Архив за месяц: Декабрь 2020

2020 Memories are made of this

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 292 [31 December 2020]
or Goodbye 2020, if I never see you again will it be too soon?

Published: 31 December 2020 ~ 2020 Memories are made of this

The End is Nigh! Well, you would think so from the aggregated hype bubbling furiously over the past 12 months in the cauldrons of the western media. Never before in recent history has the press had the opportunity to indulge itself in a Groundhog Field Day like the one that has been handed to them by the pandemic (or is that scamdemic?). But enough of the soothsaying and a tad more soothing-saying, if you don’t mind. The end is nigh for 2020: Time to reflect on the past 12 months.

My period of voluntary self-isolation began back in March 2020, and like most people I have evaluated the quality of my life during this epoch as a series of stops, starts and checks. However, on looking back I realise that although the impediment of coronavirus fear and its attendant restrictions have cast a long shadow over our social life, it never succeeded in inflicting a total eclipse. As my wife is fond of saying, “Humans can adapt to anything in time”, and whilst in my books I have committed the cardinal sin by steering clear of bars and other places where people tend to congregate, in retrospect 2020 was far from totally written off. Indeed, in spite of muzzle-wearing and fetishistic hand-sanitising, we did still have a life ~ we met friends, took several trips to the coast, visited art galleries and places of historical interest, entertained at home and, most importantly, used the extra time that we had at our disposal in the most constructive ways.

We certainly managed to get more done around the house and in the garden ~ especially in the garden. This is Olga’s pet project: converting what was a slab of inherited concrete into a proper, functioning outdoor area, where she can enjoy the flowers and trees, and I can enjoy a pint.

Years ago, in the mists of a different time, I worked on a magazine called Successful Gardening, from which I learnt that my greatest contribution to any practical endeavour in this field would be to make myself scarce, which is exactly what I did. So, I have to confess that the lion’s share of the work was done by my wife. Yet, I feel no need for excuse making. Gardening is a sport, and like any other sport, some you participate in; in others you are a spectator.

Where coronavirus is concerned, it is for my family and friends back in the UK that I feel the most sorry. The UK media has not had the opportunity to be this gory and ghastly in its coverage since Jack the Ripper terrorised Whitechapel. Not even brutal acts of terrorism, which are officially swept under the carpet by deflection techniques that focus on holding hands and candle-lit vigils, come close to the penny dreadful coverage that coronavirus receives. It would not be half so bad if 1 + 1 = 2, but nothing about the measures being taken to combat coronavirus in the UK ~ the draconian measures ~ seems to add up, and, as with Brexit, the country appears to be split yet again, and uncannily yet again, as with Brexit, the fault lines are political and a peculiar inversion of the status quo.

In complete contradiction to the overt emphasis placed at any other time on civil liberties and the evils of the so-called surveillance society, 1984 and all that, it is the left that appears to be screaming for lockdown, mask-wearing and any other hard and fast rules. Indeed, they do not seem to be able to get enough of it, and, with the illiberality that is customary with liberals, are spitting tar and feathers at anyone who is impudent enough to advocate liberty above home slavery. The megaphone message is: Do as you are told! Stay in! Don’t go anywhere, or we are all going to die!!.

Admittedly, there are a lot better things to do with your time than dying but is being bolted and barred in your home for what little there is left of your life it? The older we become the more precious life becomes, but so does living your life. It is the Bitch of having been born at all.

The problem, or at least one of the salient problems of getting old ~ and for some inexplicable reason we all tend to do it, get old, I mean ~ is that you reach the stage where you think you can hear each grain of sand dropping into the hour glass, and whilst it is normal on the push-penny arcade machine of life to brace yourself for the moment when inevitably your turn will come, when you will be bumped off down the chute, the media over the past 12 months has not missed a trick in reminding us that the man with the cowl and scythe is busier than he has ever been pushing coins into the slot.

No one can deny that there has been a lot of death about, and sadly we were not spared. Our good friend, Stanislav (Stas) died in November 2020. Immediately, rumours abounded that he had died of coronavirus, the majority of people having become so obsessed with the virus that it has become almost impermissible to die from anything else. Stas did not die from coronavirus. But he did die, and with his passing we lost a very good and much-loved friend.

Without doubt, one of the most perplexing things about getting older is that not only do you have to come to terms with your own mortality, you also have to come to terms with the loss off those who are nearest and dearest. Each loss tears a hole in the fabric of life that can never be repaired.

