Category Archives: Meanwhile in the UK

MEANWHILE IN THE UK

Meanwhile in the UK by Mick Hart, an expat Englishman living in Kaliningrad. A category of the blog expatkaliningrad.com

Meanwhile in the UK is a category of my blog expatkaliningrad.com. At its inception, I had fully intended it to be a minor category, allowing me to comment from time to time on UK current affairs but mainly to include innocuous pieces of a nostalgic or historical nature pertaining to life in the UK, possibly more as it was then than as it is now, and then along came coronavirus which, as we know, changed everything. At the time of writing (3 June 2020), thanks to coronavirus, this category would appear to contain as many if not more posts than some of  the categories that I had envisaged would be salient, with due deference to my Diary category (2019/2020) which, again influenced by coronavirus, has expanded through my ‘Diary of a Self-isolator’ articles, a series that focuses specifically on Covid-19 in the Kaliningrad region and how the legal rules and social obligations enacted here to better control the virus have impacted our daily life.

MEANWHILE in the UK contains too many entries to preview in this category post, but as of 3 June 2020, the contents of this category comprise the following articles, arranged chronologically:

Independence Day: Freedom from the EU

Talking Wollocks

Dad’s Army by Roger Corman

Being British is Bliss

Chastised & Locked Down

A Brother Calls

Claptrap ~ It’s Contagious!

Coronavirus & Rights: an Unholy Alliance

Coronavirus warning: Speech impediment could be new dastardly coronavirus symptom

I don’t believe in could anymore

Self-isolating/Lockdown: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

It’s a great time to be a hypochondriac

LOCKDOWN! ~ the game that everyone is talking about …

At least we can all die laughing

EXIT STRATEGY ~ a new bored game

How to tell The New Normal from your elbow

The Sorry State We Live In

Banners need a course in banners ~ and the rest

Clueless ~ a World Health Board Game

So, what are we to believe and how should we proceed?

Lockdown not working

[caption id="attachment_1339" align="alignnone" width="225"]Meanwhile in the UK Hello! Hello! Hello![/caption] [caption id="attachment_1228" align="alignnone" width="300"]UK LOCKDOWN new board game UK Lockdown ~ a new board game to take your mind off lockdown[/caption]

Meanwhile in the UK

I am aware that the tone and, indeed, the very composition of these pieces may not be to everybody’s taste. Quite obviously they are not supposed to be, so I shall not waste anybody’s time pretending that I feel in the least bit sorry about that. England is a great country ~ and the other chunks attached to it are not that bad either ~ BUT … (could this be an acronym for Britain Undermined Totally? Or is the only thing missing …TOCK?). He sang, didn’t he, ‘Let me take you by the hand I’ll lead you through the streets of London’. Well, yes, mainly London but also almost any and every UK city and town. Still, as the man who never deserved the Nobel Prize in Literature said (no, I am not referring to Obama, that was the Nobel Peace Prize, or Noble Appeasing Prize or something like that ~ but if the hoody fits, so to speak), ‘Times they are a-changing’. Let’s hope so, because for the UK at this present moment in time it is very much Paul McCartney, ‘Yesterday …’

Land of wokes & snowflakes UK is dying

Land of Wokes & Snowflakes

A modest proposal (with apologies to Jonathan Swift)

In the land of wokes and snowflakes Hope & Glory are to liberals what a crucifix is to Count Dracula. Demolishing the BBC and sowing the ground with salt might help.

Published: 28 August 2020 by Mick Hart

‘Come on now, play the white man!’ Now, there is an expression that you do not hear every day. Back in the 60s, my friend’s father, who never passed up a chance to remind us what a true ‘English gentleman’ he was, often used to say this in circumstances where standards were lax or propriety compromised. It always produced a good titter from we children.

‘Ooohhhh, but you couldn’t say it these days!’. Well, I’ll let you into a secret, we do now and again, and it still raises a chuckle or too. The laugh comes not from the so-called racist connotation but from the jingoisticism of it. It is funny because it echoes and epitomises the arrogance, stuffy, and overbearing colonial mentality in which it is rooted. It is, in short, like many such sayings, a delightful and whimsical anachronism.

John Cleese, a master of satire, exploits similar examples of the British colonial mindset in the award-winning comedy series Fawlty Towers. The humour lies in the fact that it is self-deprecating, self-effacing. It demonstrates how the British, the English in particular, are able to send up their own national foibles and laugh at them. As our friend Victor Ryabinin would say, if you can laugh at yourself then you can laugh at others.  Poking fun at one’s own national character is as British as a pint at the local and the age-old tradition of Yorkshire pud and roast beef on a Sunday. So, hoorah for the likes of Cleese and hoorah for Fawlty Towers.

Thus it was sad, nay deplorable, to learn on 12 June 2020, that the ‘gutless and cowardly’ BBC, as John Cleese called it, had removed an episode from the Fawlty Towers series for what The Guardian referred to as featuring ‘racial references’. Although, he was perfectly right ~ it was gutless and cowardly ~ it was not entirely unexpected, as more and more people agree that the BBC is the most institutionally liberal organisation in the UK, second only perhaps to the UK education system.

Fawlty Towers is just one of many classic TV programmes that have come under the BBC’s prissy PC scrutiny of late, although it is worth remembering that a lot of these condemned programmes are readily available on DVD. I recently watched a  wonderful episode from Steptoe and Son on DVD in which old man Steptoe sings ‘Enoch’s dreaming of a white Christmas’, and, believe it or not, you can still buy the liberal anti-Christ of all 1970s’ comedy series Love Thy Neighbour and watch it at home in your Englishman’s castle. “Sssshhh, is the drawbridge up, Ethel?”

Knowing what the BBC is, knowing how it operates but wondering why anyone who does not read The Independent pays its license fee, it came as no great surprise when I heard this week that its latest PC purge was a suggestion to drop Rule, Britannia! and Land of Hope & Glory from its televised account of the Last Night of the Proms from the Royal Albert Hall.  Apparently, the BBC lovies had been impelled to consider this in fear of reprisals from the Black Lives Matter mob. What was it John Cleese called the BBC? Aaahh yes, ‘cowardly and gutless’. Thankfully, the response of the real British public to this blatant publicity stunt was such that the BBC did a double-fast U-turn. Had it not, I think we could safely say that the writing, which is already on the wall for it, would have been summed up in two short words ‘F… Off!!’

It is appropriate that the BBC, which is at the forefront of historical revisionism, advocates that Land of Hope & Glory is dropped from the Last Night of the Proms, as revisionism and PC-groveling has been a cornerstone of its programming philosophy for some time now. I believe it must have a slogan on its foyer wall, soon to become an integral part of the BBC logo, which reads, ‘If the left don’t like it we’ll rewrite it!’ They are particularly assiduous in this respect when it comes to creating parallel worlds, especially out of historical dramas; who recalls their not so finest hour with the sad and sorry remake of that superb old series Upstairs, Downstairs?

Why not just call it a day? Give away your heritage, history and ancestral home in one fell swoop; commit cultural suicide and become second-class citizens in your own country; anything has to be better than this slow, painful and humiliating death via cringing appeasement and craven capitulation.

Oh, dear, who is really sick to death of all this liberal-left diversity-inspired political correctness gunk? Alright, let’s rephrase that question, who isn’t?

For years now the poor old tolerant, long-suffering British nation has had to sit back and watch as this once great country of ours is dragged into oblivion by two-party seesaw politics and the self-interested jobs worths and subversive lobby groups who run it ~ or rather, who are running it into the ground. No wonder the bods in Westminster did nothing when the adherents of BLM tried to remove Churchill’s statue. I should think it is a constant reminder to them of how gutless they have become. Come on lads (and the lady quotas) Tony’s been gone a good while now!

Anyone who was naïve enough to believe that things might change when the Conservative party got back into power need look no further than the humiliating paralysis that settled over Westminster during the BLM riots to prove how wrong they were? Was it not Nigel Farage who asked, what is it that the conservatives are conserving? I mean if the BBC is as anti-conservative as it is constantly claimed to be, then why does not the Conservative government do something about it, and, whilst it is at it, why not replace Ofsted for Instead (Investigating Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills), a department tasked with rooting out the liberal bias entrenched in the UK education system?

Ahhh, somewhere over the rainbow. It is obviously far easier, and possibly agenda fulfilling, to back down, give in and accommodate ~ I mean, think of what might happen at the ballot box! But the sad truth is that each time a concession is made in the false names of tolerance, fairness and equality, because one ethnic group or another demands it, another little piece of British history and its way of life is chipped and scraped away.

When terrorists attacks occur in the UK we are immediately told by the powers that be and their ideologically motivated media, that a few individuals, a minority, are trying to drive a wedge between us ~ ‘us’ being some fantasy co-operative who all live happily together in Pleasantville. The usual community leaders are rolled out, inadequate apologies muttered and, before you know it, we are off down another candle-lit vigil road. 

As a friend of mine once said, he was surprised some budding entrepreneur had not cashed in on this process. Considering the way this country is going, someone could make a fortune selling candle-lit vigil kits wholesale.

This wedge, sometimes referred to as the thin end, is, in fact, the fat end. It is up there with the numerous acts of street violence, murders, muggings and the latest moped crime trend that has earned London the unenviable sobriquet of stab-fest capital of the world, and which plague many other big cities and towns in the UK.

