some of the most chaotic in British political history.

Split down the middle by pseudo-liberal influencers, the Cons were far too busy fighting amongst themselves to deliver on their promises, paving the way for the pro-migrant left to exploit this lack of leadership and fill the moral void with its woke-obsessed agenda.

It certainly did not help the Cons when instead of returning to grassroot principles they sold out to the woke vote by installing Mrs Badenoch (bless her old cotton socks), who, should she eventually lead the party to victory, would wear the gilded crown of being the first woman of colour to hold the office of British prime minister. How’s that for ticking Labour’s box first!

You would think that the Cons would have learnt their lesson from the fall and fall of Rishi Sunak, but no. The quickly invented Badenoch was a Dr Who regenerative moment for the likes of the party’s liberal faction, but for the dyed-in-the-wool blue rinse brigade, it was yet another broken string on the old Conservative fiddle; another act of betrayal in a long series of similar acts, gambling on the premise that in order to survive, the Cons need to emulate Labour and ultimately beat them at their own game. Whata mistaka to makea …

As for Labour, what you can say? Labour has been Starmered, well and truly Starmered. If Tony Blair has gone down in history as a nail in the UK’s coffin, Starmer could be remembered — if remembered he is at all — as the Labour party’s undertaker and grave digger in chief: the man who laid the party out and then went on to bury it.

Well Done Reform A Great Week in British Politics

Returning to the voters of habit who have yet to understand the existential crossroads that Britain has been driven to, the collapse of the vote for both Cons and Labour translated in some areas, predictably ivory tower areas and those which for the moment are the least effected by immigration, into gains for Jeremy Thorpe’s old crew, the faded jaded Liberal Democrats

For disaffected voters frightened to think outside the box, it was time to fall back on the old switcheroonee. If they could not vote for Liebour or Cons, and conscience said they couldn’t, then they would have to vote LibDem! What a terrible farce. What a tragic mistake.

The Liberal Democrats as the name suggest are little more than orange squash Labour — full of sugar and diluted down — which, in terms of immigration and the woke that provides its life support, offers more of the same but worse. But look here let’s be frank, Cyril, some of the LibDem politicians and even some of its supporters come across as nice mean-wells — enlightened Tims-Nice-But-Dims. True, many are wishy washy and still others namby pamby, but whatever they are individually taken as a party, they are still the problem not the solution.

LibDems are like an old broken horse, not worth backing. But Well Done Reform in the local elections.

What a naga to backa …

If you think about it, and it isn’t really rocket science, to steal a march on Reform all that Labour and the Cons need do is to stop the boats from romping in, take control of Britain’s borders and, as in Russia, where Russians come first, restore faith in blighted Britons that the government is their government, that the country is their country and that it is their culture and they who come first.

The fact that the old political parties will not control immigration and will not withdraw from the ECHR, the thorn in the side of sovereignty, not even to save themselves, is an out-and-out admission that they have not the slightest intention of observing and upholding the primary responsibility of that of any government, which is to ensure the safety and security of the citizens of the country who voted them into office on this mandate.

So, under the rule of the two old fogeys, the long-since past their sell by dates Labour and Conservatives, what has Britain got to look forward to? Both of the two old past-it parties will keep on letting the migrants in and letting them in their thousands. They will blather on about net-zero policies whilst concreting over the countryside. They will turn the other cheek on escalating utility bills and, with nothing else up their sleeves, inflate the cost of houses. There will be more boats, more migrants, a more divided society, more deaths and broken lives, more candle-lit vigils, more and more and more and more stultifying woke and with each year that passes less of the Britain we knew and loved. Is this what you want for your children’s future? That’s what you’ve got and that’s what you’ll get if you vote for the same old cronies.

Take your country back, now, whilst you have the chance, for it may well be your last chance.

Vote for the future of Britain. Vote Reform.

“Only Reform will stand up for British culture, identity and values. We will freeze immigration and stop the boats. Restore law and order. Repair our broken public services. Cut taxes to make work pay. End government waste. Slash energy bills. Unlock real economic growth.

