Woke up children! I don’t think Colston cares that much!
Published: 14 January 2022 ~ Colston Woke Statue 4 Scratch the Itch of History
Woke Watch PC UK! {Case 4}
Congratulations! Hoorah! Yippee!
Great celebrations throughout the land of Wokedom! Hark! Sound the bells in the Cathedral of Woke in joyous proclamation: Hurrah! Hurrah! The yobs who uprooted the statue of Edward Colston and tossed it into the side of Bristol harbour are not yobs at all, they are in fact national heroes. Ding Dong Ding, Ding Dong Ding … Clang …
Colston Woke Statue 4 scratch the itch of History
They went into court charged with criminal damage but emerged from it ~ let’s not say ‘whiter than white’ ~ vindicated. The jury returned a verdict of ‘not guilty’.
Were the four as triumphant as they looked or simply basking in the delusion that because they had been duped into playing the part of useful idiots somehow the verdict had transformed them into a credit to their generation?
Of course, a far simpler and more credible explanation in these blighted times is that the young clones (clowns if you want) received a pat on the back instead of a boot up the arse because they behaved with exemplary Wokism. If ever testimony was needed that ideological brainwashing works then it doesn’t get much better than this, excluding, of course, candle-lit vigils.
Indeed, in an article published by Metro1, one of the absolved, a female yoof with a ring through her snout, is showcased revelling in virtue-signalling limelight. How does it go? Every dog must have its day! Woof!
Reading from the usual script, we hear the same old tired and sanctimonious cliches about ‘equality’, ‘police brutality’ blah, blah, blah … and a telling remark relating the actions of the four Wokerteers to that of the suffragette movement, which seems to imply that not only is trial by jury a cornerstone of democracy but also so is violence and vandalism. Feel a bit miffed about something? Then why not go throw a brick or bust up a postbox? The suffragettes did! Good for them. Now women can vote, wear a ring through their snouts and run around pulling down statues. Take a bow whilst you’re taking that knee!
It is nothing short of hilarious that a blatant act of vandalism, excused by a woke jury, in a court of law administered by a woke judicial system, should be used by woke mainstream media as a rallying cry to campaign against wokism. (I mentioned the word woke once or twice, but I think I got away with it. No, really, ask my jury.)
Not convinced that the failure to prosecute these vandals is something to trumpet about in the name of racial equality, but I am more than certain that as justification for acts of vandalism it will open the floodgates to copycat incidents even more successfully than an ideological wedge rammed in the door of border control.
WOKE WATCH UK!
🤣Broken News Just In!😂
Ay up, news just in (13 Jan 2022)! The statue bashers are on the rampage! As I write this, I learn that a barncake has attacked the Eric Gill statue at BBC Broadcasting House2. Admittedly, it is a tad ironic that the BBC should have a large statue erected by a paedo adorning their headquarters when you consider the recent scandals surrounding Mr Saville and Co and more so in that the Beeb’s reporting of the four children who ‘rectified history’ and were given a resounding three cheers for their actions have since proved the adage that ‘what goes around, comes around’. Tell me, has Mr Gill’s statue escape with his winky intact? Ahh well, there goes another national monument to be replaced by something on the ‘right side of history’ ~ something black and gay should do the trick.
By the way, here is an extract from a MSM report3 on that incident. You’ll Ha! Ha! at the wokism in this!
“The protester … forcefully hammered away at the statue, removing large chunks of stone while the police stood and watched due to health and safety reasons. 😄
After more than four hours😄 , Met Police officers and the London Fire Brigade used a cherry-picker to bring the man down. Once on the ground, the police detained him. The protest comes just days after four BLM supporters🐑 were acquitted of felling a statue to the slave trader Edward Colston … A spokesman for the Met said: ‘London Ambulance Service checked the activist 🙄 [PC Plod: “You know, you should really wear goggles when defacing public and private property …”] before making an arrest on suspicion of criminal damage.
#
Statues, street signs, monuments, stained glass windows, historic buildings, antiques, objects of antiquity, paintings ~ there really is no end to the list of ‘victories’ waiting in the wings for self-styled woke revisionists.
I wonder what history will make of them when the future that they have made for themselves becomes the present in which they are trapped?
Meanwhile, let’s hope that the intelligent members of the jury who returned a verdict of ‘not guilty’ on the statue-shifting knee-takers have their garden statues (and everything else) very well insured.
L. Roy Woke & Sons & Sons & Sons Estate Agents Beautiful property, well appointed, four bedrooms … Freehold. No connection with slave traders, President Trump, Jimmy Saville, the Roman Empire, Brexit, a male Dr Who, rainbow-less skies, Rolf Harris’s didgeridoo and anyone not gender neutral. There are two statues in the back garden, but they shouldn’t cause any offence: one is taking a knee and the other is going ‘Baa’.
My first visit to Kaliningrad in 2000: 23 December 2000
See you in Kaliningrad Russia! is one in a series of posts that recount my first visit to Kaliningrad in 2000, and my first impressions of the land, the people and its culture.
Updated: 11 January 2021 | First published: 8 July 2019
I am not, and have never been, a traveller, so my first trip to Russia was as much a surprise to me as it was to everybody else.
The story of my first trip to Russia has been told so many times that it is almost legendary, but for the uninitiated it goes something like this. From my unlimited knowledge of the country, having grown up in the late 60s early 70s on Len Deighton’s and John le Carré’s Cold War thrillers, Michael Caine spy films and Callan, and having been force fed Solzhenitsyn’s novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, at school, as far as I was concerned Russia was the USSR and in deciding to go there I was off behind the Iron Curtain.
In the weeks leading up to my departure I took advantage of the internet, using computers in the offices of the publishing company where I was supposed to be working to research my travel arrangements and Russia in general. In those days I was not particularly switched on to the British establishment’s trashing of everything Russian, so I took all of the warnings and don’ts very seriously. Admittedly, it was not all fabrication. This was the year 2000 and the catastrophic after effects of perestroika were still ricocheting throughout Russia.
It was my intention to access Kaliningrad, Russia, via Gdansk, Poland, about which the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) warnings were also dire. At this time Poland was independent. It had its own sovereignty and had not yet become a vassal state of the European Union.
The end result of my internet research was that I ended up with a hulking great Lever Arch folder bursting at the seams with the scariest stuff imaginable ~ not a reassuring read for a novice and nervous traveller.
Why Go?
My decision to fly to Russia had not been made on the basis that I wanted to discover Russia or anywhere, for that matter. As I said earlier, I was no traveller. The thought of flying was anathema to me. I had not flown since a school trip to Switzerland in 1971. But, in the summer of 2000, all that was to change.
I met a woman who was later to be my wife. Her name was Olga. Olga was an English language teacher. She was spending a month in London, having brought a group of Russian students on a cultural trip to England. We met, I showed her around London ~ mostly around the pubs of London ~ a relationship developed, and when she had to return to Russia as her visa had expired, and I was faced with the unthinkable prospect of never seeing her again, I decided that if she could not come back to England then I would go to Russia. That this decision was taken after several pints in Clerkenwell’s Wetherspoon’s pub in London is immaterial. I had made a promise, and I had to stick to it!
But I would not be going alone. My fear of flying was so ingrained that I needed a co-pilot. I found one in my younger brother, whose flippant, frivolous and devil-may-care attitude was exactly what was needed on a dangerous mission like this.
See you in Kaliningrad Russia!
What Brits don’t know about Russia you could write on a postage stamp ~ billions of them ~ but one thing we do know is that it snows out there: Russia is very cold.
I cannot recall a single Russian spy film or television series made in the West where there is not a surplus of snow and furry hats, so you can be certain that we spent the weeks leading up to the trip equipping ourselves for Siberia, filling our oversized bags with woolly jumpers, great thick socks, big hulking overcoats, thermal shirts and the must-have cotton long johns. As it happened, even though we were travelling to Russia’s westernmost point, where the climate is not dissimilar to England’s, on this occasion we had been wise to take precautions, as the temperature sank whilst we were there to minus 29C.
In addition to clothing baggage, there was another type, the kind that comes with security. Having read over and over again that we were likely to be robbed at knife point or, at the very least, succumb to spates of pickpocketing, we had taken every precaution and more.
Credit cards were stashed away in various places; credit card company emergency numbers had been written down in at least two pocket books; the names of family, friends and close associates, all of whom could help us if we found ourselves in a jam, were meticulously listed along with contact numbers and emails (where they existed!); and money? ~ we were taking US dollars, some of which I had cunningly concealed in a money belt.
The money belt that I would be using to keep my dollars safe was no ordinary, bog-standard traveller’s belt. Having read somewhere that savvy robbers went straight for the type of belt that you buy from travel-clothes shops, I had acquired from an old army friend an ordinary leather belt which had a zipped liner at the back into which notes could be threaded. This belt wasn’t additional; it was the one that held your trousers up; the notes were very tightly stashed in a thin threaded line, so you can imagine the difficulty of paying for something, especially in somewhere busy such as a supermarket! Still, the currency that I had stuffed inside the leg of one of my socks was not such a difficult enterprise.