The thin edge of the wedge is reflected in the fact that the old British way of life is extinct. It is  goodbye to leaving your front door unlocked and evenin’ all Sergeant Dixon, and hello to bolts and barricades and where’s that bloody SWAT team when you need it!

The thin end of the wedge, which is more like a very annoying and painful wedgie done whilst wearing Y-fronts, can be estimated from the following occurrences and their psychological and societal impact on a nation that has never been more unsure of itself, more identity insecure, more unstable and more divided.

Let’s roll some of these thin wedgies out:

😆We must rename the Christmas holiday to Winter Lights because as Christmas is a Christian holiday it might offend the sensibility of certain migrant groups

😆We must not fly the Union Jack, because to do so is racist

😆We must not fly the Union Jack, because it is a fascist symbol

😆We must not fly the English flag, the St George flag, because it is racist, and because it is a symbol of colonialism

😆Serving members of our armed forces, who risk their lives in defence of the realm, are spat at in the streets by certain migrant groups

😆Serving members of our armed forces are refused service in shops run by people of particular migrant origin

😆Serving members of our armed forces are told that they must not wear their uniforms in public for fear of violence from certain migrant groups

😆State-run institutions and some private companies instruct their staff to remove crucifixes as it may offend migrant sensibilities

😆Remembrance Day poppies are burnt by sensibility-challenged migrants; liberals on social media urge for the poppy symbol to be dropped

😆Individuals who cry racism are awarded very large sums of money, often from the taxpayer’s purse

😆 Every day, the printed, televised and internet media is saturated with tales of a politically correct nature

This is a just a handful of rather unpopular and perennially irritating issues that clutter up and weigh heavily upon the life of every Briton. Perhaps you would like to add more of your own.

Until Nigel Farage burst upon the scene, one mention of immigration and you were immediately branded as racist. In fact, you are still  branded as racist whatever you say. For example, if you were to say, I don’t think much of this engineered society of ours perhaps we’d all be better off if immigration was controlled, what would that make you? Concerned about your country, your traditions, way of life and a stable future for your children? Of course not. You would obviously be a racist, fascist, extreme right wing, far right, intolerant, a Nazi … in other words a threat to the liberal status quo.

On the opposite side of the coin, the liberal-owned and democracy-managing media continually refer to the extreme left, the neo-marxist and the various brownshirt organisations that masquerade as humanitarian groups fighting for ‘justice’ and ‘equality’ as anti-fascists and counter-protesters. Sounds good, does it not, if not a tad one-sided?

In 2016, the leader of Britain First, Paul Golding, narrowly avoided jail having being convicted for wearing a political uniform. Was he wearing full body armour like the black Forever Family activists that marched through Brixton this month (did anybody get arrested for that?) ~ no, he was wearing a fleece with a Britain First logo on it. I see so many T-shirts, sweatshirts and fleeces adorned with logos and slogans which, if there was any justice, should get the wearers sectioned, but hey ho and freely around they go, why? Because it is one rule for one and one for another, depending, of course, on the establishment’s patronage.

The internet, that once-trumpeted doyen of free speech, of which it was famously said could never be governed or censored, is governed and censored in the UK~ only the British establishment, who have always done a good line in misnomers, whenever they take down someone’s ~ wait for it! ~ social media account, explain the act of censorship away by stating that the person concerned, predominantly white British, was inciting racial or religious hatred. And watch out for those mean tweets, you could have plod at your door! But only some doors and not others …

The list of politically correct follies goes on and on and on, and yet still the UK has the gall to present itself to the rest of the world as the crucible of democracy, where freedom of speech is sacrosanct. The reality is, however, that freedom of speech in the UK is a lot like rights, ie there are rights for some and not for others. In other words, there is freedom of speech for some, as long as you stick to the establishment script, but woe betide you if you stray from it!

How many of you are old enough to remember Britain as it really was, in the days before PC-enforced diversity? Be honest, when you think of it, does it not make you want to sing, “Oh, but it was all so simple then …”?

How complicated, stifling, suffocating, tumultuous, frustrating and just downright stupid it has all become. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to round up all the racisms, tolerances, civil liberties, freedoms of this and that, rights, discriminations, equalities and all the other infectious isms and bin them, and then make further references to them unlawful! Imagine the tables turned ~ found guilty of being politically correct. Good stuff, ay!

When you stop to think about it ~ and they would rather you did not ~ how awful it is that Great Britain, which was once as its name suggests Great, has been reduced to this. And whilst you are at it, spare a moment to commiserate with the hapless lot of legacy Britons, those Britons whose families go back generation  upon generation. What have these legacy Britons had to put up with? ~ the oppression, the intimidation, double-standards, bullying. The only people who believe they have benefitted from so-called progressive liberal values are those who are, bless them, really nice but naive people who want desperately to be thought of as tolerant or enlightened, and are used as democracy fodder as a result, or self-culture loathing anarchists.

Whenever I see or hear the phrases celebrate diversity, champion diversity, show more tolerance, or hear references to ever-increasing levels of enrichment, I am  reminded of the conditioned response of the villagers in Patrick McGoohan’s TV series The Prisoner. The villagers, the brainwashed citizens of the Village, run around with rainbow-coloured umbrellas like performing poodles,  pretending that life is harmonic, whilst Number 6 warns them through a megaphone that “Unlike me, many of you have accepted the situation of your imprisonment and will die here like rotten cabbages”.

What do you want to be a rotten cabbage with a rainbow umbrella or a realist? Either respect the history of your country and uphold its importance and rule of law or else denounce it once and for all. You cannot have your Yorkshire pud, roast beef, tats and eat it. Either value your traditions and celebrate them, set them in stone and let those who want to live here know that if they do not want to live by the rules and values of the host country don’t bother coming (or even better, just close the borders) and for those already here who violate our laws demand that your government take suitable punitive action. It really is time to draw the line and to say that this line must not be crossed. If not, simply cave in, admit defeat, wave the white (oh, sorry) flag and give the country away.

I understand that we are going to hell in a handcart, and the trick is to leave the brake on just enough so that hopefully the complaining oldies drop off naturally one by one, thus  leaving the way open for the softened generations processed in the jelly mould of the liberal left’s compliance factory, otherwise known as the British education system, to carry the future can. But, if that is the plan, why wait?

Why not just call it a day? Give away your heritage, history and ancestral home in one fell swoop; commit cultural suicide and become second-class citizens in your own country; anything has to be better than this slow, painful and humiliating death via cringing appeasement and craven capitulation.

It really is time gentleman please, or as dear old Leonard Cohen might say: “It’s come to this, yes it’s come to this and wasn’t it a long way down …”

Either play the white man and resuscitate the patient or switch off the life support machine, and then perhaps whoever is left can get on with their lives. Perhaps … Land of Hope & Glory? Hope, as they say, dies last!

🇬🇧 Flag for United Kingdom Emoji
Land of Hope & Glory ~ Last Night of the Proms

Copyright © 2018-2020 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

A Fairy Tale for the End of Summer

A Fairy Tale for the End of Summer 2020

A Tale of Two Towns

Published: 23 August 2020 by Mick Hart

Once upon a time there were two towns, one called Decadence and the other Tradland. Although the children who lived in each were much the same as children everywhere, the two towns, and the way they were run, were altogether different.

The children who lived in Decadence were told by their prefects that they lived in a blessed land, a land of plenty, full of endless supplies of sweets, chocolates and ice cream and to get this endless supply they need do nothing. In Decadence, there was precious little in the way of laws, except for those that related to credit and borrowing, and all mention of good behaviour or, heaven forbid, morality had been swept under the globalist carpet donkeys’ minds ago.

The children of Decadence had ‘rights’ and all they needed to do to ensure these rights, which in turn ensured an endless supply of sweets, chocolates and ice creams ~ or so they were led to believe ~ was to go the betting office once every five years and put a cross on one of the betting slips. To make it easy for the children, who to be honest did not understand much about high-stakes gambling, the National Democracy Race had always been a two-horse fix. There were no winners only losers; no matter who you placed your bet on, you always got more of the same. Most of what you got was promises, but as the children of Decadence had been taught from primary school to the time that they left university, usually with a triple first in banner carrying, what was the point of promises? They were only there to be broken.

Nevertheless, Decadence was sold to the children who lived in it and to the rest of the world as such a bountiful place that people flocked there from every forsaken corner of the world. It did not matter that thrown together in this way these poor unfortunates despised one another with a vengeance, squabbled, fought, and grappled for power, as the prefects just kept on telling them that Decadence was Utopia and everybody in it one big happy family. And the more they repeated this, the more the children who lived there, who let me say dear reader did not know any better, wanted to, or were made to, believe that what they were told was the truth .

A Fairy Tale for the End of Summer 2020

Meanwhile, whilst the children were getting fat, indolent and lazy on too many sweets, ice creams and chocolates, the prefects, who had carefully schooled them in the art of looking the other way, were busy plundering the world of its wealth and resources.  From the children’s point of view, this good life was a life without end. They really did believe that ice creams, sweets and chocolates grew on Rights trees, firstly because the prefects told them so and secondly because those same kind prefects were always willing to grant them credit, as long as they paid the interest, of course.

A few miles away, down the road from Decadence, there was another town, a very large town indeed. In this town the children were not much different from the children in Decadence. They, too, liked ice cream, sweets and chocolate, but they had been taught that in order to have these luxuries they had to work for it. In Tradland, rights were not enough to get ice cream, also to be considered was respect, social responsibility and a very old-fashioned and out-dated idea by Decadence’s standards, morality.