“Only Reform will take back control over our borders, our money and our laws. Only Reform will secure Britain’s future as a free, proud and rich nation.” — https://www.reformparty.uk/

Meanwhile in the UK links

UK utility bills: What a gas freezing is
UK Zelensky tour is a charity gala performance
Brits told to be vigilant as boats roll in on tide of terror
UK anti-immigration riots herald a new dystopian era
Don’t kill cash!

Image attributions
Bulldozer: https://openclipart.org/detail/260944/bulldozer

Bye Bye: https://clipart-library.com/terms.html

Old Nag: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Old-nag-silhouette/58275.html

Kaliningrad a Green City

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 65 [23 May 2020] ~ Trenches & Trees

Revised 1 May 2025 | First published 23 May 2020 – Kaliningrad a Green City

Apprehensive that May may not be the merry, merry month that it is cracked up to be? Put your memory in reverse gear and trip back to the coronavirus spring of 2020. I cannot guarantee that things can only get better. I cannot guarantee that they could hardly be worse. But, relatively speaking … {This post originally published May 2020 | Revised 2 May 2025}

Unlike in the UK at present, there is no sudden uplift in the weather; nothing to tempt and entice one to cast caution to the wind, ignore the restrictions and warnings and go wassailing off for a day at the coast. It is true that in the past few days Kaliningrad has been granted a nominal hike in temperature, pushing it up to 15 degrees, and this long-awaited blessing combined with a light but still fresh breeze in association with Mr Blue Sky and a sun that has condescended to at last come out from behind the clouds, were sufficiently alluring to prise myself from self-isolation for the novel pleasure of stretching my legs.

To effect our home exit strategy, we first had to run the gauntlet of passing without mishap from our garden to the road beyond. For the past three weeks or more, our house, and those around us, have been subject to ‘trench warfare’.

**The Trenchmen cometh … I can’t help thinking that we would have been better laying that new block paving later …**

Cable-laying has been going on. A narrow but deep trench, hazardous enough to dislocate or break something vital should a miscalculated step occur, dissects the pavement at the front of our property and, running at right angles to it, extends along the neighbours’ boundary to the gate at the end of the cul-de-sac, behind which, you might care to know, sits a very large dog.

From the vantage point of my bedroom window, I have been able to observe (intermittently, you understand, as self-isolation has not left me wanting in occupations of an interesting kind), this cable work in progress and mentally bookmark whilst doing so the differences that might exist between how a job of this nature is handled in Kaliningrad compared with similar tasks undertaken in the UK.

From the outset, and for most of the initial period of work, the workforce has consisted of three lads and a young woman, armed with two spades, two shovels and the indispensable trusty wheelbarrow. The blokes have been doing most of the digging, whilst the young woman, with her workman’s gloves neatly folded and tucked to dangle professionally from her jeans’ back pocket, appears to have had an overseeing role, an inference later corroborated when a clipboard suddenly sprung into her hand. Praise where praise is due, however: at one stage in the laborious game, she, too, rolled up her sleeves and took a turn on the shovel.

Weather conditions ~ cold and raining ~ have been generally unsympathetic, hardly conducive to the job in hand, but this small group of sappers, equipped with nothing more mechanical than the arms that God has given them, unless you include the wheelbarrow, struggled valiantly on alone until, after a week’s hiatus, the cavalry arrived.

The reinforcements are a hardy bunch of chaps, not only are they seasoned trenchers but also capable cable layers. The cables they are laying had been deposited along with piles of aggregate prior to their arrival. They now reside on the oval island, a compelling grass-covered landmark at the centre of confluent streets, which marks the spot of a German bunker constructed in World War Two.

The temptation at this juncture to go off on a historic tangent and waffle on about the many wartime installations surviving in Kaliningrad and across its Prussian region is difficult to resist, but as global tourism has some way to go before it can get back on its feet from the damage done by coronavirus, I will wait for a more propitious moment to elaborate on this and continue for the present with my narrative.

Kaliningrad a Green City

We had crossed the trench in front of the house and this delicate feat accomplished were now walking along, as if coronavirus was not our shadow, the original cobbled streets that once were Königsberg. Victor Ryabinin, the artist and historian, had assured us that ‘green’ Königsberg was essentially a myth. Königsberg, he said, at least the oldest parts of the city, never had been green.