After a
month of fretting and dwelling masochistically on what it would be like to be
plummeting earthwards in a doomed airliner, I was ready to say goodbye.
Before departing (I was inclined to say ‘leaving’), a close friend of mine did all he could to reassure me: “After all,” he said philosophically, “it’s not the flying you have to worry about, just the crashing.”
First Day in Gdansk is the third in a series of posts that recount my first visit to Kaliningrad in 2000, and my first impressions of the land, the people and its culture.
Published: 1 September 2019 | Updated: 9 January 2022 ~ Kaliningrad 2000: First Day in Gdansk
My brother likes breakfasts. He does not like getting up for breakfast, or, to be more precise, he would rather breakfast was at half-past-three in the afternoon, which for him it often is. For him breakfast is, de rigueur, a full fatty fry, otherwise known as a Full English, aka an overfull Englishman. So, when he emerged from his room this morning, impelled to do so by the fact that breakfast was included within the hotel tariff, the absence of three whopping great sausages, a load of greasy bacon, a fried slice or two, two fried eggs, beans, tomatoes and a loaf of toasted bread was not so easily digested. He soon cheered up, however, when he discovered the as ‘much as you can eat’ Polish buffet, a culinary experience typical in this part of the world and one which through its familiarity over the coming days would induce him to coin the catchphrase ‘cold meats and cheeses’ whenever the words Poland and breakfast were brought into close proximity.
We were only
in Gdansk for a couple of days, in transit, so to speak, so any sight-seeing
that we hoped to do would be at the very best fleeting. Apart from exploring
English breakfasts, my brother was a keen tourist, but he was not convinced
that cold meats and cheeses were nutritionally sufficient to ward off the worst
effects of the ever-sinking ambient temperature, so before heading off into the
great outdoors we bulked out our bodies with as much winter clothing as we could
and succeeded in looking dafter than we usually did.
Needless to say, our urban excursion took us into what today are well-known tourist destinations: Ulica Długa (Long Street) and Długi Targ (Long Market). Then, we knew nothing of these places. As I have said before, I am no globe trotter, but I am, and always have been, more than just a little fascinated by my mysterious fascination with time, with my love for history and need for the past.
Trip to Kaliningrad, Russia. Poland, Gdansk in 2000.
Of the history of Gdansk, I was sadly lacking, but I did know enough about architecture to understand that the great proportion of the 17th century buildings in the ‘old’ quarter, with their Flemish (Dutch), Italian and French influences, were predominantly reconstructions. Adolf Hitler and Co had made certain sweeping changes back in the 1940s and subsequent generations of architects, designers and town planners had embarked upon an adventurous and inspirational programme of rebuilding with (oddly enough) minimum attention to Germanic influences.
To what extent a reconstructed building, street, district can be said to embody the cultural-historic significance of its predecessor is a moot point. I personally prefer not to erase the patina from original antique furniture, but when it does happen the piece concerned can still retain historical value and suffer no detraction in its aesthetic appeal. Admittedly, it may no longer be the complete genuine article, but as long as it possesses something of its past it cannot be discounted, and on this day back in the year 2000 my novice traveller status, love for the past and for architecture left me with an impression of Gdansk’s historic district that was and is distinctly memorable.
My memory of atmosphere is possibly only challenged by the recollection of how cold it was on that day but also how wonderful it felt to leave the outside chill for the warmth, comfort and cosy interior of a welcoming café-bar and then, having fortified ourselves with hot food and red wine, to return enthusiastically to the crisp and snow-flurried streets.
St Mary’s Church Gdansk
Olga, who had visited Gdansk on three or four occasions prior to our visit, was eager to visit again the large ~ very large ~ church which was located in the district that we were visiting. The building to which I refer is, of course, the world-renowned St Mary’s Church, believed to be the largest brick-built church in the world, dating back to the mid-to-late 14th century. As with most of Gdansk’s buildings, this, too, was severely damaged during WWII and extensive renovation and rebuilding had been required to return it to its former glory. Fortunately, most of the ancient and valuable artworks contained within the church were removed for safekeeping early in the war and many have since been returned.
If a small English parish church can entrance me with its age and history, you can imagine how intensely mesmerised I was by St Mary’s Church, Gdansk.
Guide books would be doing St Mary’s Church a great disservice if they failed to mention the clock and the great views of the city afforded from the 78-metre tower (they always do mention these things, mind), but as one time traveller to another my advice to you is simply visit the church yourself and feel the history.
Time is fascinating and time was ticking on; we were getting peckish; the cold meats and cheeses were definitely wearing off and, apart from that, we all agreed that it was time to sup some ale. Until now, we had been drinking vodka, but only because of the difficulty of fitting an appreciable amount of beer into a hip flask, and having renounced grim lager many years hence, we were none too keen to start again now.
Vodka was not a beverage that appealed to me either. I had had a bad experience with it many years ago, when I was nine years old to be precise. One nice sunny day I had raided my mother’s drink cupboard, filled a bottle with vodka and undiluted orange squash and, together with a friend, had taken it on a picnic. Between us, we consumed the entire bottle. That evening I was at church, singing in the choir. Gothic churches are great places to commune with history, but they take on an altogether different aspect when they are spinning like a top. The hangover was also magnificent!
On the subject of bars (which we mostly are), whilst our Polish hotel had no such facility, on our return from wherever it was we had been, we happened on one but a short walk away, and this is where we ended our evening.
Tomorrow would be Christmas Day in Gdansk.
Gdansk 2000. On our way to Kaliningrad, Russia. Mick Hart & brother Joss …
Published: 6 January 2022 ~ The Terrible Doubt of Weeping Flowers Victor Ryabinin
The Terrible Doubt of Appearances or the Terrible Doubt of Weeping Flowers? ‘Whenever sad, draw a flower’, Victor Ryabinin wrote. If only he was here to show us how
***
Recently, a friend of Victor Ryabinin’s visited the flat where he used to live, she wrote:
“Yesterday we were at V. Ryabinin’s house. I looked at his diaries — amazing documents of the life of not one person, but of a country. Today I read poetry on one of the pages [of his diary] , and my heart sinks.”
It would appear that Victor had found the words he needed to express his own thoughts and feelings in a poem by the American poet Walt Whitman, Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances.
The following extract, translated into Russian by Victor, appeared in his diary:
Of the terrible doubt of appearances, Of the uncertainty after all, that we may be deluded, That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after all, That may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only, May-be the things I perceive, the animals, plants, men, hills, shining and flowing waters, The skies of day and night, colors, densities, forms, may-be these are (as doubtless they are) only apparitions, and the real something has yet to be known, (How often they dart out of themselves as if to confound me and mock me! How often I think neither I know, nor any man knows, aught of them,)
My wife, Olga, wrote on her Facebook page on the same day as she read the above:
“Whether we have it all or we have nothing, we are all faced with the same obstacles: sadness, loss, illness, dying and death. It has always been the same. My friend Victor Ryabinin, who was not only a great artist but a great philosopher, invented a simple cure for depression. His motto was: “Whenever sad, draw a flower”.
The Terrible Doubt of Weeping Flowers ~ Victor Ryabinin
The photographs below are of the building where Victor lived and some of his stored artwork. They are reproduced here with the kind permission of Valentina Pokladova, who wrote:
“The shrubbery along the fence seems to remember the owner and sheds pearly tears …”
Published: 3 January 2022 ~ Christmas in the Land of Vax
It was very hit and miss, as though they had taken a leaf out of the government’s ‘How to Pretend that we are Dealing with Coronavirus Convincingly’ manual, the question should the Sheep family invite their relatives, the Woollies, from Scotland to spend Christmas with them or should the Sheep spend Christmas with the Woollies in Sockland?
Christmas was closing in faster than a new coronavirus variant, and with the distinct possibility that Boris might do a U-turn on vaccine passports using Plan B (which some unpleasant people say stands for ‘Bollocks’), it was be damned if you do, be damned if you don’t, and be buggered if anyone from government to Abdul knew what was going on?
One thing the Sheep were sure of was that they had better decide soon before more authoritarianism was brought to bear in the name of beneficent government. Two new strains, mainly on credulity, and 300 additional threats to society, had already been detected in two 5-star hotels, The Grinning Boaters and The Froggy Freeloaders, located on the outskirts of Dover.
Following this discovery, as reported by Nigel Farage, Downing Street immediately issued a warning that Christmas parties, possibly Christmas itself, may have to be cancelled, whilst a silly old chap who works for The Grimstarnian, Jenkinspoop, had nothing better to do than sit at home in his face mask and write an incredibly banal and spurious treatise on the UK’s need for unlimited mountains of migrants, as if he had never heard of Brexit and had no idea why the Labour party had been wiped out in the last election. A possible reason for his renewed confidence in the Kalergi Plan was the recent news that the neoliberals had set the democratic seesaw in motion giving Labour a nine-point lead. ‘Stupid, yes! But not that Stupid Surely!’, Bongo wrote, who had obviously no idea of what it was like to live in a democratic country, although he had booked his hotel and was on his way ~ at speed !
It was little Amanda Sheep who finally brought the question on where to spend Christmas to a decisive conclusion, recalling that the last Christmas they had spent in Sockland had been extremely close to putrid.