The prefects in Tradland were not as bad as they were painted by those in Decadence, who, as one old sage from Decadence remarked, “Decadence is ‘frit’ of sovereign values, and therefore ‘frit’ of Tradland itself” (The parish magazine promptly labelled him as the village idiot. He was excommunicated by the high priest of the Internet, Facebook, and never heard of again.). But in Tradland sponsored-egotism, waywardness and the continual free-for-all mentality that was worn like a badge of honour in Decadence was not encouraged. Neither did the prefects of Tradland support a World and Its Wife attitude with regard to who came to their town and who lived there. In short, they wanted their town to be lawful and safe, to be proud of its history and conserve its way of life.

Whilst Tradland did not care too hoots how Decadence was run, the prefects in Decadence had been brought up on the nasty belief that you could never have enough. Gangs in Decadence had sprung up and these gangs, such as Hope for More Ice Cream and Hate for Traditional Values, were bent ~ as were many of their followers ~ on whipping up trouble in their own town, and the prefects, whilst never admitting it, supported them in this quest and used words like free toffee apples and equal candy floss opportunities as a pretext for bullying other towns to adopt their ice-cream-on-credit mentality.

As Tradland had more bows and arrows than Decadence, the only way Decadence could get the upper hand was to attempt to change it from within. To help them to do this they enlisted the assistance of the men with bent noses who owned and ran the parish magazine. Using a language which a lot of the children understood, Sheep, they produced endless articles calling the prefects of Tradland all sorts of nasty names and promoted the lawlessness and bad behaviour that epitomised Decadence as a natural product of freedom whilst disparaging the rule of law and order and conservative values in Tradland as a sorry old state of affairs ~ a bit like a shop where you couldn’t steal sweets.

One day, quite unexpected, a stranger climbed over Bills Gate and ended up in both towns, and more besides, at once. In Decadence, where there were many strangers, and no one was allowed to question him on pain of having their ice cream tubs removed, he passed among the children like a peculiar shepherd. Dressed from head to toe in black, and carrying a strange kind of crook, he wove back and forth among his flock, who were far too boisterous and self-obsessed to even know how close he was to them ~ certainly less than a metre (cough! cough!).

In Tradland, the stranger was spotted at once, but although Decadence’s parish magazine, Gardnonsense, reported that Tradland’s evil prefects had immediately deprived him of his lollipop, he had in fact been placed in quarantine, as the elder prefects of Tredland, being wise men, suspected who he was. And do you know who he was children? He was the man from Pestilence!

Some children later chanted the ancient rhyme, “Never on a Saturday, Never any day, Here comes the bogeyman send Sorryarse away”, the same rhyme was sung by a minority of rebellious children in Decadence, but they were soon shut up by the prefects and parish magazine, which threatened them with inciting hatred against harlequin ice cream, which was a state-ordained brand rolled out and force fed from early-years school, through doctored GCSE grade to a university first in PCism.

In spite of the best efforts in Tradland and none in Decadence, the contagion spread ~ or, at least, appeared to spread! Some of the more selfish children thought that it was simply an excuse to stop them going to the shops to glut on ice cream, whilst still others cried that the Pills & Potions Gang were masterminding a protection racket called Vaccine.

Whatever anyone believed or did not believe, Decadence declared a race: who could develop the vaccine quickest. It was all a matter of more sweets, chocolates and ice cream, and their reputation as Freeloadersville (as some wags called Decadence) depended on it.

About the same time as all this was taking place, a pantomime came to town. It was a spiffing wheeze in which the main jape was to accuse people of things that were done centuries ago and then pull their statues down. The prefects, anti-farcists, and other street gangs loved it. Decadence’s police force, which had long ago had its force forcibly removed, dutifully ignored it and the prefects of the town clapped furiously from the front rows as they did absolutely everything in their power to do absolutely nothing about it. It was such high jinks, this pantomime, that it was not long before the game had spilled out onto the streets. Children were running amok. Choc ices became an overnight best seller and statues of the great and good were coming down faster than you could sing “Roll me over, more from Dover, Roll me over, take them down and my country away”. Talk about knees up Mother Brown! It was all jelly, ice cream, sticky buns, sweets, chocolate and …. yes, children, you’ve got it ~ it made one sick to the stomach.

Just when tears before bedroom looked imminent, it was announced in Tradland that a vaccine had been found. What a calamity! Unless something was done about it quickly all bets would be off! As luck would have it, luck for Decadence that is, at about this time a small village that lay between Decadence and Tradland, Agoodexcuse, developed a serious problem. The man who ruled the village was looked upon by some not as a guiding prefect but a stern and strict headmaster. A good many of those he ruled, began to call for change. Some believed that this call for change had been aided and supported by the ice cream salesmen from Decadence, but Decadence’s  parish magazine painted an entirely different story, with tales of ice-cream deprivation and sweets-withholding practices contrary to the natural laws of Hedonism (which was a large and frivolous amusement arcade owned and operated by the Obama Fence-Sitting Company ~ those who spoke Sheep adored it!).

The parish magazine was a gay parade of encouragement, urging the prefects of Decadence and towns of a similar ilk to intervene, ‘More sweets! More Ice cream! More sticky buns!’ it cried, whilst at the same time, terrified of true conservatism, throwing out more than a hint here and there that the prefects of Tradland were up to no good.

And then, just at this point of time ~ when pestilence and conspiracy theories were at their most contagious, when the children were out of control, the police and prefects powerless, the vaccine race lost, the ice creams melting, the sweets getting sticky and a man who would not stop taking about boats coming in ~ an incident occurred that enabled the prefects of Decadence to resort to the old tried and tested distraction routine, ‘Look out … he’s behind you!’ A staple of all good pantomimes!!

Someone, a free-ice-cream advocate, who did not like the prefects of Tredland, had suffered an accident, but the prefects of Decadence, who never missed an opportunity to put Tredland down, aided and abetted by the parish magazine, Gardnonsense, was bellowing that someone in Tredland had tripped him up!

The Twice-Daily Blackmail, a parish magazine that appealed to older children who loved parrots, had a parrot field day and, before you knew who you were or who you were standing next to, although you knew you had been here a lot longer than them, although they wanted you to believe that you were a stranger in your own town and they were the best thing since boats and Dover, the preface had been written ~ Tradlandaphobia had come round again.

Now, should Tradland attempt to help in any way the village of Agoodexcuse to heal its wounds, Decadence will roar that anyone who is naughty enough to trip someone up will not think twice about regulating ice cream in a small and vulnerable village! And, this dear, children is their despicable plan. They have merely written a preface to the narrative that they have already written.

But take heart!  Like all good fairy tales this story has a moral subtext. See that man over there, the one in the long dark robes lurking by the school gates. See the bag of sweeties in his swarthy hand. If he offers you one resist it, resist it at all costs, because it comes with a hidden price, the most expensive price you will ever pay ~ culture. Because come the day when the ice cream melts, and it will, all that he will leave you with is the wafers of your memory.

There is more to life than ice creams, sweets and chocolates, and it is not what you cannot take with you that matters (WYCTWY Matters), it is what you leave behind, such as heritage, history, ancestral home, for future generations.

If Decadence was writing this story, even though tradition means nothing to it anymore, it would fall back on the traditional fairy tale ending, and say of itself and its peculiar admixture “And they all lived happily ever after!”

Aaahh, If dreams were horses beggars would ride …

Goodnight children, everywhere.

Other Stories for Bedtime

Coronavirus & the Fear of Conservatism
The Covid-19 Vaccine Race
What Really Matters
Is the UK in Multicultural Meltdown?

Featured photo credit ~ https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/pictures/260000/velka/halloween-haunted-ruins.jpg)


Copyright © 2018-2020 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

Coronavirus & the Fear of Conservatism

Coronavirus & the Fear of Conservatism ~ but whose fear is it?

Published: 16 August 2020

Pinch me, wake me up, please tell me that I have been dreaming. I will not go so far as to say that the BBC has plumbed new depths of depravity, but could we say stupidity? Once renowned for its incisive journalism, for producing some of the finest English historical dramas ever to cross the airwaves, not to mention some of the finest comedies, the beeb has allowed itself to become so completely enslaved to the revisionism and foppery of liberalism and its politically correct mantra that it is fast becoming a parody of their worst excesses. Consider this article, if you will: ‘The fear of coronavirus is changing our psychology’.

There now follows a series of quotes, please look away if you are not up for a giggle:

“Due to some deeply evolved responses to disease, fears of contagion lead us to become more conformist and tribalistic, and less accepting of eccentricity. Our moral judgements become harsher and our social attitudes more conservative when considering issues such as immigration or sexual freedom and equality. Daily reminders of disease may even sway our political affiliations.” {Oh no, Ha! Ha!}

“The recent reports of increased xenophobia and racism may already be the first sign of this” {Ha! Ha! Ha!}

“In the same study, a reminder to wash their hands led participants to be more judgemental of unconventional sexual behaviours. They were less forgiving of a woman who was said to masturbate while holding her childhood teddy bear, for example, or a couple who had sex in the bed of one of their grandmothers”. {Ha! Ha! He! He! Others, Its and all … er, and so what?}

“… the threat of disease can also lead us be more distrustful of strangers. That’s bad news if you’re dating.” {… guffaw!  and good news if you are not as cautious as you should be}

“… it can result in prejudice and xenophobia … fear of disease can influence people’s attitudes to immigration.” {snort, well, yes?}

Where’s Michael Palin when you need him! Oh yes, most likely virtue-signalling by calling for a new politically correct design for the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George. We’ll press on without him.