The streets were narrow, the buildings high and the order of the day had been red brick and grey cobbles. The city’s outlying districts, those laid down in the early years of the 20^th century and expanded in the 1920s through to the mid-1930s, had been designed with green in mind. The houses and plots on which they stand have their English equivalent in the UK’s 1920s’ suburbs, whose properties sold on the back of the clever and catchy advertising slogan, ‘A country home in the city’, or words to that effect.

Every home in Britain’s new suburbs came complete with a small front garden and a larger plot at the rear, and on the wide and curving streets where these airy houses stood, a row of trees lined either side, augmented, where space allowed, with narrow but neat grass verges, demarcating pavement from road and bringing a little more green into the urban environment.

In Königsberg’s equivalent districts, as contemporary photographs and postcards show, though most new streets of the day were tree-lined like their English counterparts, such trees as there were, were, of course, but saplings, which doubtlessly formed visually graceful vistas but with nothing like the leafy foliage that adorn those self-same streets today, now that these trees, like me, have reached maturity.

You see, what happens to you when you subject yourself to self-isolation: every simple detail, every once commonplace thing, every taken-for-granted and overlooked minutiae undergoes a process of scrutinised amplification, so acutely rendered to senses locked away indoors that before you can wryly say ‘I believe in coronavirus’, you cannot see the wood for the trees — or, in my particular case, the trees for Kaliningrad’s leaves.

Should old acquaintance be forgot

Our leafy walk through Kaliningrad’s suburbs, along the canopied tree-lined streets with their flower and foliate burgeoning gardens, had brought us after a while within viewing distance of a most eccentric sight — that peculiar waterside café, that semi-abandoned confection, which, with its facsimile rooftop lighthouse, Captain Ahab perched on the balcony doing I don’t know what and a lot of marine-like crustaceans daubed upon the walls, resembles something that sneaked into Russia during the 1970s from an amusement park in Skegness.

Cafe near pond in Kaliningrad now in 2025 demolished

I have seen postcard photographs of the building that stood here in earlier times. Admittedly, it, as with the pond and everything around it, was saturated monochrome — obviously in the 1910s the world was waiting for colour — but even in this black and white existence (things used to be black and white before coronavirus was invented) the former Königsberg building had all the ennobling features that Gothicity could bestow and was, in its waterside setting, a proverbial sight for sore eyes rather than an eyesore for eyes reduced by its sight to tears, which, omitting novelty out of context, is as good as it gets today. [Note, although Captain Ahab went down with his ship two years after this photo was taken, the demolition pirates have failed to launch their own version, which stands as forlorn and half-built in a spot which Heaven reserved for a restaurant, but which seems to have become Kaliningrad’s ghost ship graveyard.]

Kaliningrad a Green City

Passing quickly by this ‘thing’, which in spite of my reaction I have a sneaky affection for, we wended our way, notwithstanding, happier now that it was behind us, along the block-paved path that runs around the pond’s perimeter.

Old photographs demonstrate that on both sides of the lake (my apologies purists, I know I should say ‘pond’, but ponds are so small in England and Königsberg’s ponds so large that the appelation seems incongruous) the banks had, for the most part, been left to their own devices, accumulating vegetation and fringed throughout with wetland trees. In the black and white world of old photography atmosphere reigns supreme, but detail can in time, and as a result of time, often call for magnification. I had thus to resort to a lens to pick out from these old photographs the presence of a narrow winding path, most probably gravel surfaced, curling in the early 1900s, through the ribbon of trees and foliage skirting the edge of the pond.

Subsequently lost, this beaten track is now hard paved and in a character and colours favoured by, and thus typical of, 21^st century urban planners. Much of the original foliage, by that I mean the wild and natural, has long since been dug out, substituted with mown grass lawns and carefully tended municipal flowerbeds. But whilst block paving of every kind, in all its imaginative shapes, its patterns and its sizes, along with children’s’ play parks, public lavs, a skateboard space and even an exercise quadrangle, has colonised the past, the Königsberg trees that form a boundary along the side of the adjacent road and the odd gnarled or venerable specimen dotted amongst the later additions, some Soviet others millennial, endorse the attribution that Kaliningrad unlike Königsberg is as green a city as a city can get.