The jokes in the Christmas crackers were atrocious: “Question: Where’s the smallest airfield in the world? Answer: Up a Scottish kilt, two hangars and a spitfire!”; Uncle McSock got so sloshed on cheap whisky that he ended up with his sporran on his chin; his wife Agnus ‘Haggis’ McSock insisted on forcing noise out of an instrument that was the equivalent of blowing up the arse of a tortured cat; and the whole evening descended into chaos when someone mentioned Bonny Prince Charlie in the same breath as Nicola Sturgeon. The only person who seemed to be enjoying himself, little Mac McSock, sometimes fondly referred to as ‘Plastic’ or ‘Flashing’, spent the entire evening of Christmas Day locked in his bedroom, practising, or so his mother said, for the Edinburgh and Glasgow Caber Tossing Championship. Little Mac desperately needed a smaller ego, almost as much as he needed greater magnification in the lenses of his spectacles.
So, the Sheep remained in England (where else?), where things had gone from bad moral high-ground to sanctimonious worse-ground. Not only was it looking more likely that Boris and Sergeant Daftit were about to go Nazi on vaccine passports (conveniently given the blue light by Omicron) but had introduced more punitive measures in the interests of saving people so that they could spend the rest of their lives in mortal dread of ever going anywhere and seeing anyone again.
This course of action, Plan C (and, for the sake of proprietary we won’t divulge what the ‘C’ stands for, although it is obvious to the majority) has been launched in the name of Protecting the NHS, which by clever coincidence would seem to rhyme with ‘what a nasty mess’. In other words, the UK, like many other countries, seemed to be sliding reptiliously into vaccine passport dystopia. Not only would you not be allowed into pubs, restaurants and nightclubs without an electronic tracking vaccine passport, but added to the no-go list would be DIY shops, non-food store outlets, garden centres and sex shops ~ the latter prohibition would impact really badly on Simon Sheep’s Christmas present list ~ whatever would they buy granny now? (You see, she was a progeny of the progressive and permissive 1960s!)
Christmas in the Land of Vax
So, the Sheep stayed at home and in the tradition of the UK’s meek and tolerant had a ‘make do and mend’ Christmas as their forbears had before them. There are parallels to be drawn here, based on believing what you are told: One generation had gone to war believing that they were fighting to preserve their country (look at it today!); the present generation, who do not feel quite so entitled anymore, believe that in the new war between coronavirus and traditional freedoms our governments are fighting for us. Gullible and Naïve, the London department store, one street lower than Downing Street (is that possible?), were offering a multi-complex, multi-irrational, multi-cultural (am I repeating myself?) solution to getting into their store. Once, all you needed to do was open the door, but now it was lateral flow tests and PCRs (the only things missing are ‘I’ and ‘K’).
Before anyone could think of Christmas shopping, however, there was the house to decorate. Luckily the Sheeps were forward-thinking people. They had been first in the queue when coronavirus was announced and were fortunate enough to have a several bog rolls left from the 20,000 that they had stockpiled in the Great Panic Buying Bog Roll Bonanza of 2020, and big Boris Sheep, in between making plans from the alphabet ~ he would soon be on ‘Triple Z’ ~ recalling his days at public school, when he made enough Christmas decorations from his parent’s allowance to give Oxford the ring road it badly required, set about making paper chains out of used face masks.
The Christmas tree was an ingenuity stretcher, it almost made them wish that Christmas had been banned, as the leftist predecessors to the Religion of Woke wanted it to be back in the days of Sir Tony, but eventually Boris saved the day (sniggers and guffaws) with his Plan ‘Other Characters’ by suggesting that Keir Starmer come round and stand in the corner with his arms out ~ well he had to have some use. Then they dusted off their ancient decorations, including Ed’s Balls, draped the tree in sycophants and lush-living liberal lefties and stuck a great big gender-neutral fairy on the top. Good heavens, how he/she/it/other looked like Larry Grayson! ‘Shut that door!’ It’s too late Larry!
As the big day approached, with Big Pharma cashing in on the traditional uptake of the ‘day after’ pills, Big Tech on the volume of gadgets purchased, mostly during Black (whoops, you can’t say that) Friday, the Sheep family settled down for their second coronavirus Christmas.
As the whole family had been vaccinated more times than you and I have taken a knee, obtaining the components for the traditional Christmas dinner had been as easy as conning countless liberals to vote Remain and then later to remain in their houses.
Eating Christmas dinner with a face mask on had been a very messy business, especially whilst wearing a silly paper hat and a pair of rubber gloves, but at least the latter concealed grotesquely chapped hands from excessive hand-washing and the neurotic application of disinfecting wipes.
As the Sheep family live in Dover, shortly after watching the Queen of Coronavirus’s Speeches by Fool-Them-All Fauci, they retired to the lounge where from their bay windows they had the perfect view of the little boats arriving along the coast. Such heart-warming scenes to be sure! Scores of happy, smiling Christmas migrants gift-wrapped by the French and welcomed ashore by British policeman, who, if truth be told (but only by Sorryarse Fact Checkers!), were rather pleased to have been given this cushy detail, having spent most of the past 12 months either investigating mean tweets or bursting into people’s homes to see if the residents had their masks on.
After a nice glass of Dover Port, which gets more full bodied with every passing month, the Sheep family played ‘WHO Dunnit to Them’, a game by Public Health Charades, in which little Dick Sheep made then all howl with laughter at his superb rendition of a non-vaccinated white man banned from everywhere including his own country ~ they all had another booster shot after seeing that one!
They then watched WHO Dunnit on the television. It wasn’t a bad film, but the plot was so unbelievable, especially at the end where Herculean Plotdemic was about to reveal who the killer really was when thankfully a message popped up on the screen redirecting viewers to the true version of events and Herculean Plotdemic never got another job again, at least not in liberal-lefty lovie land.
They then watched the popular soap opera Coronavirus Streets, which was a touch boring as the entire cast just sat in their houses two-metres apart from each other, twiddling on their outsmart-them phones, and finished off with a quick game of pin the face mask on granny. By now they were getting tired, but fortunately the BBC were running a Dr Who Christmas Special (not to be confused with you know WHO!) and this programme certainly Woke them up!
At 7 o’clock the guests arrived. Only two out of 25 were allowed in, as the others hadn’t been vaccinated. Natural immunity and proven antibodies were no excuse. It was essential (for someone) that anyone coming into the house was vaccinated first, had a Visitors to Your Home DIY Vaccination Kit, played music from the Third Reich and wore small black moustaches, whilst the rest of the family chanted something from a liberal-left website about ‘Thank you for thinking of others and saving their lives for them’ at which everyone fell about for at least 30 proper seconds in a state of rapture bordering on orgasm. Little Dick hadn’t seen anything like this since Tony Blair was elected Chancellor and was then given a knighthood for turning the UK into a kebab shop.
The evening was not entirely ruined, however, as it was not snowing that heavily outside and the non-vaccinated, who were used to being outcasts, they had learnt to accept their place in the New World Order when smoking was banned in pubs and restaurants, accepted their lot cheerfully. Huddling up in the cold was no new thing for them, and besides it was a lot better than being pumped full of a biological substance that didn’t give young, fit, medically proven A1 footballers heart attacks.
Christmas in the Land of Vax
Every now and again, whilst partner dancing six feet apart, little Amanda Sheep would chuck a roast potato or some brussels sprouts at the non-vaxxers from the bedroom window, and her little brother Boris would serve them drinks through the letterbox, wearing rubber gloves, of course, and a hairstyle that he had got out of a Christmas cracker that looked like a face mask blown inside out.
After that they played hide and sneak: someone hid a coronavirus and the rest of the group had to look for it whilst telling the authorities on their mobile phones who had not had the vaccine. This game was as limp as vaccine-induced impotence, as hopeless as finding an ounce of sense in Boris’ haystack and even more ludicrous than trying to stop a virus with a face mask.
Arse Mask ~ the bottom line in Covid protection. As good as face masks but you’ll crack up whilst wearing them!
Pass the Covid Parcel was far more successful. It was understandable: half of the room wore red rosettes the other half wore blue. It didn’t matter if the music stopped or not, since nobody took any notice, they all kept humming the same tune whilst passing the parcel one from the other — quickly. The coronavirus version of musical chairs was much the same as pass the parcel. “Pass the what?” some wag cried, who was particularly good at inventing cockney rhyming slang. And then came charades, well no need to explain that one, the name speaks for itself, although there was something about Nightingale Hospitals, ‘now you see them, now you don’t’, that nobody understood, least of all those who established them, never used them and then dismantled them. Ahh well, it would make sacking unvaccinated healthcare workers easier!
The highlight of Christmas day was watching the anti-totalitarian riots in Australia and Canada, whereupon the entire family concluded that you would think that they would have something better to do, such as making Facebook avatars with ‘I have had my vaccine’ written in rainbow colours around them or having an interim jab between their twice-minutely booster.