At one level, the nonsense in this article is reassuring, for instance you may have been labouring under the false apprehension that your conservative view on the world and the renewed trust placed in less ‘eccentricity’ and more social and moral stability is the onset of coronavirus itself (one of those media-alleged new symptoms) or alternatively has been brought about by me, in Kaliningrad, hacking into your juice blender.

No connection, but as for the sex bit, I would think that your lust affair with your teddy bear, Action Man model or Obama doll is your business, and as for grandma’s bed, well it is the same as gay parades, it is all very colourful, isn’t it, but do we really have to applaud every time?

As for strangers, generation upon generation of grandpops and grandmas (all suspicious about ‘whose been sleeping in my bed’ (wasn’t that something to do with teddy bears? Or did that happen at their picnic?) have been warning the young about the dangers of strangers ~ “If you go down to the woods today you’ll be in for a big surprise …” ~ there you are, it’s those teddy bears again! Admittedly, it is not good for dating, and we no longer have Cilla Black to reassure us it is all safe fun.

And what about, “Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Fear of coronavirus ‘can result in prejudice and xenophobia … fear of disease can influence people’s attitudes to immigration’”.

Presumably, when in lockdown you would welcome the chance to see more people, is not that the reason why when lockdown was eased hordes of Brits, both legacy and in name only, threw away their masks like women’s libbers of old discarding their burnt bras, and shooting off to Skeggy and Brighton for the day, showed the world, whilst showing themselves up, just how tolerant they were to every piece of space invasion. The same could be said about Brit attitudes to immigration, unless of course you realise that the country is over-populated, that the NHS cannot cope and as the economy is at the lowest ebb it has been for years there is little sense in encouraging thousands of illegals to land upon these shores and put them up for free in Kent hotels. But then that’s not xenophobia, that is common sense.

So, we can see from this article that the definitive message is do not worry about catching coronavirus and feeling ill, do not worry about catching coronavirus and feeling very ill, do not worry about catching coronavirus and it killing you, the main concern is that the fear of coronavirus may wake you up from the PC nightmare inflicted upon you for the past 30 years and make you want life to be normal again ~ a return to Britain the way it was.

Rest assured, this is not your fear, but the fear of it happening is sure terrifying someone.

Quick, bring on the ‘vaccine’!!

Coronavirus & the Fear of Conservatism
You’ll just have to wait until you’ve had the vaccine!

Copyright © 2018-2020 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

Covid 19 Vaccine Race

Covid 19 Vaccine Race

The Grand International Covid-19 & Culture-Threat Vaccine Race Not Quite Live from Gaydock Park

Published: 5 August 2020

Hello and welcome to the first Grand International Covid-19 & Culture-Threat Vaccine Race not quite live from Gaydock Park.

Held in somewhere that used to resemble the UK, this is the first equestrian race of its type where most spectators are watching in self-isolation from the comparative bailiff safety of their coronavirus mortgage-reliefed homes. The only people who will get an actual glimpse of the race live are boatloads of migrants, who will have a clear view on their approach to Dover. That’s them cheering in the background, ‘give us a free house in Surrey’, and there’s a man on the cliffside watching through his binoculars who has given us a tip for the 1960s’ Race at Haydock, which is odds-on favourite, They Should Have Listened to Enoch.

Described by some as the first nationalist race symbolising the inevitable, irredeemable, inexorable demise of globalism, and by Others as being sexist, what we do know is that it is the first race ever in which the horses will be wearing face masks, even if nobody else is.

For those of you who have just joined us, from anywhere and everywhere, the police are providing a free taxi service to a hotel of your choice, for the rest of you who understand English, and there aren’t many, but never mind we’ll provide an interpreter, it’s only money, this is a high-stakes race, the first one past the Vaccine Finishing Post not only out-prestiging everyone else in the civilised world, as well as those in Scotland, but also monopolising the coronavirus vaccine for his country and ensuring that their pharmaceutical sponsor makes mega-bucks whilst holding the world to ransom.

Ahh, and now we see the horses approaching the starting gate. In a few moments, a billionaire philanthropist will fire the starting gun and the first Grand International Covid-19 & Culture-Threat Vaccine Race will be underway.

There goes the gun (blast, he missed himself!) and they’re off! (I wondered where my wife was?) and the horses are off too.

And up front, but not so up front as we’d like, it’s China’s Unnamed Unknown Vaccine, followed by Discredited HOO, odds-on favourite Oxford Fix close behind with Gay Parade too close behind for comfort as Labour Party falls back, but not far enough for some. And China’s Unnamed Unknown Vaccine going like a bat out of hell, neck and neck with Conspiracy Theory as they approach Bills Gate. And in the black & red face mask and German tin helmet its BioTank putting pressure on Rest of the World with Open Borders, Big Mistake and Murkal’s Refugees crowding in the middle and everywhere else, whilst US Operation Warp Speed fails to trump False Liberal Media. Into the first hurdle and down goes Lockdown, Conservative Party unseating its rider, Nobody Cares and Who Gives A Toss on either side of LGBT, Tony Blair a casualty But He Doesn’t Seem to Know It, as She’s Got More Mouth Than a Cow’s Got C… ridden by the Dwarf from the North thunders into fourth place.  False Liberal Media making difficult headway as they enter the Straight & Narrow, with Selfish Brits Crowding Brighton Beach and Social Distancing now one metre, could be two, behind Confused Government Policy. There goes Statistics and its China’s Unnamed Unknown Vaccine fighting it out with Poisoned Meat Market, Don’t Believe It and Whose Laboratory as Mrs May’s Highly Likely is overtaken by Truth, Porton Down and Unbelievable Story with outsider Russia’s Vaccine closing the distance on  Collusion Complex and Clinton’s Hacking Jacket an also and almost ran. Ahead now and quite round the bend Entire Liberal Media, closely pursued by Populist Vote, which surges into first place as Farage’s Triumph sails merrily into the lead, threatening EU Dominance, pulling the plug on EU Court of Human Blights and Whose Democracy Is It? Common Sense is out of the race replaced by All Kinds of Liberal Agendas, Lost Heritage and Law & Order Matters, and its Muggers Alley, Hand-Over Your Cash, LoL and Innit, and Churchill’s Statue battling it out with Defund the Police as the race enters the final straight.  Black Lives Matters, Reputation in Tatters and Obsequious Corporate Policy making the running, in the opposite direction, alongside Fickle Government Policy and Overpaid Untalented Celebs all surprised by BREXIT.

And its Bullshit, Bullshit and the Liberal Media, Bullshit, Russophobia, Bullshit and BBC Licence Fee hard pushed to pass They Won’t Pay It with Historical Drama Revisionism tangling with Gender-Bending Dr Who and Sink Estate in a TARDIS as they round Diverse Psychosis Corner. And its Bullshit in the lead, Ballshit out in front, Ballshit trampling Anti-Vaxxer, Trump with Second Wind as he trounces Second Wave and yes, its … Wait one moment. News just in! Apparently, we’ve just entered the third wave. Traditionally, it takes 10 to 15 years to develop a vaccine, so the finishing line has been moved to 2035 ~ stay tuned, stay in, stay safe and whatever you do don’t back Nightmares.

😉(Featured image Photo credit: https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/pictures/10000/velka/1-1239868251vifh.jpg)

Copyright © 2018-2020 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

Remain Media Influenced Brexit

I spy with my little eye something beginning with bull….
(or How interference can go badly wrong …)

Published: 23 July 2020

I was sitting here in Kaliningrad, Russia, trying to avoid all contact with UK news, enjoying an old episode of The Avengers. The episode I was watching was a very early one, from the days when Ian Hendry was the star and Patrick Macnee’s John Steed was still in his embryonic stage. As a piece of television history, it was interesting to revisit but paled into relative insignificance against the style, panache, flamboyance and fantasy for which the later series became to be known.

Just as I was getting wistful about the demise of the spy-fi genre and thinking what a nice change these 1960s’ British programmes make from the politically correct obsessed and historical revisionist dramas, now the staple trade of UK television, I flicked onto Google News and was enraptured to find that the UK media, presumably having run out of things to say about coronavirus, was currently regaling us with a story so Brian Clemens in nature that I could almost hear the click of his typewriter.

The online newspaper headline read: ‘Coronavirus: Russian spies target Covid-19 vaccine research’.

 My, what a cracker, I thought. With a bit more imagination this BBC article could be all bowler hats, furled umbrellas and impeccably mannered old-world spies, but coming from the BBC it couldn’t and, of course, it wasn’t.

It was one of those headlines, you know the sort, full of promise and expectation but no real substance to back it up. Within three short paragraphs of the article opening we were already out of John le Carré territory and sinking into the murkier world of innuendos, unfounded allegations, hearsay, rumour and speculation. Indeed, try as it might to steer us in one direction, and believe me it did try,  the plotline twisted and swerved so much that the ride could not have been more ropey had we been roaring along in John Steed’s Bentley on the edge of Tall Story Road struggling to contain ourselves after finding the brakes had been tampered with.