But enough of this morbidity. Like everything in life, what some people lose on the swings others gain on the merry-go-rounds, and whilst we can conclude that whereas it has been a troubled year for most of us, especially those on the frontline ~ doctors, nurses, paramedics and the rest ~ if you have the good fortune to be a mask producer, the director of a pharmaceutical industry, a media magnate, I do not suppose that Mr Coronavirus seems such a bad fellow after all, and this is without mentioning the increased yields experienced in the funeral industry.

Enough said: In a consummately original and unplagiaristic moment, my valediction for the year 2020 is that it was ‘the best of years, ‘t’was the worst of years’.

Think of 2020 as a painful tooth that needs to be extracted by the dentist: you might miss it, but you will certainly be glad it has gone …

Happy New Year
to One & All

Flowers in Olga Hart's Garden Kaliningrad

2020 Memories are made of this Mick Hart Woodoo Hairdressers Kaliningrad

Kaliningrad 2020 Mick Hart & Olga Hart Vintage Car

2020 Memories are made of this Mick Hart & Olga Hart

Olga Hart celebrates Kant's birthday Konigsberg

Mick Hart with relics Kaliningrad market

2020 memories are made of this

Out of 2020 Out of the EU

The End of 2020 and the EU Occupation

Published: 29 December 2020 ~ Out of 2020 Out of the EU

A most wonderful thing is about to happen! At midnight on the 31December everywhere, it will be the end of what has been unarguably (unless you are one of the elite, perhaps! Subscribe here for my conspiracy theory!) one of the worst years in modern history.

But it is not just the end of 2020, for lucky Brits it is the day on which all of Nigel Farage’s hard work pays off. Having defeated the machinations of the left, he has almost single handedly provided the UK with an escape route from the collapsing agenda of the EU New World Order ~ soon to be rebranded by history as the EU New World Disorder.

Whilst no one can be naïve enough to believe that the UK will completely pull the plug on the EU experiment ~ I mean, it just does not happen like that, does it! ~ hopefully, the cables will have been wrenched enough to disable the worst of the EU’s ideological influence as the powerhouse of liberal control and, once disconnected from this self-serving force, Britain can truly begin to move forward into those bright sunlit uplands of which Churchill spoke so optimistically when Fascism was vanquished in 1945 ~ sigh, little did he know …

And, with 2001 forecast to be the Year of Vaccination, or more likely the Year of Vacillation, whatever we will continue not to believe, for none of us believe everything, especially everything we are told to believe, let us make the most of it, and on 31^st December at midnight exactly all join together, wherever we are, whether locked away in the bog on our own with our mask on our chin or breaking social distancing rules, and give this miserable year 2020 the resounding kick up the arse which it so richly deserves!!

✔✔✔
Happy New No More EU, Nigel, and a Better New Year for the World!
😊😊😊😊

Read on >>> Independence Day: Freedom from the EU

Coronavirus Truth or Trickery Trick or Treat?

We all know a lot less than we think we knew when all this started

Published: 29 December 2020

So, here we are, coming to the end of the first year of the Coronavirus Age and my first 9 months of being a coronavirus self-isolator. Time for reflection, or, as Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise the comedians used to say, “What do you think of it so far?”

In 1992 the alternative rock group REM produced a hit record the chorus of which went, “If you believed they put a man on the moon … If you believe there’s nothing up his sleeve, then nothing is cool.”

The question today is ‘Do you believe that lockdowns, mask-wearing, social distancing and a worldwide coercive mass vaccination programme using vaccines which scientists and public health officials admit have been fast-tracked into existence and therefore, one presumes, not as rigorously tested as they would normally be, are manifestations of global humanitarianism or a totalitarian globalist agenda in which economic reset and culling the world’s population are two primary objectives? And apropos of this, do you believe that the misinformation and disinformation at the centre of public confusion is just a byproduct of the gabbling information age in which we live, the bungling inefficiency of the ruling elites or a carefully and meticulously orchestrated web of deceit and deception.

Take my word for it: I don’t know.

But there is no doubt that the traction gained by conspiracy theories is beginning to make them look and sound a lot less infeasible than the obfuscating quagmire into which the official narrative, in its failure to provide conclusive answers or even address people’s fears, sinks a little every day.