Having to vaccinate at every tick and turn is inconvenient, especially when the nearest vaccination point is 5 miles away. However, using her discount coupon from The Grimstarnian’s Covid Virtue Signalling page, little Amanda Sheep trotted off to her nearest store, proudly presented her lateral flow test and returned home with Christmas stockings full of Do-It-Yourself Coronavirus Testing Kits, the perfect companion to the Candle-Lit-Vigil Kits, which she had also bought using Virtue Signalling discount coupons from The Grimstarnian’s media website.
Then came the presents: Dick was chuffed with his map to the nearest vaccination clinic, ‘Oohh, it’s just what they’ve always wanted’; the elder brother, Boris, was given his own mobile vaccination centre ~ thus being assured of a job for life ~ he was even given a white coat with ‘I am a WHO scientist’ written on it and a Junior WHO Scientist Kit, the same one that the grown-ups had used to identify coronavirus with. Dad was content to receive a bumper pack of Bile Beans. He had been having a lot of difficulty lately adjusting to the latest propaganda ~ all those new stains! ~ and his Scrabble ability could certainly do with some kind of pill that claimed to cure everything.
Mother’s present was spectacular. She was given a brand-new bottle of vaccination paranoia tablets and a year’s free subscription to The Independent. She also joined Facebanned, a new social media site where account holders were routinely banned, blocked, barred, re-routed, suspended and eventually arrested for crimes against stupidity and for inciting logic and common sense.
Simon Sheep was given a New World Order coronavirus tie, with a Bill’s Gatepost chip inside. The beauty of this tie was that every time you thought or said something that you were not supposed to think or say the tie slowly throttled you. Thanks, Bill, you’re a brick (whoops, there goes that Windows’ spell checker again!).
At the end of the day they all had high temperatures, dry coughs and were feeling absolutely dreadful, although no one went so far as to say ‘like death warmed up’, but at least they could blame it on the Christmas alcohol. After all, it couldn’t be coronavirus, the whole family had been double jabbed and each and everyone had fitted themselves out with a strap-on mobile booster drip which, although physically inconvenient, saved an awful lot of time in running back and forth to hospitals and clinics — time which they could use to their advantage in practising social distancing and trying on their latest face masks.
Yes, it had been a lovely Christmas, and there was nothing to suggest that it would not be the same next year … and the next … and the next … and the next …
Ivan Zverev saves old German building from terminal decline
Published: 31 December 2021 ~ Restoration brings Museum to Life in Nizovie
There are good days and bad days, and Christmas day is no exception. But this year there was no need to wonder what we were going to do. If I had been in the UK, I could have put on my Christmas-cracker hat and high-tailed it to the nearest McDonald’s for a Yuletide jab, but as I was in Kaliningrad I would have to accept the next best thing, which was an invitation to attend the opening of Zverev’s museum in the village of Nizovie.
Restoration and museum comes to life in Nizovie
As long as you know where Nizovie is, the museum is impossible to miss. It is a large, red-brick, three-storey German building, set back from the road; very municipal-looking; very formal; and unmistakeably civic.
Today, its presence was even more unmissable. In addition to the soviet pennants fluttering in the breeze on either side of the imposing entrance and next to them a red sign bearing the words ‘NKO USSR, Military Commandant of Waldau’, and a large, decorated and illuminated Christmas tree on one side of the forecourt upstaged only by the pea-green 18th century carriage located on the opposite side and a very active music system, a not insubstantial crowd was gathering, some of the younger folk among it dressed in animal costumes and some among the older in the velvet-rich finery and lace that would have been worn by the well-to-do back in the 18th century.
😊Waldau Castle and Museum are a short distance from the Zverev museum, making it possible to visit all three on the same day …
Snow, and lots of it, completed a scene which for me was exceedingly 25th of December, although the meaning that I attributed to it may have been lost on the crowd, as in Russia Christmas is celebrated according to the Orthodox calendar, and thus falls later on the 7th of January.
Nevertheless, we were into the festive season and the composition all told engendered a perfect seasonal atmosphere.
Restoration brings Museum to Life in Nizovie
The official opening of the museum took place at the foot and on top of the steps leading to the main entrance. The ribbon was cut by a representative of Kaliningrad’s administration and then, after a short speech from this gentleman, Mr Ivan Zverev, owner of the building, chief restorer and curator of the museum, delivered a slightly longer one, upon completion of which up went the volume of the music and with it a herd of people who, whilst no doubt endeared by the snowy scene around them, which was extremely picturesque, could not forbear a moment longer the urgent need to throw themselves inside the warmth that the building offered.
I endured for a few minutes more, as I wanted to have my photograph taken with the man from the 18th century and his female entourage. That done, I, too, shot up the steps and into the entrance hall behind the great wooden door.
Mick Hart with re-enactors at the opening of Ivan Zverev’s renovated German building and museum in Nizovie
As I passed through the doorway, someone remarked ‘original’. It could have been me they were talking about, in which case I am glad that I did not catch the last word, but I think they meant the door, which they believed was genuinely old. The key to the door looked old, also. I did not stop to verify this as my toes were nipped and nippy, but I must say that I would not want this heavy, six-inch metal object hanging on my key ring.
The 18th century photograph taken outside had been a prelude to what awaited me on the other side of the door, a flirtation with the past possessing curious overtones of baronial medievalness and 19th century sobriety. Too many facets for immediate computation presented themselves, but the tiled flooring, stained glass partition windows, beamed and lattice-work ceilings, heavy Tudor-style wrought iron chandeliers, enamel and metal signs and, on either side of the hall, views of an eclectic profusion of bygones announced your departure from the 21st century, which, let us not be shy in saying it, can by no means be misconstrued as anything but agreeable.
Entrance Hall to Nizovie Museum
The extent of the building’s restoration to date is confined to the ground floor, but make no mistake, given the size of the building and the condition in which it was found after 10 years of neglect, the work involved so far has been nothing short of considerable.
If you were to put the plaster entirely back on the walls and mask out the curios and relics, the feeling of being back at school would be understandably justified since, in Soviet times, this is what it had been ~ Nizovie village school. Interestingly, some among today’s visitors were former pupils who attended the school in the 1960s and 70s.
Prior to its scholastic purpose, in German times the building had served the village as an all-inclusive health centre and, considering Nizovie’s diminutive size, an elaborate one at that. It had contained a dentist’s surgery, doctor’s surgery and also an apothecary.
The apothecary theme has been picked up by the building’s restorers and built into the first room on the left hand-side of the hall, which today doubled as an exhibit’s gallery and refreshment centre. The room is screened off, but not enclosed, by a decorative wrought iron framework, likewise the room opposite. This is an excellent arrangement as it affords irresistible glimpses of all that lies beyond.
Today, it was a choice of hot beverages and snacks, or, if you were so inclined, exotic and novel alcoholic infusions. Into the room we went!
The first one I sampled was a herb-based liqueur, the secret ingredient of which, or so it was whispered, is amber, over which the liquid recipe is poured and then slowly left to marinate. I took a nip of this not knowing what to expect and instantly wished I had been more greedy!
The second beverage was difficult to decant. It sat within a giant, thin-necked oblong bottle. Snow-bitten fingers and hands that looked like salmon made manoeuvring this a risky endeavour, but not one to forego a challenge, at least when it comes to alcohol, needless to say I excelled myself and was thus rewarded with a delicious glass, which then became two, of mead. Other people in the room must also have been unsure as to whether they had the dexterity to safely handle the bottle, since nobody made for the mead until I had shown them the way, after which I was quickly promoted to chief difficult bottle controller and mead dispenser extraordinaire!
Whilst drinking this pick-me-up, I was able to enjoy the many and various apothecary elements displayed in the wall-side cabinets as well as reflect favourably on specific details of restoration, for example the technique repeated throughout the building of contrasting exposed and clean brickwork with asymmetrical flowing panels of plaster.
Medicinal herbs in the apothecary at Nizovie Museum
In this room, the plastered section has been artistically decorated with large, coloured illustrations of herbs and plants, accompanied by short descriptions of their medicinal value and the curative or health-giving properties that each is said to impart. The apothecary theme is further enhanced by a line of suspended dried plants strung against the ceiling and, of course, by a multiplicity of obsolete bottles together with teeth-chilling dentistry and twinge-inducing surgical instruments.
Anaesthetised by the pleasant brew, I did, however, eventually vacate this room and, fortified as much if not more than I should be, given the time of day, I set off floating somewhat on a personal voyage of discovery.
Restoration brings Museum to Life in Nizovie
Having stopped for five minutes to enjoy the resuscitating heat puthering out from a great barrel of a wood burner, which bore an uncanny resemblance to a vintage eight-cylinder car engine, my explorations revealed that the building’s ground floor is arranged around a T-shaped profile. The entrance hall, flanked by the two rooms, has no door at its opposite end. A corridor running at right angles to it lets into rooms adjacent, and at either end of this corridor, within two symmetrical wings, a room in each is located transverse to the others.
The room on the opposite side of the entrance hall, the apothecary’s counterpart, is chocker block, mostly with relics of a domestic nature, ranging from kitchen utensils to telephones, whilst the end room in the wing on the right contains larger, more bulky household devices and many other items and implements once commonplace to gardening and agricultural work. All this was good, educational and insightful stuff from the past, reminding us that before the universality of plastic everything from watering cans to ‘washing machines’ had been manufactured from heavy, solid materials including, but not limited to, galvanised steel, wrought iron and wood.