And then, just as I was about to make allowances, since before the days of the PC lovies the BBC produced some quite applaudable stuff, it all became so predictable, so pithy and prosaic. Prof somebody or other from a famous UK university (that sounds quite Avengerish, doesn’t it!) spoilt the plot completely with his announcement that we are all at it, which is to say hacking around on the internet. He suggested that the Chinese do it, the Americans do it and even we in glass-house Britain do it! And how outrageous is that!

This tawdry end to what started out to be a story more unbelievable than Piers Morgan ranting just because he gets paid for it, ended up like something from Get Smart! I switched off and read one of my old Noddy books, an unexpurgated, non-PC purged, pre-revisionist edition, published long before poor old Enid B was sent the same way as Enoch ~ there’s an awful lot of statues in England’s heritage wilderness.

I was just wondering if there would ever be a PC update on Noddy in which Enid Blyton’s policeman would have to deal with a BLM riot, when I spotted another article* on the spy-fi theme and init some very interesting reader responses.

Do not expect too much from the article itself. Reading has never been the same since liberals took spanking out of the The Beano, but the comments demonstrate a more incisive knowledge of what is going on than the media give Jo Public credit for. (I have quoted the following verbatim, with no editing on my part.)

From what I can glean about There were something like 300 social media bot accounts accused of being Russian intelligence. Those accounts posted both pro Brexit and anti Brexit material because they were commercial bots attempting to generate likes and retweets. It think the top one got something like 2,000 views and 100 likes! compare that to the government spending tax payer money to send leaflets through every door urging people to vote remain and a whole host of foreign politicians being lined up, including Obama, telling us we should remain or else and the 24/7 project fear anti Brexit stories in media including the BBC along with celebs and lovies rolled out across the airwaves telling us how racist it was to want self determination and not be ruled by a bunch if foreign plutocrats and technocrats who issue diktats upon us. I mean the President of our closest ally was flown into Britain to threaten us but that isn’t foreign interference, nope but some random Twitter bot with 50 views won Brexit and definitely is LOL (Dan Brown)

They do say that bad things come in threes, so I am sitting here wondering what the final tale in the meddling trilogy will be as we romp our way through the current instalment of spiffing yarns about Russian interference. But do not get too excited. If the second episode is anything to go by, the third will be a repeat.

Stop me if you have heard this one before, but Was there Russian meddling in the Brexit referendum? (Today’s headline (22 July 2020) from The Guardian.) Here is your second episode, following swiftly on the heels of the spy-fi adventure about Covid-19. But stay tuned, as meddling and interference stories are like muggers in London’s Brixton: they often travel in 3s or more!

The simple answer for the rehash is that in the matter of timing it ties in nicely with the Covid story, and as Brexit is imminent liberals still insist that someone, somewhere, has got to take the wrap.  

I suspect that the difficulty liberals have in accepting their defeat lies in its broader and more damning ramifications, that Brexit represents a firm, unequivocal and absolute rejection of their ideological agenda. But surely, even the most in-denial liberals have had time to adjust to the truth, as unpalatable for them as it is, that in the matter of Brexit they were fairly and squarely trounced. A democratic vote was taken, and they were simply, but honestly, outvoted. Leave won the day.

I have it on good authority, but from a source I cannot reveal, that John Steed, John Drake, Napoleon Solo and Maxwell Smart are unanimous in their view that foreign influences, like Chaos and Thrush, are less than ‘highly likely’ (thank you Theresa May (her only contribution)) to have been involved and that a more plausible place to lay the blame would be at the door of the UK’s homegrown enemy The Ministry of Unwanted and Unasked for Societal Change.  But the real coup for the victorious leave camp, came, ironically, from an own-goal scored by remain’s partisan media.

Remain media influenced Brexit

The media’s attempt to thwart the democratic process before during and after the Brexit referendum pushed too far, grew self-hysterical and ended up as overkill, exposing itself in the process. Legacy Britons, who from the left’s perspective were looking comfortably soporific after year upon year of PC bullying, suddenly woke up, and in so doing found that they were a lot further down Sheeple Road than they could ever imagine. They were ready at last to listen to the warning voice of our ancestors: this is not the Yellow Brick Road, this is the road to a very dark place where you just don’t want to go. At last it had become clear that the slippery slope just had to be stopped because if not, the next stop was the Twilight Zone.

Now, there was a good programme, a very good programme. Do you remember that episode about cloak and daggers, espionage, clandestine goings on, spies in trilbies and raincoats, and in the end it was all just smoke and mirrors? Therein lies the answer. Think of the UK as a backyard full ~ too full ~ of things, nasty, uncomfortable things and every which way you turn all is going terribly wrong. If this was your neoliberal legacy wouldn’t you want to divert attention away from inside the yard, to conjure up fictions, extraneous threats, to point the finger elsewhere?

Reversing up a little, in John Steed’s Bentley preferably, I return to The Guardian headline, which I purposefully truncated. You see, the headline actually reads ‘Was there Russian meddling in the Brexit referendum? The Tories just didn’t care ‘ (my underlining).

This article, together with similar fare from the liberal press, is about trying to get a derailed Labour Party back on track. The question of meddling is less important than Tories not caring ~ so vote for Labour (as there is no one else). You get the picture. Yet another case of move along please, there is nothing here to see.

Of the many episodes of The Avengers that I deem classic and which once watched is never forgotten is ‘The Hour that Never Was’. You will not get the same entertainment value from the political pages of the UK media as you will from watching The Avengers, but one thing you can be sure of finding is a lot of ‘never was’. It should, of course, ‘never have been’ but unfortunately ‘it is’.

Remain Media Influenced Brexit
Londongrad, Londistan or BLM (Black London Matters) ~ whatever it was it isn’t.

✔What Really Matters

Reference

*https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/coronavirus/outrageous-that-russia-trying-to-steal-or-sabotage-vaccine-research-raab/ar-BB16Vgu9?ocid=spartan-dhp-feeds {link no longer active 12/02/2022]

Copyright © 2018-2022 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

Is the UK in multicultural meltdown?

Is the UK in Multicultural Meltdown?

Riotings the Name, Blackmail the Game

Published: 24 June 2020

I am not sure what it seems like to you but from where I am, in Kaliningrad, Russia, it appears as if the UK has descended into multicultural meltdown. The ‘mainly peaceful demonstrations’, to cite the demonstrator-friendly British press, orchestrated in the name of Black Lives Matter, have seduced some and disgusted others.

In the midst of the social disorder, a Russian friend telephoned us to say how appalled he was to witness what was happening in the UK and asked the unanswerable question, what is the UK government doing about it? I was unable to provide him with a credible answer. I realised that the  apparent apathy was not strictly down to the government but a systemic paralysis of the entire British establishment. I tentatively suggested that just because the unrest had not been nipped in the bud when it should have been did not necessarily mean that the movers and shakers, the people in authority, had moved behind the last statue standing and were shaking there, wherever that was, but if at home self-isolating or preferably around the boardroom table somewhere in Number 10, hopefully they were growing a pair. The same astounded man pointed out that amongst the black rioters whites were running amok. I corrected him ~ no, I said, these are callow students or liberal-left extremists.  

Hot on the heels of the first riots came a terrorist attack, which, if the prime suspect is a Libyan asylum seeker as the mainstream press reports, is not only tragic but also embarrassing. I wondered how long it would be before the terrorist faction raised its ugly head. After all, the riots are receiving so much good publicity from the UK’s liberal media that your average terrorist probably feels upstaged.

The riots have certainly upstaged coronavirus, albeit temporarily I suspect, but the rioters, like other groups that hunger for the limelight, are bound to stage a sensational comeback this autumn, the likes of which Tony Blair is bent on emulating but alas can only dream of. And what if a substantial number of these rioters through their self-made inability to social distance catch coronavirus and die as a result? And will the government be blamed for it, for making them take to the streets as the only means of leveraging racial justice, and will it then lead to a second wave of rioting? And will that become a conspiracy theory also?

According to western mainstream media sources, top of the conspiracy pops is the George Soros conspiracy theory. It appears that he has kicked the number-one favourite, the Bill Gates conspiracy theory, into second place. Rumour is that  extreme right wingers are blaming everything on George Soros, but then if he is funding the migrant invasion of Europe on multiple fronts and bankrolling certain adverse world events, as many people believe, I suppose it is only natural to ask the question why? Even the most philanthropic, billionaire or otherwise, cannot fail to see that something is going terribly wrong, unless that wrong for some is terribly right for others? But then, what do I want with conspiracy theories? There is enough real trouble going around without icing it with conjecture.

Sticking to the facts, it does not seem that long ago when I was editing scores of articles about championing diversity, embracing multiculturalism, celebrating enrichment and wondering what one had to do to land oneself a job as a diversity director at 55 grand a year. What went wrong? Was it ever right?

Now, whenever I have the misfortune of catching a glimpse of the news I get these goosebumps and something of a shiver. It is all do with that large black cloud hovering over our summer of discontent. Is it a plane, is it a bird or is it the doom-laden shadow of Enoch Powell’s wilderness?

The other thing that is tainting the air is the mood of the British people ~ something that every British government fails to acknowledge or grievously underestimates. The British nation, that is almost everybody who does not live in London, is waiting in that tolerant way for which it is renowned, or simply enduring as it has always done (but remember, endurance and tolerance can surely run out!) for its absentee leaders to do something, to rise phoenix-like from the ashes of appeasement and grasp the bull by its nettles. I, for one, understand the reticence: Blackmail is never an easy business, but if Hollywood has taught us anything it is pay the blackmailer once and you will never stop paying.