So, this is where I come to my What Do You Make About That? section ~ where I air alternative views to those presented in the authoritative script and leave you to make your own minds up: ‘Trick or Treat’?

Coronavirus Truth or Trickery Trick or Treat?

In this video clip taken from the Brexit party’s Facebook page we learn that the Nightingale Hospital at the ExCel Centre in London has disappeared. It has been dismantled, which is a mite odd as we are told that London is supposedly locked down tight, sinking into the abyss of yet another onslaught of virus virulence and, moreover, threatened by a mutated strain of Covid-19.

This clip is taken from www.bitchute.com {link inactive as of 12/04/2022} an alternative social media platform to Facebook. It sees controversial investigative journalist Gemma O’Doherty ‘proving’ that proof exists that coronavirus does not ~ in the most official sense ~ and, it would seem, that the efficacy of every preventative measure and precaution taken to limit the spread of this ‘non-existent’ disease has no basis in fact.

Here is a Gemma O’Doherty’ quote: “As part of our legal action we had been demanding the evidence that this virus actually exists [as well as] evidence that lockdowns actually have any impact on the spread of viruses; that facemasks are safe, and do deter the spread of viruses – They don’t. No such studies exist; that social distancing is based in science – It isn’t. it’s made up; that contact tracing has any bearing on the spread of a virus – of course it doesn’t. This organisation here – is making it up as they go along.” — Gemma O’Doherty

Put like that, it’s a Buggeroota to be sure!

Here is a piece that was aired via Russia’s RT. RT is the first Russian 24/7 English-language news channel which brings the Russian view on global news.’ There are thousands of Covid strains, so this new scare is NOT a big deal, but politicians just love their new authoritarianism — RT Op-ed.’

The article which claims that the British government ‘know what they are doing’ ~ “One should be wary of caricaturing Boris Johnson and the rest of his cronies perpetrating this crime on the people as ‘Grinches’. They are nothing so amusing or cuddly. They are far, far worse than that, and make no mistake about it, they know full well what they are doing.” ~ is strangely reassuring for, from the average Britisher’s viewpoint, they don’t.

So, here we are, coming to the end of the first year of the Coronavirus Age. Whether you believe that what is happening in response to coronavirus is all part of a well-orchestrated plan by the usual neoliberal suspects or just another example of where are the world leaders we used to have when you need them, one thing is universally certain, we will all be glad to see the arse of 2020 well and truly booted out. But, as one life and soul of the party said to me recently, do you really think that things are going to get better in 2001?

That is a tough one to be sure. If 2020 was the year in which a new disease was unleashed on us, and the year when all respect and trust in authority and the media died, 2021 looks set to become the year in which Big Pharma faces its greatest test of veracity and confidence since Charles Forde & Co beguiled us into believing that Bile Beans cured everything.

In 1979, The Police, no, not those ones who are told to look the other way when statues are being defaced and to arrest people for not eating Christmas dinner in a small room papered with old copies of The Independent (They don’t produce a print version anymore, do they. I wonder what their readers do for toilet paper?) —The Police rock group released a record called ‘Message in a Bottle’. Perhaps, this is where the answer lies, and we will not know the truth for certain until it comes rolling in on the tide of time.

In the meantime, to offset allegations of partisanship on my part to the anti-vaxxers cause, perpetual seekers of reassurance might do worse than to read this article: Covid-19 vaccines are safe. That doesn’t mean no side effects – STAT (statnews.com).

You pays your money and you takes your choice …

Coronavirus Truth or Trickery: a Message in a Bottle

(Image credit: Photo via <a href="/ru/”https://www.goodfreephotos.com/”/">Good Free Photos</a>)

Zelenogradsk! Lit up like a Christmas tree

A festive day in Zelenogradsk

Published: 24 December 2020

Travelling for the first time from a small railway station tucked away in Kaliningrad, my wife, Olga, and I recently visited the coastal resort Zelenogradsk. It was a wet, cold, overcast day, and it was also Monday, so we had the pleasure of travelling on a very sparsely populated train. Even though we were the only ones sitting in a carriage that could hold 60 people effortlessly, we were still obliged to obey the mandatory mask-wearing rule, aka ‘muzzles’, as Olga calls them.