The most inspiring and thought-provoking of the museum’s exhibit rooms are, without question, the one themed around bygone motorcycles, associated vehicle parts and ephemera and the other which is devoted to the Second World War.
As a westerner, the two-wheeled Soviet transport displayed offered me an intriguing chance to compare the similarities of and differences between the mopeds and motorbikes used in postwar Soviet Russia with models I was familiar with in the UK that had been manufactured and ridden in an era contemporaneous to that of their Russian counterparts.
This room also contains a number of enamel wall signs, most of them German, some advertising motor oils, others vehicle requisites.
These signs are a particular favourite of mine and were, and no doubt still are, highly sought-after by collectors and interior designers. When we owned and ran our UK-based antique and vintage emporium enamel signs were never out of demand.
The Nizovie exhibition of Soviet war memorabilia is really in a class of its own. Naturally, it helps with a display of this kind that the environment in which it is housed has a stark, industrial feel to it, a backdrop which comes naturally to buildings of a certain age where the walls and floors are made of brick, the ceilings lined with thick oak beams and the lighting commercial in character.
Mr Zverev and his helpers have spared nothing creatively in an effort to frame the exhibits in such a way that they guarantee emotivity.
Two explicitly detailed and dramatic murals, one a battle scene raging above and around Königsberg Castle, the other a depiction of vanquished Hitler youth and battle-exhausted German soldiers forlornly resigned to their fate as they huddle against the walls of a bomb-gutted Königsberg Cathedral, capture the hell of war in its devastating consequences for culture and humanity.
Suffering and death are also served up in two macabre symbolic compositions: one is a life-sized skeleton dressed in a German greatcoat wearing a gas mask; the other, aligned above him, is a wall painting of a Nazi officer in full military uniform locked behind a grid of real iron bars. The mask used for the face in this depiction has allowed the artist to twist and distort it into a crumpled agony of bewildered despair.
Displayed against this sensory backdrop is a diverse assortment of German and Soviet field gear, some excavated others well-preserved, as well as small arms, edged weapons, military uniforms, flags and banners and examples of heavier weapons such as the Maxim M1910, Degtyaryov machine gun DP-27 and what I think may be a tripod-mounted German MG34 anti-aircraft gun. A particularly interesting exhibit is the military motorbike and sidecar combination fully equipped with machine guns.
Another valuable asset was the war room’s guide — a knowledgeable re-enactor dressed in full Soviet combat uniform. As my Russian is slow and still has a few shell holes in it waiting to be plugged, the fact that this particular Russian infantryman could speak good English and, as with most re-enactors, was a mine of information (Did you get it? ‘Mine’ of information? Alright, well you do better!) proved most beneficial.
Mick Hart with Soviet re-enactor in the war room at Ivan Zverev’s museum
In conclusion, Ivan Zverev’s red-bricked building, a one-time German centre for a doctor’s, dentist’s and apothecary, which later became a Soviet school, has been rescued from extinction. It is a deserving restoration project, a first-class example of the architectural style of its time and the culture from which it derives, which now, in addition to its intrinsic merit, accommodates, thanks to Mr Zverev, a unique historical exposition that combines the satisfaction of entertainment with an improved understanding of the socio-cultural timeline of this fascinating region.
All in all, I must say that this Christmas Day was one to remember. Thank you, Ivan Zverev, for your gracious invitation!
Ivan Zverev with Olga Hart, Nizovie
Ivan Zverev and the Zverev Creation Ivan Zverev, the inspiration behind the restoration of the former Soviet school and medical centre in the village of Nizovie, is a Kaliningrad businessman. He purchased the derelict school after a long search for somewhere close to Kaliningrad where he could establish a museum dedicated to the history of Königsberg and its territory which would encompass its pre-war German, wartime and Soviet periods.
Already, a percentage of that vision has been brought to fruition with exhibitions devoted to a German pharmacy, German post office, motorcycles of the 1960s and 70s (a personal interest of Mr Zverev’s), a WWII exposition and artefacts pertaining to gardening and agriculture. Mr Zverev has also obtained thousands of photographs and associated documentation relating to the building when it was a school, which he intends to use as a basis for a classroom diorama.
Ivan Zverev is a hands-on restorer. He fully understood from the outset that the restoration of a building as large and run down as Nizovie School would be no undertaking for the faint hearted, but often the hard graft that underscores labour for love is not without its special compensations, and Ivan was rewarded for his hard work.
In a hitherto unknown or forgotten cellar, exciting finds were unearthed ~ a mummified mouse in a mousetrap (possibly of German ancestry), shelves containing cans of unopened food and ~ joy upon joys ~ a real German motorbike in remarkably good condition!
In a disused well at the back of the building a further discovery was made, which Ivan Zverev considers to be one of the most poignant and historically valuable. It is a white enamel dentist’s sign, inscribed in German ‘Dental Practice, Kai Marx, Dentist’. As this find ties in with at least one important vocational aspect of the building’s history, it now has pride of place in Nizovie’s entrance hall.
Ivan Zverev’s business and cultural curriculum vitae testify to a long-standing interest in and love for the past, especially for the land in which he lives and for the Soviet era in general. It is also reflected in his passion for acquiring antiques and collectable and in ‘Chevalier’, the quirky mediaeval-styled restaurant which he conceived, created, owns and operates in Alexander Kosmodemyansky, a village outlying Kaliningrad.
Published: 23 December 2021 How to deal with a vaccinated liberal family member
Preamble
As the stigmatisation of the unvaccinated steps up a gear, creating that two-tier society which Nigel Farage so accurately predicted a few weeks ago, the relentless drive to coerce people into having a vaccine which they neither trust nor want takes on a more cynical and sinister nature, targeting families in a blatant attempt to pit one member against the other using sanctimony, fear and guilt as weapons. Thus, we see yet another article following in the footsteps of the two I examined earlier in my posts, The Liberal Solution to Anti-vaxxers and Don’t let that man spoil your vaccinated Christmas!, titled ‘How to deal with unvaccinated family members at Christmas’1 from The Independent (Independent my arse! Who said that?).
In order to level the playing field a little, I thought it only fair that consideration should be given to the conundrum of how to deal with an unwanted guest from the point of view of an unvaccinated family, whose only wish is to spend a normal family Christmas free from the constraints and self-righteous sermonising that so often is par for the course with the uneasy vaccinated. I make no apology for wedding the vaccinated example in my ‘How to deal with …’ version to a specific ideology as, from what I hear, see, read and experience, it is generally people of this persuasion who are the most vocal, vociferous and intransigently bigoted and, therefore unsurprisingly, the most obsessed and controlling. It is what fear does.
How to deal with a vaccinated liberal family member at Christmas
Christmas comes but once a year and with it that old chestnut of yet another coronavirus variant. Last Christmas it was just plain old Covid-19, but for Christmas 2021 it’s been given a jolly name, Omicron, known by its friends as Moronic, and news of its alarming rate of transmission, dramatic and sensationalised, is continuing to spread rapidly around the UK, thanks to the UK media. Bad news sells, folks!
A figure pulled out of nowhere claims that more than a million people will ruin their Christmases by subjecting themselves to self-isolation, which is good news for lonely guys who will not feel half as embarrassed sitting at home with the budgerigar, a meal for one, no children, as the courts gave custody to the wife, whilst spending Christmas in a rented flat as the wife got the family home. It’s called equality ~ of the liberal kind.
Never mind, they can always console themselves with a daily dose of Coronavirus statistics. Friday 17 December was an important day in the coronavirus statistic watchers’ calendar. On this day, so the media solemnly swears, there was more coronavirus infections than on any other: 93,000 (so they tell us!). But take heart, rumour has it that two pricks of Pharter’s Covid-19 vaccine offer a whopping great 70 per cent protection against whistling off to hospital, and a man who plays Bingo, and knows all about numbers, has said that it also gives 33 per cent protection against getting it. But he’s a lonely guy who works for a liberal newspaper, so he probably doesn’t get it, or get it very often, and even if he did get it, it would most likely be in a place where most of us would not want it.
And it really wouldn’t be a Coronavirus Christmas without mentioning boosters, so let it be known that ‘early tests’ indicate ~ and let’s face it, everything about the vaccine is an ‘early test’ (too early) ~ that yet another Pharter’s prick, a booster, may be all that’s needed to convince omicron to sling its hook and go and look for a less polluted body.
In the meantime, you could not do any worse than click on the government website, where it is suggested that getting fully vaccinated is the best way of protecting yourself from continual harassment about getting vaccinated.
Funnily enough, not everybody is buying it. It was written on a fag packet that one-third of Londoninstaners (‘Oh, maybe it’s because they’re not Londoners …’) were sticking two fingers up at all of it and adopting an attitude of, ‘Well, you can F!*K Right Off!’. But this hasn’t stopped the boats coming.
Nevertheless, the chances are that when families get together this Christmas, with no intention of self-isolating ~ who is going to miss out on all that free grub and booze ~ some of them might be vaccinated! There is also the possibility that some of them might be liberal!