As much as I was enjoying and being overly distracted by that which I am phenomenally good at — daydreaming — today had its objectives, and this meant putting my dreams on hold and focusing for a moment on finding a wall with graffiti on it. Not that this endeavour would prove difficult in Kaliningrad. Graffiti is just one, sadly, of a number of contagious viruses that has made its way from the West.

Mick Hart with Anthony Hopkins in Kaliningrad — **Mick Hart with Anthony Hopkins and Nadezhda Rumyantseva in Kaliningrad**

The graffiti we were looking for was not one of your run-of-the-mill, deface, vandalise, spoil, degrade and then talk it up as ‘urban art’ jobs. It was truly an original piece, a bona fide work of art, featuring the actor Anthony Hopkins in his role as Hannibal Lecter and the Russian actress, Nadezhda Rumyantseva, star of The Girls, a classic Soviet romantic-comedy drama — but more of that on another occasion. We found what we were looking for, and my wife made good with the camera.

Kaliningrad: Not all graffiti is equal — **There is graffiti and graffiti …**

Work of an anonymous but talented Kaliningrad artist — **Mine’s a vegetarian**

And then she said, For old times’ sake.” What could she be suggesting?

She wanted us to walk closer to the lake, taking in Flame restaurant as we did so. The ‘old times sake’ referred to recent history, but a recent history which in the New Normal was as lost to the world as dinosaurs. Ah, those glorious days — so happy and carefree — when we would walk to Flame on an afternoon or stroll down on an evening for a meal and a pint of brew. What had become of those days? More to the point, will they ever return?

Like every other bar, Flame was a victim of coronavirus. There it stood, shrouded in darkness, doors barred, patronless and yet for all this desertion not quite extinguished. A nice and reassuring touch was that in keeping with its tradition, Flame, though closed to the public, continued to project music into and across the surrounding recreation area via external hi-fi speakers stationed on its alfresco forecourt. In these grim and troubled times, the music struck a chord that resonated inside one’s soul. It was the bittersweet sound of the band playing on as the Titanic hit the watery skids.

Now that the shops — some of the shops — had officially opened their doors again, we had a small chore to fulfil, which was to buy a part for the vacuum cleaner. We might fall foul of coronavirus and die as a result, but heaven forbid we would do such a thing in a house with a mucky carpet.

As we crossed the road from the pond, emerging at the side of Flame, it was evident that whilst we had been hibernating Kaliningrad’s construction workers had been doing no such thing. The shopping centre that has been taking shape at the end of the city market had gone, in the space of days, from a shell of incomplete concrete pieces into an impressive three- or four-storey series of ascending profiled platforms.

Ordinarily, way back when in the Old (and familiar) Normal, something as mundane as this seen on a day-to-day basis would have excited little more than a passing glance, but incarceration, self-imposed or otherwise, seems to have the tendency to sharpen the edge of the mind, so much so in my case that in regarding this evolving building, its Phoenix-like transformation, I felt a kindred spirit in Rip Van Winkle, or rather an affinity with the bemusement he had felt on waking from a sleep of hitherto unknown proportion.

Vacuum cleaner part in pocket, we set off on our homeward journey, not by retracing our steps — having to pass Flame again now that it was clam-tight shut would be more than the drinker in me could withstand — but with a view towards returning on the opposite side of the pond. This route would necessitate, however, walking past yet another well-frequented, landmark bar: the one in historic Rossgarten Gate — CLOSED … just like the rest!

Fortunately, by way of profound distraction, on the opposite side of the road, in one of Kaliningrad’s public squares, I saw a man with his hose in his hand. He was leaning nonchalantly from his truck, playing his hose in the sun over some of the city’s prettiest flower beds. “Hmm,” I thought to myself, “It’s not only the bars that are dry.”

Watering the flowers in the green city of Kaliningrad — **A lovely day on which to have your hose out**

Kaliningrad a Green City

Our walk back around the lake had proven itself a pleasant detour. There is only so much of novelty to be found in strolling back and forth days and weeks upon end from your kitchen to the living room, and, let’s be honest about it, the water features of bath and bog, though unarguably indispensable, hardly compete or come close to the natural scenerific beauty imparted by rippling pond under a clear blue sky.