Meanwhile, the mob are flying on a magic carpet fuelled by government qualms, indecision and sponsored by media showcasing, the bit of power is between their teeth and the scent of success in their nostrils. And, the impresario whisper is we ain’t seen nothin’ yet!  

Really, it would have been better in the long run if someone had taken the initiative and pulled the rug out from beneath the mob before it left square one, instead of allowing the game to continue up the ladders and down the snakes.

What we can say, without taking sides, is that a mob is a mob whatever and whatever the stated cause.

Powell’s wilderness is one thing; his river quite another.

Is the UK in Multicultural Meltdown?
If he had a statue I bet it would be listed in ‘The UK Guide to Offensive Statues Handbook‘
[Photo credit: Allan warren / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0); https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Enoch_Powell_6_Allan_Warren.jpg)]

❤Feature image (Union Jack): Dawn Hudson: https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=127662&picture=uk-splat-flag)

Copyright [Text] © 2018-2021 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

No Mention of the Extreme Left

No Mention of the Extreme Left

SSSShhhh Don’t Mention the Extreme Left!

Published: 17 June 2020

On encountering this news article1 about the continuing civil unrest pertaining to Black Lives Matter protests and the scuffles in Westminster on Saturday 13 June, my reaction was that it was a prime example of imbalanced journalism. I am sure it is not intentional. See what you think?

Whilst the headline ‘Ten year jail sentences for desecrating war memorials’1is encouraging, leading the reader to the erroneous conclusion that the article’s focus will be on bringing to justice vandals and subversives who throw national monuments into rivers or deface statues of national heroes, it transpires that the acts of desecration are disproportionately narrowed down to one clash in Westminster and (at the time this article was written) an alleged act of disrespect, that of a man with ‘far-right connections’, urinating next to a monument.

The first couple of paragraphs look promising, but as the quotes are rolled out the narrative seems to hang on a piece of elastic, which keeps pulling it back in one direction.

‘Robert Buckland, the Justice Secretary, Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, and Suella Braverman, the Attorney General, are understood to be discussing proposals to make it easier to prosecute people who damage monuments to those who died during wars. The measures under discussion could also cover some of the statues currently being targeted by activists.’

Here we see statues being targeted by ‘activists’ but without reference to the political affiliations of the activists, or, indeed, their collective identity. The following paragraph reads:

‘… the Cenotaph daubed with graffiti, while demonstrators pulled down a statue in Bristol and are targeting many others across the country. In another incident last week, paint was found to have been thrown at two memorials in Lincolnshire.’

This paragraph tells us that the Cenotaph was ‘daubed with graffiti’ but it does not tell us who daubed it, the same applies to paint throwing in Lincolnshire.  We are told that it was ‘demonstrators’ who pulled down the statue in Bristol, but we are not told who the demonstrators are and there is no mention of their ideological background.

In itself that would be no problem, if it was not for the fact that no such reticence was exercised in the censorship department when it came to attributing identity to those people who travelled to Westminster on Saturday 13 June 2020 to protect the country’s heritage statues.

‘On Saturday, missiles were thrown at riot police attempting to move far-right activists away from Whitehall as their self-proclaimed mission to protect the Cenotaph and statue of Churchill descended into hours of violence.’

Here we have ‘far-right activists’ ~ a clear and categorical identification attributed to, presumably, all those in attendance. And then something strange (or, rather, not so strange) happens: the entire article pivots on one incident:

‘One man linked to a far right group was seen urinating next to the memorial to PC Keith Palmer, who died protecting Parliament from a terror attack in 2017.’

Forget for a moment the ambiguous ‘linked to’ and the ‘far-right’ label and concentrate on the phrase ‘next to the memorial’, and then read this:

‘Home Secretary Priti Patel condemned the incident. “We have seen some shameful scenes today, including the desecration of Pc Keith Palmer’s memorial in Parliament, in Westminster Square, and quite frankly that is shameful, that is absolutely appalling and shameful,” she said.’

Priti Patel states that ‘we have seen some shameful scenes today’, but then we have seen some shameful scenes all week, not the least of which has been the necessity of boarding up Winston Churchill’s statue and the Cenotaph to protect them from ‘demonstrators’ intent on criminal damage. She also asserts that PC Keith Palmer’s memorial has been desecrated.

At this point in time (when the article was published) the alleged far-right affiliated man had been described as urinating ‘next’ to the statue not on it. So was he being intentionally disrespectful? He was later found guilty of outraging public decency but not of acting with intent.

As disagreeable as this incident was, it should not be used to eclipse offenses of an even more disturbing nature, such as dragging statues off plinths and dumping them into rivers, daubing paint on the Cenotaph, attacking Winston Churchill’s statue and causing widespread civil unrest. Neither should it be used as a pretext for diverting our attention away from the many other distasteful acts committed during the recent period of civil disorder by people who certainly have no right-wing connections or by making tenuous links intended to demonise all counter-protestors as being of far-right extraction.

Back to the article: After a couple of paragraphs in which various commentators refer to the conservatives as the ‘party of law and order’ and the ‘defender of our culture and our heritage’, the article quickly reverts disproportionately to this one protest in Westminster and the ‘shameful behaviour’ of the far-right. Remember that the headline of the article leads one to believe that is about bringing statue violators to justice not just far-right activists in Westminster and a man relieving himself on the street.

‘Mr Johnson said “racist thuggery has no place on our streets”.’ 

Quite right!

‘The violence – which came as Black Lives Matter protestors gathered in mostly peaceful protest elsewhere around the country – were described by Ms Patel as “thoroughly unacceptable”.’

‘In mostly peaceful protest’? So has the Black Lives Matter ‘protest’ been mostly peaceful? According to this BBC article2, it would appear so: ‘Some peaceful anti-racism protests also took place in London and across the UK’

Apparently, these peaceful protests took place elsewhere but on the same day as the one in Westminster. But were there any not-so-peaceful protesters from or associated with the Black Lives Matter movement in Westminster on Saturday 13 June?

Political fog over Westminster
Dense fog over Westminster
(Photo credit: Sandra Ahn Mode on Unsplash

Moving on:

‘In their public letter to this newspaper, Ms McVey, along with MPs including Lee Anderson and Brendan Clark-Smith, state: “The recent protests have been dominated by criminals who are undermining the very real fight against racism by burning flags, vandalising sacred war memorials and attacking police officers and this has caused outrage in our newly won constituencies in the Midlands and the North.

‘”It’s time for these subversive individuals to be arrested, prosecuted and punished in accordance with the law.” ‘

Here! Here! But who are these people who are ‘burning flags (and which flags?), vanadalising sacred war memorials and attacking police officers’? To whom do they owe their political allegiance?

Quickly wheel on Ken Marsh!

‘Ken Marsh, Chairman of the London Metropolitan Police Federation, called violent protesters to be jailed. “A faction of people only had one intention – to be violent and unlawful, they didn’t come here to protect the statues, it’s just disorder and unruliness.

The first sentence is spot on, but then he has to ruin it by referring specifically to this one protest in Westminster, which, in the context of this article, implies  that the only assaults the police have had to contend with during the Black Lives Matter furore are those from the far-right on Saturday 13 June.

Let us ask the question again? Are we to believe that each and everyone of the counter-protesters (there’s an expression that is typically reserved for the left) were of far-right persuasion and that on this day in Westminster the police had no one else to contend with, that is to say no unruly and violent behaviour from the subversive left?

No Mention of the Extreme Left
(Photo credit: Alexander Mils on Unsplash; https://unsplash.com/photos/mCUI2v4LomE)

When it comes to obtaining a clear and credible picture of events, especially when intuition suggests that those events are having difficulty passing the politically correct litmus test, you could do a lot worse than give the UK mainstream media a wide berth and look elsewhere. And, indeed, as I trawled through the UK press in the rapidly disappearing hope of finding something that sounded more tenable, I found myself repeatedly reciting the Rolling Stone’s refrain, “I can’t get no, satisfaction”, and then I went to India*.

It is a bit of a bugger when you have to travel halfway around the world to find something that has a ring of truth about it, but in my opinion I found it here in an article titled ‘Patriots defending statues clash with Black Lives Matter protesters and police in London’, an article which appeared online on The Times of India website*.

The Times of India3 report cuts through the PC soup served up by the UK media, dissolves the ambiguities and provides, in my opinion, a clear and balanced perspective of what shaped the events that day. You will also note that it pulls no PC punches when it comes to identifying who is who.

‘A hundred people were arrested and 27 people including six police officers injured when patriots defending statues clashed with Black Lives Matter protesters and riot police in London.

‘Black Lives Matter (BLM) had officially called off their protest on Saturday when war veterans, football supporters and other groups, including far-right Britain First, announced they would be travelling to the capital to defend its statues and war memorials after many had been daubed in graffiti by Black Lives Matter activists last weekend.’

On the subject of the composition of those who travelled to London to defend its heritage, The Times of India refers to war veterans and uses the all-important word ‘including’, with reference to the presence of the ‘far-right Britain First’: ‘including’ the far-right but not made up exclusively of the far-right. It also states unequivocally who it was who ‘daubed’ the statues.