This could be a cause for real concern, since, according to what everyone knows, mixing with vaccinated liberals means that you’re 20 times more likely to be subject to ranting, raving, frothing at the mouth and scenes of toy-throwing hyperventilation than you are of catching coronavirus.
But how do you tactfully approach the subject with family members that have this misfortune? And what if they, the vaccinated, are suffering from the delusion that you are willing to let them doss at your home over Christmas? And is there the slightest possibility of avoiding boring conversations about coronavirus bullshit when you know full well that even an unvaccinated liberal (if there is such a thing) can never resist bringing his, her or its, Guardian-inspired nonsense into the house, even when you have asked them to wipe their boots.
Dealing with a vaccinated liberal family member at Christmas
A man who always wanted to be a counsellor (he’s liberal) but didn’t know how to spell it so ended up a councillor instead, came out with the best understatement that anyone has heard since Waddington’s invented the family game Rowopoly, namely that Christmas can be a stressful time.
“Considering that last year we were all lucky not to spend Christmas together,” said this man, “the usual family rows that we would have had may well have been simmering for a good twelve months. Add to the toxic mix a family member, or two, who are vaccine control freaks and readers of The Independent and someone could well end up flying across the festive table. Being aware of this, and coming prepared with a first aid kit and, if you live in London, a stab vest or two, could be prudent.”
The man, whom everyone is rather glad is not a family member, for if he was coming for Christmas dinner he would be the first to have his head pushed into the trifle, went on to counsel that the issue of vaccinations will certainly come up if one or more of your vaccinated family is a liberal, as they won’t be able to keep their gobs shut ~ do they ever!
Not wanting to make us any more neurotic than we are at present, thanks to endless twaddle about coronavirus, the man, who would do better keeping his pseudo-psychology to himself, suggested that the best thing we could do to prepare ourselves for a heated Christmas row was to practice what it was we were going to say to the vaccinated lefty and get the boot in first. A beginner’s course in martial arse would be advisable, which you will not be able to take without a vaccination passport. The prickless will just have to rely on the way they usually deal with conflict, which might mean falling back on those stress-relieving breathing exercises or, alternatively, unwrapping that baseball bat Christmas present ahead of the festivities.
Asking yourself questions like, “How do I usually approach conflict? What triggers my anger more than anything else?” won’t help any if the answer is a self-righteous vaccinated lefty, but at least you could say so, later, in court.
In the last and honest analysis, heated discussions have the unfortunate habit of breaking out when they want to, so nothing that you do to prevent one from happening will work, especially after you’ve stuffed yourself with mounds of grub, knocked back several G&Ts and swilled two bottles of red. The best thing to do is ditch the psychobabble and brace yourself for a bumpy ride. After all, it is Christmas, and a good old family bust-up is as traditional as wrapping the cat in holly and clipping a piece of mistletoe to the belt buckle of your trousers.
If the vaccinated do bring up the topic of vaccination, which they will, stay cool, be curious, pretend to listen to what the other person is saying, no matter how stupid it is, don’t jump to the right conclusions ~ keep them to yourself ~ and if all else fails offer the argumentative vaccinated more roast potatoes, using your roast potato mandate.
Just to ensure that there is no possibility of avoiding a family rift, which will divide the family for ever, you could always take the following steps.
Health advice on enduring Christmas with vaccinated family members (especially if they are liberal)
Don’t ask everyone to wear masks unless it is part of a silly Christmas party game
Apparently, some clown from a university in America has advised that if you are a vaccinated family inviting unvaccinated family members to join you on Christmas Day, you should insist that everyone wears masks, including children over two years of age. As there is no real evidence that masks are effective and, in fact, may do more harm than good, our advice is stick to the paper hats. They are a lot jollier and, unless you want to look especially stupid on your Christmas photos this year, more so than when wearing a paper hat, common sense and logic would suggest that what the gentleman from the university in America is telling you is a lot of unfortunate bollocks. Conversely, therefore, if you are an unvaccinated family and can think of no way out but to invite vaccinated relatives, by all means let them wear masks. Eating and drinking may be a little tricky for them, but at least by combining these activities with a mask the possibility of receiving a lecture on why you should be wearing one and choking along with them should be considerably reduced.
Ask vaccinated liberal guests to provide proof of a recent psychiatric test
The same man from the American university, Professor Twat, suggested that in the case of a vaccinated family inviting unvaccinated guests, the vaccinated should be ordered to take a lateral flow test? Why would anyone want to have their drains inspected just because its Christmas? Oh, yes, with all that gutsing and swilling it could be a good idea.
We suggest unvaccinated families inviting vaccinated guests not to be so stupid. We all know that vaccinations do not stop the spread of coronavirus but insulting the guests with apartheid-type requests prior to the big day could precipitate the very bust-up that you are trying to avoid, or at least save for later.
However, since we are led to believe that one in three people with Covid-19 do not have any symptoms, it is not inconceivable that one in three vaccinated family members might not show symptoms of voting Labour, although hard experience has taught us that asymptomatic Labour supporters are a very rare thing indeed. So just ask them to bring along proof of a recent psychiatric report on why they or anybody else for that matter would want to vote Labour and tell them as logically as you can that since they could be spreading the liberal virus without knowing it, testing themselves repeatedly, by reciting their doctrines in front of the mirror, might eventually lead to a full recovery from something they did not know that they had.
Try to limit the number of households
Professor T advises that limiting the number of people gathering at Christmas, especially the vaccinated, might not stop coronavirus spreading, but it will ‘sure as hell, boy!’ reduce the risk of someone getting punched on the snout. He fails to warn, however, that cherry picking who comes and who does not is a failsafe way of assuring that never again will the family be united. But then, isn’t this what it’s all about!
If possible, host events outside
With advice like this I hope to get a job as a UK government health advisor. But, as loony as it may sound, it is not without merit. As a method of avoiding coronavirus uptake by reducing the risk of airborne transmission it is spot on, especially if you are one of a group and you all sit upwind. Even better, however, is the possibility it offers for ‘dealing with’ that vaccinated liberal. It works whether your house has a garden or not. Just politely ask the vaccinated liberal to sit outside in the garden or, alternatively, on the pavement and close the door. If he or she is vaccinated, wearing a mask and you are treating him or her (or it, or other) to the six-foot distancing rule, there is nothing at all to complain of. Just make sure that the windows are closed, the double-glazing is of reasonable quality and pray for a fall of snow.
Lovely jubbly, job done. Now sit back and enjoy Christmas. You’ve earnt it!😌
Published: 22 December 2021 ~ Don’t let that man spoil your vaccinated Christmas!
In a previous post, The Liberal Solution to Anti-vaxxers, I promised that I would turn left towards The Guardian (Guardian of what? You may well ask, young white man!), and place before you, for your learned consideration, a big, sickly dollop of icing from the cake which the liberals want to have and also want to eat. Liberty, freedom of choice, civil liberties; or rules, regulations, restrictions ~ which is it to be?
The article in question, ‘Someone in my family won’t get the vaccine — should we still spend Christmas with them?1’ is one of those agony aunt respond-type pieces, and believe you me it is agonising.
Some bod writes into Auntie complaining about an awful relative who refuses to have the vaccine, so what should they do? This naughty, naughty man horrified them last Christmas, when Mr and Mrs Fully Vaxxed and their fully vaxxed family objected to his unvaccinated presence in their self-isolation unit, aka home, where he could easily infect them with coronavirus (But I thought you said that they were all fully vaccinated?) and bugger me if he’s not about to do it again!
Auntie Agony actually solves the dilemma in the first sentence. Tell him that as he does not want to be vaccinated to shove off. Most likely he would rather not spend Christmas huddled up in a mask looking like a broken bauble hanging on the terror tree anyway. But the good advice from the Christmas tree fairy (bemasked, 6 feet away and fully vaccinated) suddenly becomes a vehicle for ‘Get Your Vaccination Now!’, citing all sorts of popular statistics, some pushed by some scientists, some pulled by others.
Shock and horror, however! The ‘refusenik’ (a liberal ‘thing’) as opposed to the ‘accept-twits’, may not be such a leper as the kids! For scientists tell us ~ those that have not been deplatformed ~ that children who have not been vaccinated, ie because they are too young, might be more dangerous Covid spreaders than the party-pooper with no prick.
Considering all the horrible stories coming out of the UK involving psychiatric-ward parents, we could venture that this is not the best time to demonise children in what might be misconstrued as an attempt to lower the age for mandatory vaccination, something surely which nobody, not even in their wildest liberal mind, would wish for?
Don’t let that man spoil your vaccinated Christmas!
In all fairness, one or two sensible points are made in this piece, but did they have to include that awful, cheesy stock photo of old middle-class gramps sitting in his armchair with a face mask wrapped around his mug, wearing that silly Christmas sweater whilst his granddaughter (One would hope it’s his granddaughter. He doesn’t work for the BBC, does he?) sits at the table unwrapping a Christmas present also happily swaddled in a regulation mug mask? It’s amazing what they put in Christmas crackers these days, isn’t it? Perhaps, not.