On this side of the pond as upon the other, trees in abundance abide, and in such variety and of such different ages that they did not have to ask me twice to indulge my obsessive passion for retrospective reverie, inviting me to determine which of them had been planted during Kaliningrad’s Soviet era and which belonged to Königsberg. I suppose you’d do the same if you were me.

The wise old trees of Königsberg-Kaliningrad

Trees, ponds, brand-new shopping centres rising up from out of the ground like mysterious midnight mushrooms, bars with no people inside them, sepia memories of long ago, men with their hoses dangling quaintly out of civic truck windows, a light breeze, a blue sky and off to the shop to buy some tomatoes. Very nearly and almost back home; just the trenches to cross.

UK Utility Bills Fiasco: What a Gas Freezing is

A swarthy face and a dinghy, the only way left to keep warm in Britain

26 April 2025 – UK Utility Bills Fiasco: What a Gas Freezing is

The cost of heating one’s home in the UK is a joke — a sick one. It’s alright if you’re an entitled millennial, as most likely you are still living at home with mum, and, given the prohibitive cost of striking out on your own, most likely will still be living with mum when you are in your 50s. For us old fogeys, however, who belong to a generation who would never have dreamt of living at home with mum, and who left the nest at the age of 15, heating one’s home is past a joke — it’s a travesty wrapped in catastrophe.

I returned to the UK from Russia, where I had been enjoying affordable gas central heating 24/7, to a rambling old Victorian house so cold that I wondered if, in my absence, I should have let the Cryonics Institute use it for cold meat storage. Birds Eye would have had no difficulty in hiding its fish fingers here. And this was during a winter which, once again, was unseasonably mild. Let’s clasp our hands together brothers (many times may help) and thank the heavens for global warming!

Gas fire with bird that died from cold, as in Britain we can't afford the heating ...

Disinclined to hand over my hard-earned cash to insult-to-injury utility companies, who unashamedly explain away the reason for their extortionate tariffs by boasting about the part they play in planet-saving strategies – we invest in renewable energy! – but then go rather schtum at the mention of corporate virtue signalling or shoot-yourself-in-the-foot back-firing Russian sanctions, I, like many other Brits, spent three uncomfortable UK months surviving on rationed gas and electric.

Swaddled in two fleeces, one of which is a British-army thermal, with long johns under my jeans and four pairs of socks on my feet (OK, so I bought them from Primark), I thought of renting the icy house out to special forces operatives training for cold-climate combat. I’m fairly certain that Sir Edmund Hillary and the adventurer Robert Falcon Scott used my house for training purposes before setting off respectively, one to climb Mount Everest and the other to meet his maker in the Antarctic.

As I sat in the smallest room in the house, the easiest to heat, with a hot water bottle shoved up my jumper, I thought how perspicacious it had been to bring with me to chilly Britain a pair of those splendid thick Russian socks, the sort traditionally knitted by winter-savvy and wise babushkas. I put them on over my Primark’s and said hello to my toes again.

Free with every packet of Yester Years’ Crisps:
Woke and Hypocrisy: It really is God Save the King!
Brits told Be Vigilant! As boats roll in on Tide of Terror!
2023 UK Woke Hits an All-Time High!
UK Zelensky Tour is a Charity Gala Performance

Things will get worse before they get worse

Things may seem bad in the UK now, as bad as they can get, but under the lefty jackboot doctrine of ‘tax them to the hilt and raid their hard-earned pension pots’, Starmer’s rip-em-off Britain can only get progressively worse.

As it is, I was forced to set the coordinates and dash off in my way-back machine into the 19^th century to enjoy the luxury of a real coal fire, which I cannot do in present England at £13 a bag. Actually, to give the local coal merchant, Cagey Smythe, his due, his smokeless save-the-planet coal does belt out some heat — but at £13 a bag! That’s almost as bad as British pub beer prices, which in some pubs have already reached, and in others are nudging slyly towards, a shameful £6 a pint, or as bad as a farting packet of crisps, which can cost anything in British pubs from £1.50 to £1.90.

Double Diamond may not have worked wonders as the adverts claimed it would, but in 1976, it was 15 pence a pint and a packet of Golden Wonder crisps cost something like 3p. Everything is relative, so they say, and they also lie. Quick, back into the time machine! Take off!