Zelenogradsk! Lit up like a Christmas tree

Cutting out the rail journey across town, the trip took about twenty minutes in total. First stop, Love café, for a bowl of piping hot mushroom soup, potato pancakes and a couple of carafes of vodka. Thus fortified against the inclement weather, we were better able to appreciate the delights of Zelenogradsk’s festive decorations. The upper end of the High Street was positively festooned with them, and there was no shortage for my paparazzi-minded wife to snap her mobile phone at, prior to uploading them onto Facebook.

Love café Zelinogradsk: Mick Hart & Olga Hart Xmas 2020 — **Mick & Olga Hart in Love café Zelinogradsk, Russia, Christmas 2020**

Although the lower end of the High Street was less profusely decorated, I was much taken with the latest socio-cultural symbol, which speaks volumes about our modern-day society. It takes the form of a bronze statue, modelled after a shapely young woman trouncing across the road. She is towing a case on wheels and, oblivious to everything around her but herself, is taking a selfie on her mobile phone. With her arm outstretched and her head tossed back, she is so completely self-entranced that when I put my arm around her she did not blink an eyelid. Thank you lady for that, but do watch out for the traffic now!

We took a stroll along the deserted beach, which only five months ago was a sardine tin of sun loungers, and then retraced our steps from the park, detouring in the direction of the Cranz water tower. My wife, knowing that I have a skeleton fetish, had steered me toward the Skeleton Museum, a truly novel establishment which I intend to write about later.

Then, it was back along the High Street, allowing Olga to indulge herself in her fetish ~ more photo-taking for Facebook. This made me grumble a bit. This never-ending compulsion to phone-photo everything for Führer Facebook has the irritating tendency to subjugate life to a series of fits and starts, placing real time in abeyance, putting it on hold in the most obtrusive and disjointing way. The inconvenience righted itself, however, when Olga, in order to placate me, suggested that we stop for a drink in the Telegraf restaurant, a capital suggestion with which it was inconceivable not to agree and which most mysteriously seemed to alter my point of view about photos. After all, I reasoned, over a nice refreshing ‘pint’, I would need the photographs for my blog.

Zelenogradsk! Lit up like a Christmas tree

Bicycle Zelinogradsk adorned for Christmas

Zelenogradsk, Russia, Christmas 2020

Coronavirus & The Ghosts of Christmas Past

Mick Hart’s Christmas Message from Russia (Not to be confused with the Queen’s Speech)

Published: 23 December 2020

When I see and read about the mushrooming angst as my fellow Brits try to come to terms with the first coronavirus Christmas in the UK, I breathe a sigh of relief that I am out of it. Lockdowns, tiers, enforced mask wearing, has any of it been proven to work? Is it just too complicated? Is it really a neoliberal plot to ‘crash the economy’? Most people that I know in the UK are following the advice of Frank Sinatra and doing it their way.

Here, in Russia, Christmas is not celebrated on the 25 December, it is celebrated on 7 January, since the Russian Orthodox Church uses the old ‘Julian’ calendar for days of religious celebrations. Under the Soviet Union, Russia was banned for the greater part of the 20^th century from publicly celebrating Christmas. Christmas trees were singled out for special treatment. They were banned until the mid-1930s, at which time they made a comeback but rebranded as New Year Trees. Nobody thought to ask the trees what their opinion was.

This will be my first Christmas abroad, and the first time that I do not have to worry about how I should be celebrating it. I say ‘should’ be celebrating it as over the years I have reached the conclusion that Christmas is something that you have to celebrate, that you have to enjoy, that there is an onus on you, an unwritten but widely reinforced prejudice that Christmas must be enjoyed at all costs!

It is not dissimilar to the rules of any other party. You know the scenario: you are sitting in the corner quietly enjoying a drink and some life and (R)soul of the party rushes up to you and says: “Come on, cheer up, it’s a party!”

Not that I am averse to Christmas. Looking back to my youth, up until about my 18^th birthday, we had some wonderful family Christmases. Indeed, when I was young, and right up into my teens, I looked forward to it, and not just Christmas Day but the lead up as well.

Coronavirus & The Ghosts of Christmas Past

When we were children Christmas was celebrated in the grand Victorian style. It kicked off at primary school, with Christmas carols and discussions about the meaning of Christmas from our esteemed headmaster, Ben Rowbottom, a man who clearly enjoyed Christmas himself. We made Christmas cards out of bits of cardboard, waterpaint and tinsel, and sometimes an Advent calendar, which we could proudly then take home.