However, it is the second paragraph that most importantly distinguishes the account of what happened in Westminster on that day from the UK mainstream media narrative:

‘Despite being called off, hundreds of Black Live Matter protesters still did turn up and they ended up facing off against the counter-protesters, causing outbreaks of fights and violence all day.’

The remainder of the article covers something that either was omitted or marginalised by the mainstream UK press, that Britain’s war veterans who had travelled to London to protect the statues from thugs (political affiliation withheld) were not exactly chuffed to learn that they had been labelled “extreme right-wingers“ by London Mayor Sadiq Khan.

But then it is not only Mr Khan who likes to label people ‘extreme right-wingers’. And here is your homework. Flick through the UK media coverage of the past week on this whole sorry episode of civil unrest from when it started to, and including coverage on, the urinating man, and see how many times you can spot references to the ‘far-left, extreme-left’, and how many times the words ‘extreme-right’ and ‘far-right’ crop up. In fact, you can repeat this exercise for news stories from the UK media over a 12-month period in the full and certain knowledge that this is a far less reprehensible hobby than destroying the nation’s heritage.     

It is a sad reflection on the state of the UK’s much-vaunted free press that at a time when it is shouting the loudest against so-called fake news, we, the public, are still attempting to get over the first hurdle and find news that is accurate and that, in order to accomplish this, we have to look elsewhere.

References [accessed 13 & 16 June 2020]
1. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/ten-year-jail-sentences-for-desecrating-war-memorials/ar-BB15rB0n?ocid=spartan-dhp-feeds {link no longer available [12/04/22]
2. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53031072
3. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/uk/patriots-defending-statues-clash-with-black-lives-matter-protesters-and-police-in-london/articleshow/76365525.cms

*The Times of India(TOI) is an Indian daily newspaper owned by The Times Group.

❗Feature image: (Photo credit: Yeshi Kangrang on Unsplash; https://unsplash.com/photos/14RqNPmDOno)

Copyright [Text] © 2018-2022 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

Statue Erections Matter UK

An Address on Statue Erection in the UK by Chief Police Officer Raymond Ironside for CricketDick County, North Dorsetshire

Published: 15 June 2020

Keyfacts
Venue: The Village Hall
In attendance: 7 people (The Chief of Police, His Auntie (from Virginia) and something else that could not fully decide on which box to tick and was therefore counted as 5 Others)
Tickets: Parking ones £85; O.A.P.s double the price for living so long and drawing their pensions; Students ~ we’ll pay you to stay away
Refreshments: Imperialistic tea and biscuits free at twice the price in the Indian Pavilion

Chief Raymond Ironside’s address:
Good afternoon, it is so nice to see such an excellent turnout for this event (looking out of the window at an Antifart-induced riot that is going on outside over monocultural yoghurts being sold at the village fete).

First an apology (we’re good at that). Many of you have written to us at the police station asking where the police station is and why it isn’t where the police station should be? We apologise for never replying ever, and twice never on Sundays, as the postman, sorry postother, hasn’t a clue either ~ that is about who or what he is and where the police station has been relocated to. Some people believe that is in Mr Sado Khan’s Hall of Smoke and Mirrors, others that it was last seen disguised as a mobile yam and breadfruit shop. We advise people who don’t know their arse from their elbow to do what we always do whenever we want to find it: ask a policeman.

Taking into account the current trend for not being able to spell and the younger generation’s flatulent use of the word ‘like’ and ‘LoL’, even if we had received your letters, we would have had to employ an interpreter, and as the recorded message tells you on all those helplines you love to ring, ‘our interpreters are all busy helping other customers at present’, most of whom have come to Dorsetshire in the middle of the night, when they are least likely to be seen, in small boats without a TV licence.

CricketDick Police are, however, on Facebook. That’s our Facebook page. You can’t miss it. It’s the one with a mugshot avatar complete with number underneath. Please note that the face we are using is a fictitious one in order to comply with the Data Protection Act and the We Dare Not Arrest Anybody Who Looks Like That Anymore in Case of a Riot Act.

Now we know that there are an awful lot of you ~ and a lot of you who are awful ~ who are concerned about the increasing numbers of burglaries, muggings, knife crimes, terrorist activities  and murders in CrippleDick but never mind that, today we are here to talk about the dos and don’ts (mostly the don’ts) of statue erection. This is most important as transgressions of the erection laws carry stiff penalties, as I believe my colleagues, Detective Constable Ron Condom and Police Woman Cliterthroe, advised you last week during the talk they gave to the ‘High-5 Size-55 Yoga Pants Club’ on Camel Toes Matter. Get this wrong and it could, as the missionaries used to say, land you right in the soup. Indeed, contravention of the I Should Not Be Proud of My National History Act, carries a penalty of 5000 Obamian Dollars, two years in parts of London where I really don’t want to be, or both.

This is why I say if you do intend to raise a statue in your back garden, on your patio,  in your front room or on the empty plinths in Parliament Square ~ and every other municipal centre in England ~ please remember that there are a few legal points that you need to take into account before your erection takes place.

Here, I am reminded of the case Viagra vs Cialis, which was thrown out of court and hit someone on the head who had so many rights they didn’t know what to do with them. He, she, or whatever it was, was compensated to the tune of their own national anthem with a package consisting of two kilos of hashish, the winning numbers of the EU lottery, housed for free at Buckingham Palace and was offered an unlikely position, which IT’s husband complained about, on the Statue Shatterers Board of Directors. It was also offered an OBE but turned it down on the basis that it was racist, imperialist and you couldn’t snort or smoke it.

I know I am here to talk about statues, but our job, the job of the Defunded police (now consisting of one man and his bicycle and a huge handbook of what he can’t say, do or arrest), is first and foremost to ensure equality and fairness is exercised in all thongs pertaining to inclusivity. We will only arrest if there is absolutely no other way or whilst we are looking the other way as instructed in the statuet book.

Here is a checklist of things you should ask yourself before you put up your statue:

1. Is your statue of a pale complexion?
2. Is your statue a pre-eminent historical figure who has made an inestimable contribution to the nations’ stability and advancement, without which the current generation would lack the entitlement to which they presume they have a God-given right?
3. Has your statue ever owned a pair of dark coloured underpants with a white band of elastic around the top?
4. Did your statue read Noddy when he was a little statue?
5. Has your statue ever, with or without your knowledge, been labelled by the liberal media as Far or Extreme Right because he or she is not a self-culture loather who objects to national identity theft?
6. Has your statue ever been caught listening to the National Anthem?
7. Did anyone hear your statue say ‘Good Riddance’ when Meghan Markle shipped out?
8. Is your statue more inclined to cheer Churchill than another statue in the near vicinity?
9. Does your statue confuse the word ‘rap’ with ‘stereotypifying crap’?
10. Was your statue a friend of Jimmy Savile’s statue, or anybody else’s statue who worked for the BBC?
11. Has your statue ever owned the Vera Lynn Collection?
12. Does your statue’s family have centuries-old British lineage or were they given a piece of paper with citizenship written on it, or did they not come from the East but knew Ron Geest?
13. Is your statue balanced or does it have a large chip on its shoulder?
14. Does your statue play cards ~ regularly and deal from the bottom?
15. Is your statue an inanimate object that if pulled down will not make a ha’p’orth of difference to the person it represents as he died in 1835 and is too busy laughing in his grave?

In addition to these questions you should also give appropriate consideration to the decorations that surround your statue ~ Union Jacks, Sunday lunches, a pair of Morris dancer’s socks,  the entire BBC collection of the Black & White Minstrel Show and a certain record about Christmas by a man whose surname is very similar to someone else’s (unfortunately), should be avoided at all costs. For advice on street signs, please address your queries to Nickerless Sturfried at Scotty Parliament, or email: nomorereferendumsplease@straw.grasping.sc.

And remember, if you intend to do anything with your statue that does not concern the local leftwing council planning department, please seek advice from your local leftwing council planning department. If in doubt, you should always hide your statue in your loft, under a heavy tarpaulin away from skylights, where it could be noticed by third-class passengers hiding in the wheel-wells of passing airliners and offend their sillybilities.

Next week, your visiting lecturer will be (name withheld in accordance with The Name Witholding Act) who will be discussing her latest books, which she wrote in Yarlswood, Rewriting British History and Blackmail: Apologising and Appeasing with your statues down.

Statue Erections Matter UK
The Time-Travelling Policeman says, “I love it here in 1910. We are all well-funded, you can stand in the middle of the road and be really embarrassed if you get hit by the once-weekly bus, the government and law-abiding public all support us, the Riot Act takes care of anything vaguely subversive and all our statues and national monuments are safe and happy within their ancestral home!

The UK Guide to Offensive Statues Handbook
“If you don’t know where they are they’ll box them before you trash them!” ~ described by the B.B.C. as a ‘mainly peaceful demonstrator’

Copyright © 2018-2020 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

Statues that cause offence

Offensive Statues of the UK

The UK Guide to Offensive Statues Handbook

Published: 12 June 2020

The UK Guide to Offensive Statues Handbook, not to be confused with Enoch Powell’s biography, is the Who’s Who of offensive statues in the UK ~ a must for the Statuephobic!

The first publication of its kind to provide a comprehensive list of UK statues that should have been torn down before they were built, the ‘Rioter’s bible to statue destruction’, as the Gardroomism refers to it, has been cunningly contrived to give maximum exposure, even to those statues that are wearing trousers, to every statue known to ITs in the UK.