Double Diamond never worked wonders but it didn't hurt your wallet

My next time-travelling stop will most probably be Edwardian Britain for a good shave and a haircut by a barber who isn’t Turkish when he really might be Albanian, and whose hairdressers may not be a front for laundering money from his nearby Grow Shop.

UK Utility Bills Fiasco: What a Gas Freezing is

The compelling need to cut my hair and to trim my beard now that winter is on the wane, derives from the uneasy feeling that I am beginning to look like Rasputin would, had he been permitted to continue his natural journey into the later years of his life.

Mick Hart, with silly beard, in the UK utility bills fiasco

Some self-overrating practitioner of the proverbial art of piss-taking was thrilled to liken me recently to Merlin the Mad Magician.

If that is who I am, I thought, I would go to Dover, go directly to Dover, surpass myself by shouting ‘Go’, and, waving my magic wand, I’d litter the English Channel with row upon row of very sharp objects, dinghy-puncturing objects, adding for good measure the odd sea serpent or two.

What else could we do with a magic wand? I know! We could wave it over Number 10 and transform our Judas government from something disturbingly anti-white British into a patriotic force of old.

But what if the spell was to go wrong, turning our !!*£!-! government into EU-pandering clowns, lovers of Macron and Turdo, driving the country like Edward Smith steered his ill-fated ship towards an unthinkable destiny, its passengers, mum’s millennials and the unfortunate not-yet-borns, passing obliviously up Shit Creek into the blade of the mugging iceberg (Innit!), the tip of which, I have to say, is thrusting its way, in a most rude manner, into my front living room, where I cannot afford to turn up the gas or switch my electric light on. But hey ho and wait a mo! — it would seem as though the dreadful spell has already been tragically cast. ‘It must be the Russians that dun it!’ chorus the British media, led by their Portland Place choir leader, the baton-wielding BBC.

UK Utility Bills Fiasco: What a Gas Freezing is

Turning up the heat these days, the heat that comes from the ring of truth, must be done whatever the cost, if you want to prevent your country from slipping into a leftist ice age. Scott and his brave companions, Dr Wilson and ‘Birdie’ Bowers, are moving into warmer waters, and we must do the same, but preferably whilst our minds, in harness with our collective will, are still above the surface.

I know that it is no easy feat. Nothing worthwhile in life is easy, especially when your jumper has a water bottle up it. There’s more at risk than you first might think, unless you read The Guardian — and then you probably just don’t think. For, in ‘Watch Whatever You Say UK’, it only takes an honest remark posted on social media to get your collar felt:

“Oh, officer, I say, what big strong masculine hands you have!”

“Don’t you masculine me, you heterosexual breeder!”

My country’s gone
My feet are cold
But I must think
What I am told — Net Zero Common Sense

Mick Hart from Kaliningrad's cat, Ginger

Do you ever have the feeling that somebody’s watching you? >>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESdkAsBCZlo

One way of escaping UK woke culture and eluding the big freeze that’s burning a hole in your wallet is to pack your bags and move to Russia. It’s warmer in Siberia in more ways than one than it is in Britain’s Home Counties.

The other way is to build a TARDIS and waft wantonly back in time to those halcyon days when Britain’s coal mines proudly and productively fuelled the fires of every British home; back to the days before net zero, which were days of common sense, when we had more warmth in our homes, considerably more warmth in our hearts and, before Labour got into office, a lot more money in our pockets.

Olg Hart with TARDIS. A means of escape from UK Utilty Bills Fiasco

Read my A to Z of how to build a TARDIS, and once you have mastered the art of not turning woman or black, and ruining a very good TV programme, zip back old-days Dr Who fashion to your nearest polling booth and wipe out Labour by voting Reform.

Stopping the boats coming in will stop the migrant hotel bill. There’s an awful lot that could be done with the £7 million that curtailing the boats would save each day. You could build a couple of power stations, squander some on renewable energy and still have enough in reserve to give everyone in the British Ilses £6 for a pint of beer, £1.90 for a packet of crisps, a bobble hat, a pair of gloves and a pink hot water bottle called Cassandra.

No one’s ever said it before, but do these things and do them quickly and we might never have it so good!

NB: Cassandra, the hot water bottle, as seen in the feature image of this post, may well be available from all good adult shops. Keep warm next winter without the risk of gender issues.