As a member of the church choir, I would have been warbling Christmas carols for at least a month before the Christmas festivities commenced. One year we also performed a nativity play in church, which was received with such accolades that it was impossible not to concede that I was a second Laurence Olivier in the making.

We would decorate the school, decorate our home, choose and buy a Christmas tree ~ a real one, of course ~ sit down night after night to write our Christmas cards and even look forward to the not insubstantial task of Christmas shopping. Ours was a large family, and when friends and friends’ families were factored into the present-buying equation, Christmas shopping became a laborious task, but in those days it was looked upon as a labour of love, which, indeed, it was.

One of the most exciting moments in the run-up to Christmas was going to the supermarket to buy the Christmas booze. As I have said, ours was a large family and over the Christmas period three or four family parties would be thrown. I had no problem with this: family parties were enjoyable, others, alas, were not. Besides, Christmas was the only time of the year my father really pushed the boat out; for the other 364 days the boat was on a tight rope and very secure in its mooring.

Everything was so simple and so enjoyable then, so much so that it was easy to believe that Father Christmas would continue to drop down the chimney, eat the mince pie and swig the glass of sherry left for him, before depositing our main presents around the tree in the front room and the rest in boxes around the bed, until I was 65. All we had to worry about in those days was trying to sound convincing when we opened the Christmas presents: “Just what I have always wanted! (Sorry? What did you say? I can’t hear you over the noise of this very loud Christmas jumper)”.

Although Father Christmas stopped plummeting down the chimney at about the time we started to drink in the village pub, at the age of 14, looking forward to Christmas carried on until and into my teen years. As a teenager, I would spend Christmas Day with the family and Boxing Day (appropriately named) with my Rushden friends, a dodgy salt-of-the-earth lot if ever there was one, drinking over the odds at The Welcome pub.

The landlord of The Welcome, Ernie, was a cheerful soul. I can see him now standing on the elevated platform behind the bar, which made him look twice as intimidating as he really was, peering at the occupants of the bench seats that ran along the window. Old people used to sit there, and it was fondly referred to as Death Row. Said Ernie, cynically, eyeing the people seated on Death Row. “I hope they enjoy their Christmas. I wouldn’t bother if I was them booking a summer holiday.”

Coronavirus & The Ghosts of Christmas Past

These were the heydays of Christmas for me, after which, I am sad to say, it was all downhill. Then I entered a period of truly lack-lustre Christmases and even more appalling New Year’s Eves. However, I did get a perverse pleasure out of the office Christmas parties whilst I was working in London. At this time, I was skiving in the publishing industry, living my life in my own soap opera.

Let me say immediately, however, that office Christmas parties are truly the pits. After an entire year incarcerated together on No-Love Island (the office), all those people, who on any other day cannot wait to get away from one another, are now concentrated in one room along with their oppressions, petty grievances, festering confrontations, envy, resentment and old scores to settle, together with unlimited supplies of the Demon Drink. It is bound to go horribly wrong. How could it not?

There are many tales that I could tell on this subject, but my favourite has to be the one when after throwing a lavish Christmas office party with no expense spared, ie our boss hired out the function rooms at London Zoo with pre-dinner drinks in the reptile house (no comment), the following day at work both my friend, who was the production manager, and I, were summoned to the boss’ office, wished a cheery Happy New Year and then peremptorily sacked. My friend’s behaviour at the Christmas party had not gone down too well, particularly when the paranoid management thought that he was reaching into his inside jacket pocket for a gun when in fact he was about to submit his written resignation. He always did like a drama!

All’s well that ends badly, as they should say, and it was good, in hindsight, that this door slammed shut. Sometimes, especially in the early days of your career, you need to dust the boot marks off the arse of your pants to find that new direction.

Coronavirus & The Ghosts of Christmas Past

In later years, my Christmases followed the downhill trend. I never had much time for New Year’s Eve in England. It is a cattle market.

Once, whilst in London, I went out on New Year’s Eve day, and started drinking early in the pubs around Borough Market, the idea being that I would have had enough by six o’clock, would go home, crash out and miss the midnight hullabaloo. All went well at first. I was in bed before midnight as planned, but at midnight sharp a firework display at the Working Men’s Club at the rear of our house woke me up. The daytime booze had worn off, and I was unable to get back to sleep until five o’clock in the morning: Bah Humbug & Bugger!