Statues that cause offence

This handy pocket-sized booklet, that fits conveniently into the crutch piece of a pair of cheap synthetic jogging bottoms, bright pink trainers, the inside of your hoody and/or the cargo pockets of your camo trousers, without interfering with your weapons or statue-dismantling tools but at the same time guaranteeing an impressive bulge in all the right places, pinpoints with satellite precision the exact whereabouts of statues that are just asking to be defaced, desecrated, daubed with paint or thrown symbolically into strange places .

The book gives all the vital statistics ~ of Shanice , the editor ~ and also those of the individual statues, along with visibility profile, material construction, nearby rivers and lakes, whether or not the local police station has been rehoused in Martin’s the newsagents across the road and the exact locations of CCTV ~ essential information for all those who have nothing better to do than to get themselves recorded on film looking stupid for posterity as they grapple with a lump of stone or bronze (how future generations will laugh!)

There is also a splendid appendices for those statue molesters who prefer to do their statue attacks at night, showing the location of street lamps, and advising you on where to buy miners helmets with lamps on top for maximum hands-free statue removing.

Offensive Statues of the UK

What makes this book most appealing to statue destructors is its unique Tossability analytics paradigm (width x height x length x weight) assessed against the number of men, women, Its or Others that will be required to uproot each statue and run away with it down the street. By measuring the height of the wall over which you are going to throw it, you can then apply the Tossability calculator, which will give you, the Tossers, the exact number of Tossers needed to toss, together with elevation, lift, and trajectory parameters. Don’t forget that before attempting this exercise each group should appoint a Chief Tosser. This is a legal requirement of Health & Safety (you wouldn’t want to break the law now, would you?).

An original feature of this book is the statue’s subject Checklist! A list of politically incorrect offenses: an A~Z and back (provided in 33 ethnic languages, including Welsh) of documented, suspected and thoroughly bogus politically correct offences from which statue-shifters can choose to justify acts of vandalism (You will need these when interviewed by the liberal left media and as a Get Out of Jail Free card in the unlikely event that any one dare to arrest you and take you to liberal left court.).

The checklist lists all the main offenses that statues can commit:

✳Racism

✳ Sexism

✳ Homophobia

✳ Xenophobia

✳ Inciting Racial/Religious Hatred

✳ Too few women in the board room

✳ LGBT It & Other issues                  

✳ Fox Hunting

✳ Being Heterosexual

✳ Watching Black & White Films

✳ Thinking the B.B.C. stands for something else

✳ Starring in Gone With The Wind

✳ Having an Auntie who lives in Virginia

(add others as necessary)

Where can I get a copy of The UK Guide to Offensive Statues Handbook?

In spite of all efforts to the contrary, the police force has not yet been abolished and never will be, which explains why the Handbook has a limited print run and a high pulpability probability.

The good news is, however, that the manual personual is half-price x 2 to P.R.I.Cs. (Political Representatives of Immigration Councils). It is not necessary to be a PRIC but having a P.I.S.S. (Politically Incorrect Sensibility Status) and being a D.I.C.K (Director of the Institute of Chartered Knuckleheads) qualifies you to three free copies, and DICK Heads, those of you who are career statue removers, can apply, when you learn to spell, for lifetime membership.

Statue Heavers Institute & Trades Executive (S.H.I.T.E.) members, on presentation of their Antifa credentials (a blank piece of paper with no C.S.Es), receive a number of loyalty benefits, including  a handy Get out of Jail Free card; a free holiday in a place where statues have never been heard of; medical insurance for groin sprains and ruptures (statues are heavy!); riot loyalty points; and discounts on licensed products, such as blank sweatshirts with statues removed from the front and your name and doss house address on the back; back-to-front hoodies (the ultimate in unrecognisability); and a free introductory course on banner etiquette at SHITE’s headquarters in Brixton,  which includes how to spell and how to hold your banner the right way up and the right way round (IQ Test not required).

Our sisters’ publication, Offensive Statues of the Deep American South, is available from Lee’s General Stores, Confederate Street, Alobama ~ but hurry, as there are not many left!

More in the series of Our Guaranteed to Offend publications from PC Press include:

⛔ Offensive Painters & Paintings

⛔ Offensive Authors & Books

⛔ Offensive Poets & Poetry

⛔ Offensive Architects and their Offensive Buildings

🛐Offensive things that are waiting to be discovered which we will pull down later (in association with Craven Govt Publications)

Statues that cause offence
“Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up”
(Photo credit: Sarah Brink on Unsplash; https://unsplash.com/photos/TZyEMoSB9Tw)

Further writings of a Statuesque nature

Watching the Riots on TV
Life without a Television Licence
Will Life Change After Covid-19

Copyright [Text] © 2018-2020 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

Will Life Change After Covid-19?

There are lies, damned lies and statistics

Britons think life will change dramatically after COVID-19 ~ but they are not sure why or why they said it

Published: 6 June 2020

The world will never be the same as it was when it wasn’t, and many Britons would not want things to go back the way they were before they weren’t, ie before coronavirus when they had to go to work, a survey for No Real News has revealed.

Will Life Change After Covid-19?

Coronavirus has been a confusing experience, not least because in lockdown many people found themselves in the park, driving to places where they ought not to go ~ especially should their spouse find out or if they worked for the government ~ and sometimes arriving in Skegness when they least felt capable of explaining why.

A lot of people suspect that far from separating them from family, friends and loved ones, coronavirus has brought them closer together. This is particularly true for those people who visited their family more just because they were told that they should not, and for people living 45 to a house who know what it is like to travel to the UK in a very small boat.

The survey has done all sorts of funny things to those who took part in it, from people saying that they will never have to commute again to shops being a thing of the past. However, more than a third thought that this was wishful thinking, particularly those who sell on eBoot, and a large percentage of the same group predicted foreign holidays would be abandoned for a day out on a grass verge at the side of the M25.

Life After Covid-19 ~ the post-coronavirus world
The post-coronavirus world

Zoom & Skype: what are the symptoms?

85% concluded that they would not miss socialising by Zoom and Skype, because they did not know what these were, and the remaining 25% knew that they had them but were still learning how to turn them off or, conversely, how to turn their computers on ~ the latter group tended to be in the baby-boomer range, 50 to 65 year olds, who would rather be down the pub.

A recent poll by WeBelieveYou for Pie in the Sky found that 70% believed that life would be so different that nothing would be the same as it was when they weren’t drinking, whilst only 15%, those returning to work, thought that the only change would be their underpants.

A majority, 2%, ardently wished that they had done better at maths at school. Of this group, 30% said they would like the world to be different, but they did not know how, and the remainder believed that the world they have helped to shape would have been very different indeed had they gone to school instead of mugging people.

‘… but you don’t know what you’ve got ’till it’s gone’

By far the largest ‘world changers’ were those who remembered how better life was before social engineering. 45% of these claimed they were building a TARDIS, whilst 25% thought they ought to be quiet, as they wanted their company pension, many of which are police officers.

Asked what they thought they were supposed to say is the most important issue the world must face when Covid-19 is over, only 10% cited tackling future pandemics as they liked staying at home, 78% said climate change ~ particularly in England where it rains too much ~ and less than half of the number you originally thought of then doubled hadn’t got a clue or couldn’t give a flying f!*? ~ and the greatest percentage of these were university students.

Sorting out terrorism had sunk to an all-time low of 1.5%, possibly due to the fact that no one goes out anymore or, alternatively, that the figure is a false one, and the controversial subject of migration and refugees was odds on favourite depending on Brexit going ahead and Dominic Cummings keeping his job. However, a second poll by TurnLeft for PC UK, put this figure on 1% and noted that within this group 95% were fascists and the remaining 5% waiting to be labelled as such.

{At this point articles of this nature typically run out of anything new to say, so they start repeating themselves in order to create more space around which to wrap their advertisements. But we will buck (yes, I said buck) the trend:}

75% of people who think, think that after the pandemic there will be no change there, then; of those who don’t think, 50% were demonstrating and the remaining 50% were having difficulty fitting the words of their slogans onto their cardboard banners; all were defying calls for social distancing, prompting one sociologist, who has never had a proper job, to suggest that this might be their penultimate demo, the last targeting a government conspiracy where certain groups are incited to demonstrate to ensure that they get coronavirus (source: Mr Anonymous, Antifart).

The majority of people thought this last comment spot-on, with a fictional majority invented by the press admitting they were demonstrating but had never left their house. There were signs, however, that some of this group had changed their name to Short and others to Cummings.

Will Life Change After Covid-19?: Conclusion

In conclusion, of those polled 75% who think things will change significantly believe that they will probably change their minds later and of that there is no doubt.

Of those not polled, 100% wondered why, as they don’t agree with any of this.

The majority of an unspecified group had grandparents who sat on Skegness beach for 20 years waiting for the tide to return from Calais whilst wearing a knotted hanky and eating fish and chips.

And everyone, including the world and somebody else’s wife, had not a shadow of a doubt, because they never went into that part of town and always looked behind them, that after the pandemic the magnitude shift away from trusting what the media said to relying on notes in Christmas crackers would eventually lead to no more bullshit.

100% and the rest of the world could not stop applauding this!

100% agreed that this was 100%.
(Photo credit: kai Stachowiak; https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=223310&picture=100-percent)

Exciting coronavirus-stimulated bored games

Lockdown!
Exit Strategy
Clueless

Copyright [Text] © 2018-2020 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.