The Independent (Independent My Arse! Who said that?), not to be outgunned in the ‘let’s spoil Christmas for them’ department, ramps it up a notch with their own version of I’m Dreaming of a Vaccinated Christmas, with a similar article in which the family becomes a target for seasonal separatism along the divisive line of the ‘jabs’ and ‘jab nots’.
More about that later! 😂
Bedtime reading from The Lancet COVID-19: stigmatising the unvaccinated is not justified The Lancet is a peer-reviewed general medical journal published weekly. It is one of the world’s oldest and respected general medical journals.
Published: 21 December 2021 ~ Victor Ryabinin Art Exhibition Kaliningrad opens December 2021
An art exhibition devoted to the works of our late friend Victor Ryabinin opens at The Kaliningrad Regional Museum of History and Arts on 23 December 2021. The exhibition will run until 31 December 2022.
He [Victor Ryabinin] was a breath of fresh air in my understanding of art. He was so alive in comparison with many of the other teachers. He ignited our imagination. He was not backward in pointing out our mistakes, but he inspired! And he took a sincere interest in our artistic development, which extended beyond the classroom.
Stanislav Konovalov, friend & art student of Victor Ryabinin
Details of Victor, the man and artist, can be found by accessing the links below:
“When I wrote the draft to {Victor Ryabinin’s biographical essay}, I wrote that I believe there is no equal to him in Kaliningrad — I still believe he has no equal.”
Boris Nisnevich, author
Victor Ryabinin Art Exhibition Kaliningrad
The Kaliningrad Regional Museum of History and Arts is located close to the bank of Kaliningrad’s Lower Pond.
Originally Königsberg’s city hall (Stadthalle) and also a performing arts centre, the impressive, multi-roomed building was constructed in 1912 by the Berlin architect Richard Zeil.
In its pre-war glory days, the Stadhalle boasted three concert halls, a restaurant and a well-appointed garden cafe that looked out over the castle pond, Schlossteich.
As with most of Königsberg, the building suffered extensive damage during the Allied bombing raid that took place on 26 August 1944. It took five years to restore the building, from 1981 to 1986.
The museum has five halls, each one devoted to a different theme: Nature, Archaeology, Regional History, War Room & the Post-war History of the Region.
Essential details:
The Kaliningrad Regional Museum of History and Arts 236016, Kaliningrad, St. Clinical, 21
A response to ‘What to do about the Anti-vaxxers ~ there are three options’
Published: 20 December 2021 ~ The Liberal solution to Anti-vaxxers
The two things ~ two of many ~ that liberals are not very good at, but believe they are, is twisting their square-pegged ideology into the round holes of democracy and, when it suits them, which is most of the time, lathering a thick and sickly synthetic icing of Holier Than Thou on the cake that they want to have and eat.
Hence, the two-faced two faces of liberalism, in all its disingenuous and dissimulating tawdriness, emerges yet again in two media articles, one from The Independent (The Independent My Arse! Who said that?) and the other from The Guardian (The Guardian of what?), both articles seemingly wrestling with the question, how can people who are reluctant to have a ‘Friday afternoon vaccine’ pumped into their bodies be compelled to do so?
Unless you understand the liberal way, you might ask yourself the question, how could anyone of this political persuasion pursue such gross illiberalism and still try to pass themselves off as the champions of equality, human rights and civil liberties? It’s called ulterior motive.
The Liberal Solution to Anti-vaxxers
Let us take a gander at that first article, the one from The Independent1, and deal with the cynical iced-bun version in a later post.
What I personally enjoyed about the first article was its compromising headline. It immediately set the tone of the piece, condescending and arrogant, and left me in no doubt that what I was about to read would be a consummate example of illiberal neoliberalism.
Here is that headline: ‘What to do about the Anti-vaxxers ~ there are three options’1.
There is nothing new about condescension and arrogance from illiberal-liberal sources, it is their stock-in-trade, their signature, but what I did find interesting in the mindset of this piece and the ideological perspective from which it is written was the schematic way in which a solution to the anti-vaxxer problem had been approached, mapped out and presented.
This article has all the makings of a future historical document, something remarkably similar to those which, back in 1940s’ Germany, would have been served up in an emblem-impressed file and handed around to those who sat in judgement in the offices of Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse 8.
Before outlining and analysing the various solutions to the anti-vaxxer problem, the document pedals generalisations and pushes assumptions that would make even the most dissembling fact checker blush:
These are:
1. “The threat to society at large from Omicron comes not from the virus itself but from pressures on the NHS from rapidly growing numbers of serious infections among the unvaccinated.”
Do your own research, compile your own statistics: Ask yourself the question, how many people do you know who are double-jabbed and boostered who have still gone on to contract the virus? We know of several to date. We also know several unvaccinated people who have had coronavirus but had a mild version and treated themselves at home.
2. “The pressures are felt by NHS staff but also those whose treatment for other diseases is disrupted or postponed.”
Response: The NHS is under pressure, there is no doubt about that, but a substantial proportion of that pressure comes from hoards of terrified people running to doctors and hospitals in response to the terror tactics used by the UK media. Some have been wise to present with their symptoms; others have merely created longer queues and consumed valuable GP time, suffering from nothing more than abject panic. The majority of Brits who are vaccinated are putting further pressure on the NHS by running back to it in droves for more shots as instructed by their government, boosters which might or might not protect them ~ the degree to which they do, if they do, is unsubstantiated ~ from the unfortunate, but who can say not apt, anagrammatic Covid variant Moronic. How can the NHS not be under pressure, ie “GPs will be told to cancel appointments to dedicate resources to offering vaccines to every UK adult by the end of December2.”
It is painfully true that treatment for other diseases is being disrupted or postponed, which is inexcusable but quite understandable. It is a deplorable situation which came about when the National Health Service ceased to be the National Health Service and became instead the Covid Health Service. Note the following: “Britain’s National Health Service was stretched to the limit but never overwhelmed.” The NHS is stretched to the limit because it cannot cope on a day-to-day basis even without the Covid situation, the obvious reason being that the UK is over-populated, but, hey ho, any excuse, and let’s face it Covid is the best one yet. Even better now that the problems of the NHS can be dumped on the doorsteps of the evil unvaccinated.
How does this alleged political preoccupation with the wellbeing of the NHS and healthcare workers stack up against threats such as this: ‘60,000 care workers face sack after being told to get vaccine jab or lose job’3
3. “The idea that unvaccinated people should be treated differently and discriminated against as a conscious policy runs into several objections. The first is widely heard but weak: that people have a basic right to exercise a choice not to be jabbed. But if that exercise of choice harms others, it is not a valid choice. We do not allow motorists to choose to drive the wrong way down a motorway or allow people to choose to hold noisy, all-night, parties whenever they wish.”
Response in two parts: (a) Of course people have as much right not to be jabbed as Big Pharma, governments and policy makers pushing vaccine mandates assume that they have the right to hide behind a get-out-clause, a disclaimer, that protects them from all and any responsibility in the event of adverse side-effects including, but not exclusive to, fatalities. If the vaccine is perfectly safe, then the above organisations and our democratically elected representatives, should put up or shut up! ‘Papers Please!’ ‘Compensation Please!’ ‘Or even on trial for murder please!’ But, hey wait a minute, what about the scientific evidence that categorically states that the vaccine is as safe as houses (what was that crash? Negative equity?) What about the deplatforming, social media censorship, conflicting statements from once respected medical professionals and scientists. Sorry, I forgot, they all turned into conspiracy theorists. It happened overnight.
(b) “We do not allow motorists to choose to drive the wrong way down a motorway because they know that it would be a silly and rather dangerous thing to do.” Motorists do not need politicians to instruct them in this fact. By the same logic, they do not need politicians to tell them to drive over Vaccine Cliff.
“[We do not] allow people to choose to hold noisy, all-night, parties whenever they wish.” I can assure you that you do (dring, dring: “Is that the police? There’s a lot of noise coming from my neighbour’s house …”. “Sorry, Sir, that’s nothing to do with us.”) and, in certain cases it would seem, hold governmental parties whilst instructing the entire population of the UK that it must refrain from doing so ~ or else!
4. “Elected ethnic minority figures, such as the Mayor of London, have given strong, clear leadership on the need for vaccination.”
Response: He is fulfilling the political function that an ‘elected ethnic minority figure’ is paid to do. That is why he has been installed, precisely for this purpose. Sadly, but evidently, a lot of people just don’t trust the man.
5. “This is a classic case of the distinction between “freedoms from” and “freedoms to”. It is objectionable that the freedom of a majority from restrictions on their daily lives might be removed by the freedom of a minority to refuse vaccination.”
Response: This is a perfect example of twisting square liberal pegs into the round holes of logic, to which I referred earlier. It’s similar to ‘you must not discriminate against minorities’ and then arguing for ‘positive discrimination for minorities’ and being banned from social media for ‘inciting racial hatred’ when what you have really been banned for is posting something that challenges liberal fraudulence. In other words, it is playing with words to protect a flawed ideology and is a facile attempt to disguise the U-turn taken.