Fast forward to the early 20s of the 21^st century. My wife had been invited to go to Paris for Christmas, and I did not want to go. I tried to explain to her that the Paris that she was dreaming off, the Paris of high culture, of little Parisian cafés and atmospheric nightclubs with cabaret and table service had been sentenced to death by Adolf; it limped on into the 1960s and had since been swept away by the EU’s culture-destroying multicult tsunami. In short, the Paris of the past was no more. Like many other capital cities in the western world, it had been stripped of its heritage character and consigned to a predictable, unpleasant and ironic homogeneity. My wife learnt the hard way and wished she had never gone.

Nevertheless, off she went leaving me to spend Christmas Day alone (nice thing to do to your husband, isn’t it!). I spent it sitting in our antique shop office, watching through the security cameras as families and friends rolled up at our neighbour’s for Christmas. It was a surreal experience, made more so by the beans on toast I had for Christmas lunch. It felt as if the world was having a Christmas party and I had not been invited. In a word, it was blissful.

This time last year I was in England, staying with a friend. It was just the two of us. Christmas day brought brilliant sunshine. We went to the pub. The streets were deserted and even without coronavirus constraints the Banker’s Draft in Bedford was exceedingly quiet.

Coronavirus & The Ghosts of Christmas Past: The Banker's Draft, Bedford, UK — **Mick Hart, Christmas Day 2019 in the Banker’s Draft, Bedford, wondering whether he had travelled forward in time to Christmas 2020?**

The pub shut promptly at two o’clock, and the only people on Bedford’s High Street were two young Polish workers. I knew that look and that feeling: They had obviously had a damned good drinking session the night before, were well hungover and in need of a fix.

When they asked us which pubs were open, this was a tough one. After all, this was England, the land of childlike opening hours. It had not been that long ago when we had been led to believe that British pubs would be adopting continental opening hours. Pubs, we had been told, would be open all day and, as a result, the country would sink into the abyss of chronic alcoholism, anti-social behaviour and unspeakable depravity. It never happened, possibly because with or without the extension to the licensing laws, it already had.

The pub we had just exited from was on the verge of closing for the day, and the Polish lads had posed us a difficult question, but then good old Wetherspoons sprang into my mind, and the Polish lads were saved.

Coronavirus & The Ghosts of Christmas Past: Bedford Hight Street, Christmas Day 2019 — **Bedford High Street, Christmas Day, 2019. Was this a rehearsal for this year’s Christmas lockdown?**

My friend and I walked down to the Embankment in the hope that there might be some life there, but this wonderful old pub/hotel was as dark as Kipling’s chocolate cake, so there was nothing left to do but return to my friend’s house for a makeshift Christmas lunch. Luckily, our last bid gambit paid off. The nearby Ship was open, and open until 5pm.

**Embankment Hotel, Bedford** (**2019).**

I must confess that, with the exception of when I was young, Christmas has always been problematic for me. I’m not a Knees-up Mother Brown type, loathe loud, vulgar and jostling pubs and avoid parties like the plague.

In the run up to Christmas, the UK becomes a truly awful place. The pubs are packed, usually with a surfeit of people who, thankfully, you never see at any other time of the year. Drunken hysteria sets in, anti-social behaviour rockets, every street corner has a pool of vomit on it and all sense of dignity and social etiquette ~ what is left of it ~ runs for cover. I have never been able to fathom whether this Bedlam, this parody of a Victorian lunatic asylum, is the product of mass excitement leading into Christmas Day or mass despair as the anti-climax approaches. There is little doubt, however, that the hysteria stems from 12 months of wage-slave institutionalisation. At the end of the year, those who have slaved to make money for their bosses are given a two-week holiday to spend the money that they have managed to save in a bumper spending spree that will line the pockets of a privileged few. What does it matter if the masses all drink more, too much, and what is a bit of bad behaviour as long as it oils their purses and wallets and keeps those Christmas tills jangling!

This year even the Bah Humbugs have been deprived of their anti-pleasure. By all that is written and read, this year Brits face a Christmas so monstrous, so unbelievably harsh that even Scrooge himself would welcome the ghost of Christmas Past.

I know that you won’t believe this, but I am often accused of being one of that fraternity who regards half a glass of beer as being half empty and not half full, but I would argue otherwise. This festive season, for example, with its tiers, lockdowns, bubbles, restrictions, limitations … is truly a Christmas with a difference. It is the first Christmas of its kind, and may we hopefully say the last, so just try to look at it this way: You are taking part in history. You are living through an event which will be a source of nostalgic fascination and intellectual examination by generations to come. You are a living piece of history about which someone, somewhere out there in the future even now beyond your grave is already examining, re-examining and writing about ‘that difficult time’, the 2020s. They are digging for the truth and History will judge …

Thus, this is not just any old Christmas — it is the contentious coronavirus Christmas of the Year of Our Lord 2020. And when you think of it like this, somehow it seems to put everything clearly into perspective …

Skelet saying Happy Christmas to customers of our antique shop. — **Our Skelet wishing customers Happy Christmas 2017.**

🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️Misinformation or simply mis-management? Mixing in Pubs & at Home Illegal!

Feature image: ‘Marley’s Ghost’ in the Public Domain
[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%27Scrooge_and_the_Ghost_of_Marley%27_by_Arthur_Rackham.jpg] {Link inactive as at 12/04/2022]

A book about Victor Ryabinin

On the 75th anniversary of Victor Ryabinin’s birth

Published: 17 December 2020 ~ A book about Victor Ryabinin

To coincide with what would have been Victor Ryabinin’s 75^th birthday, a book has been published which celebrates and commemorates his life and work. Conceived, supervised and edited by Kaliningrad artist Marina Simkina, daughter of the famous Russian poet Sam Simkin, and Boris Nisnevich, author and journalist, this fascinating book contains personal memories of Victor Ryabinin and critical acclaim of his work and career from 28 of his friends and colleagues.

More information about the book can be found by following this link [Victor Ryabinin the Artist Born in Königsberg], which will take you to the permanent pages on this blog under the category Victor Ryabinin Königsberg.

The following articles relating to Victor, his life and his art, also appear in this category:

Victor Ryabinin the Spirit of Königsberg
Oдин из самых замечательных людей, которых я когда-либо встречал
I first met Victor Ryabinin in the spring of 2001. A friend of my wife’s, knowing how much my wife liked art and how fascinated I was with anything to do with the past, suggested that we meet this ‘very interesting’ man, who was an artist and a historian.

An artist who can hear angels speak
Художник, у которого ангелы говорят
Kaliningrad author and journalist, Boris Nisnevich’s essay on the haunting influence that Königsberg’s ruins had on Victor Ryabinin’s philosophy and art: “When I wrote the draft to this article, I wrote that I believe there is no equal to him in Kaliningrad — I still believe he has no equal.” ~ Boris Nisnevich

In Memory of Victor Ryabinin
This article was published in memoriam on the first anniversary of Victor’s death. Victor died on 18 July 2019.

Personal Tour Guide Kaliningrad
Stanislav Konovalov (Stas) was a student and close friend of Victor Ryabinin. In the months following Victor’s death Stas supervised and worked on the emotionally and physically difficult task of dismantling, packing, transporting and storing the many and various Königsberg artefacts, artworks and assorted relics that once adorned and constituted The Studio ~ Victor’s atmospheric art studio and celebrated reception room. Stas took detailed photographs and measurements of the room in the hope one day that it could be reconstructed as part of a permanent exhibition to Victor and his work. Sadly, Stas himself passed away in November 2020. We live in hope that someone will continue the work that his untimely demise left unfinished. This is Stas’ story.

Victor Ryabinin’s Headstone Königsberg Kaliningrad

Victor Ryabinin’s Headstone Königsberg
After quite a hiatus Victor’s grave was finally bestowed with a headstone befitting the man and the artist. It shows Victor sitting on a stool in his art studio. He is leaning nonchalantly in his chair, relaxed, unassuming, in tune with himself, his life and the world around him. His right arm is resting on one of his art-historian creations, his left arm cradling the base. The artwork is an assemblage, a composition of assorted Königsberg relics assembled icon-like within a frame …

Auto Retro Club Kaliningrad 2021 Calendar

2021 calendar celebrates classic cars of Russia

Published: 15 December 2020

It was during the summer months this year that our friend Sergey Goryunov invited us to take part in a photoshoot which he was organising with a view towards producing a 2021 calendar for the members of Kaliningrad’s Auto Retro Club.