The distinction between ‘freedoms from’ and ‘freedoms to’ is a semantic nicety acceptable perhaps at the vicar’s tea party (keep your distance, please!) over a game of Scrabble, but when used in a debate on incarceration by Covid it simply becomes a ploy to entice the vaccinated into believing that their freedoms are inextricably linked to the opposing views of anti-vaxxers, when lockdowns, as well as other restrictions, are indiscriminately executed and at the proverbial drop of a hat. Case in point, it was announced today [18/12/2021] that a two-week ‘circuit-breaking’ lockdown could be brought into force before Christmas across the UK. This restriction on daily life will no doubt go ahead, and when it does it will affect everyone, despite the fact that the majority of UKers are labelled as fully vaccinated. This restriction, as with enforced mask wearing, has no bearing whatsoever on who is vaccinated and who is not. It is a State embargo on freedom, for which there is no trade-off.
In the real world, however, in real democracies, where ‘freedom’ is supposedly sacrosanct, you do not go around forcing people to take potentially harmful biological substances which, for the sake of expediency, or so it was originally reported, could not be effectively tested either for safety or for efficacy by normal standard protocols. If this is ‘fake news’, then lay the blame on mainstream media. As for the negative use of ‘minority’, ie “the freedom of a minority to refuse vaccination”, whatever happened to the liberal obsession with cossetting and protecting minorities?
4. “Furthermore, the experience of France and other European countries is that, faced with serious barriers, large numbers of unvaccinated people drop their objections to vaccination very quickly. France was regarded as implacably anti-vax; but quite suddenly that has changed.”
Response: Wooh! Look at the arrogance and control-freakiness in that statement! ‘Faced with serious barriers’ = force, brownshirt bully-boy tactics, open confrontation. France is still ‘implacably anti-vax’. Hey, Mr Neoliberal have you forgotten to pay your TV licence?
Jack Boot was one of my favourite dancers; he really set the tone. And the tone having been struck in this ‘oh so very brimming over with the milk of human liberalism’ piece, we now come to the real nitty-gritty. The three proposals on what to do with anti-vaxxers.
The Liberal Solution to Anti-vaxxers
All rise. Court in Session. His Lord Justice Liberal-Lefty Presiding!
The whole thing had become so devilishly and blood-curdling juicy by the time I had read this far that I was compelled to put away the other fiction that I had been reading, penned by the Marquis de Sade, to focus solely upon what demoniacal torture the Chief Inquisitor had up his sleeve for those sub-human anti-vaxxers (clap of thunder off-stage and devilish laughter!!!).
And, on the conveyor belt tonight!
1. Compulsion through employment conditions [meaning get vaccinated with a potentially harmful substance or lose your job: very liberal, I must say!]
2. Changes to rights of treatment under the NHS [no treatment unless you are a prick ~ no doubt with a refund on NI contributions; well, I liberal never!]
3. A more comprehensive vaccine passport system [not allowed to go anywhere ‘Papers Please! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!].
The architect of the solutions document takes a pause at this point whilst he mulls over the consequences of brownshirt tactics but, seeing a dangerous precedent in this, resorts instead to name calling. “It is, of course, impractical and unacceptable to have ‘refuseniks’ (Ha! Ha! is this a play on ‘Beatniks’? Who remembers those? And what does that make the vaccinated? By default, Accepttwits?) dragged away, held down and forcefully injected. Oh shucks, come on, why not? Oh yes, I just remembered, we are supposed to be living in a democracy, aren’t we? And then, of course, there is that old but sensible adage: ‘Those who live by the sword die by the sword’ and ‘violence begets violence’ and lots of other unpleasant ‘don’t go there stuff’ to do with vendettas, revenge and repercussions. That’s a point? Are security details and personal bodyguards subject to the ‘condition of employment’ policy’?
The writer does note with unbridled satisfaction that NHS and care staff face forced vaccination as a ‘condition of their employment’. In other words ‘Get vaccinated or get the boot!’ He acknowledges that some ‘quality staff’ may not comply and will presumably ‘have to be let go’, but considers this eventuality to be perfectly acceptable collateral damage, when only a moment ago he was whacking anti-vaxxers around the head with the be-it-on-your-conscience stick, asserting in no uncertain terms that the NHS must be protected and that NHS staff face impossible stress and pressure. Er, doh, am I missing something here?
Surely, any examples that need to be made for the ‘condition of employment’ clause could be more effectively applied by rooting out those MPs who are refusing to take the jab or, better still, some of those who have indiscriminately had it and are pressuring others to ‘make the same mistake’. I am sure that the general public would welcome this with open arms, whereas they may not understand, with or without their jabs, how culling medical staff at a time when they are desperately needed solves anything, apart perhaps from justifying the daily death rate figures and blaming it all on anti-vaxxers.
Do you know, there is so much that is fundamentally wrong about this article that it makes you want to jump in the air and rejoice that the Liberal Party is where it should be, at the bottom of the bin just below the potato peelings. Let’s hope that North Shropshire is a blip on the protest vote graph: Heaven help this poor country if these twits are ever given the key to number 10!
Sorry for that emotional outburst. I hope I’m not turning liberal.
Moving on to point number two, ‘Changes to rights of NHS treatments’. This gets the writer into a ‘right old two and eight’. He starts badly with an inadmissible concept, waffles on in an attempt to prove that he really is a nice liberal and descends into nowhere land. So, no need to concern ourselves with that.
So, it’s on to point number 3, the final solution.
And, tonight’s star prize is … Yes, you’ve guessed it ~more extreme vaccine passports (demoniacal chuckle!!!)
The gist is that the nice liberal man who wrote this compassionate article is eager to see the ‘minimal’ model of vaccine passports adopted in England recast in the image of the more ‘extreme version’, which is the one that is causing riots and mayhem in totalitarian Austria. Chilling stuff comes next with his prophesising comment that “If the Omicron wave gets out of control the UK will move inexorably in [the] Austrian direction.” Place your bets, place your bets (Its, Others and What Have Yous), will the Omicron wave get out of control in the UK …? That’s as rhetorical as do we need a new script writer for the popular Covid-19 soap opera Coronavirus Streets?
“Not much happening on Coronavirus Streets tonight, love. Just a lot of people ignoring the lockdown laws, trashing the streets of the UK and those liberal-fascists running around in leather coats and trilbies, saying ‘Papers Please!!”
The article, ‘What to do about the Anti-vaxxers ~ there are three options’, fizzles, futts and farts out on the smug prediction that a more rigorous vaccination passport system (which, incidentally the UK government vowed we would never have ~ lucky then that Omicron came along, and just before Christmas at that), will, by effectively confining anti-vaxxers to their homes except for essential shopping ~ bog rolls, and the like ~ enable the ‘socially responsible’ (the ones that stand to attention on the command of ‘Papers Please!’ Woof, Woof) to enjoy all the freedoms that our wonderful democracy can offer, such as going to work, for example, presumably to earn enough money to pay the benefits of the 10 million minority or more squirrelled away in their homes.
The writer concludes his final solution project with the ultimate act of liberal hypocrisy by playing word games with what freedom is and freedom means, to wit (he is, isn’t he!) that by some strange twisting of square pegs into round holes, the systematic curtailing of freedoms for the obdurate few will eventually lead to freedom for all. Having delivered his ‘must be cruel to be kind’ curtain call, he then gazes steadfastly into his crystal balls and, like a new mutation called Prophet, let’s us in on the secret that we will all be where we want to be, or is that all be where they want us to be, come 2022.
Master plans such as this are about as funny as the prospect of the Liberals coming to power. Thankfully, from the way the tarot cards have been played in ‘What to do about the anti-vaxxers … ‘ , I think we can safely say that such an unmitigated catastrophe is unlikely to happen soon and, may we add, hopefully never will.
All you need to be aware of is that they are now saying openly what they have been thinking for a long time. It is your choice whether or not to go on swallowing the sugar-coated pill ~ ‘Freedom’, ‘Freedom of Speech’, ‘Democracy’, ‘Civil Liberties’, ‘Equality’ and so on ~ or reject it as placebo on the evidence of the totalitarian policies that they are implementing across Europe and also, unbelievably, in the UK. At least you have a choice with the sugar-coated pill, which is more than can be said for the Covid-19 vaccine. 😉
Papers Please!!
Please see my following post, scheduled after a beer or two, on the ‘sickly iced bun’ from The Guardian.
Comment:
As the vaccinated are still capable of catching and spreading the virus after the miracle ‘fast-track vaccine’, why not lock them down instead? What’s the point of them vaccinating hundreds of times, mixing with each other and then spreading new strains? By locking down the majority, more NHS workers can safely lose their jobs and with less people to care for we can protect the NHS, if only from bullshit. (Don’t forget to stop the boats arriving first!) Much better to have the majority under lock and key and the minority wandering around. They can be given Unvaccinated Passports and be made to go to work to pay for the keep of the obedient vaccinated. Just give the vaccinated congratulatory Obedience Certificates and let them lounge at home. Good dog! ~ Mr I.M. Crufts
Customer: That’s a small piece of freedom. How much is it? Purveyor of lies: 33 vaccinations and 16 boosters, please. Customer: When will Complete Freedom be available. Purveyor of lies: Soon, soon. In the meantime would you like another piece of Freedom. I hear it’s going up tomorrow by another 7 boosters!