The photo session was scheduled to take place at 6am, which meant that we had to wake up at 4am, and it was just my luck that the night before I had experienced one of my life-long bouts of insomnia. It was not a case of can I drag myself out of bed in time, rather should I be dragging myself into it.

As the photographer was on standby, the vintage car organised and the venue prescribed, the effort had to be made and, in spite of myself, it was good to have the opportunity to get dressed up again in our vintage attire and to take part in this capital retro project.

Soft Barley beer in Kaliningrad Russia

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

Article 10: Soft Barley beer

Published: 14 December 2020

None of us want to be told that we are going soft, do we? But, unless you are one of these old-fashioned he-men who pumps weights, never cries and walk around as if their arms don’t fit, there is nothing wrong with a little bit of mellowness, when the mood so takes you, which is not why I chose Soft Barley as the latest in a succession of bottled beers widely available through Kaliningrad supermarkets as an aid to my research.

Previous articles in this series:
Bottled Beer in Kaliningrad
Variety of Beer in Kaliningrad
Cedar Wood Beer in Kaliningrad
Gold Mine Beer in Kaliningrad
Zhigulevskoye Beer Kaliningrad Russia
Lidskae Aksamitnae Beer in Kaliningrad
Baltika 3 in Kaliningrad
Ostmark Beer in Kaliningrad
Three Bears Crystal beer in Kaliningrad

Among the all-shapes-and-sizes 1.5 litre beer bottles that congregate enticingly on Kaliningrad’s shop shelves, the ones that really stand out from the crowd are, in fact, the simplest. They are squat, fat, dumpy-looking things, shaped purposefully to resemble small beer barrels. They are to beer advertising what Body Shop is to shampoos and body lotions, their simple packaging and minimalist presentation emphasising good, natural, salt-of-the-earth products, free from artificial additives: Nature’s best at its best.

When all’s said and done, that’s quite a gob full to live up to and, whilst the advertising works a treat, the question is does the product fulfil the promise?

Soft Barley beer in Kaliningrad Russia

Soft Barley has a soft natural label ~ note the ears of corn ~ and when you take the top off the bottle what do you get? Sniff! Sniff! Nothing really. Unless I am losing my sense of smell (no, let’s rephrase that symptom quickly!) ~ unless my olfactory senses deceive me, there is no distinctive aroma other than, perhaps, a faintly discernible ‘softness’.

When poured, this underwhelming neutrality does not escape from the glass. The beer fizzes, an ephemeral head appears, retreats and then dissolves. This is only depressing if you like ‘a big creamy ‘ed on your pint’, but I am not from Yorkshire, so I don’t.

Nevertheless, from the first sip to the last the taste is consistently palatable. There are no sharp notes to undermine the ‘soft’, as in subtle, and almost any corn bitterness is reduced to a hint, playing second fiddle to the rounded buttery overtones.

This beer is not, by Russian standards, a strong brew; if it was, I suppose they would have called it ‘Strong Barley’, but neither at 4.2% is it limp-wristed. It has just enough bottle, taste and flavour to make it the perfect complement to light snacks and ‘bitings’, an à la carte beer which speaks to me of warm summer afternoons, picnic tables and straw hats, although, being a bit of a renegade, I can close my ears and carry on drinking it until the snow has melted.

Aficionados and advocates of seriously head-banging beers may well pour scorn upon your choice, but pour scorn is not poor corn and drinking Soft Barley does not mean that you are going soft, just that you have a soft spot for the finer beers in life.

ABOUT THE BREWERY
The Trisosensky brewery has a proud and noble brewing history, its origins dating to 1888. Its name comes from the three great pine trees on the idyllic lakeside spot where it was founded by the merchant family Markov.

One of the first Russian breweries to produce beer using European technology, the quality of its products quickly established the company’s reputation at home and facilitated expansion into the export market.

The brewery’s Black, Pilsen, Czech and Vienna beers were particularly held in high regard, so much so that in 1910 the brewery was honoured with the official title ‘Supplier to the Court of His Imperial Majesty’.

Although the Ulyanovsk brewery was assimilated more recently into the company, its brewing history actually pre-dates that of Trisosensky, when Alexander Dmitrievich Sachkov, an honorary citizen of the city of Simbirsk, founded his honey brewery at Ulyanovsk in 1862.

Today, the Trisosensky brewery prides itself on the historic continuity of its classic brewing techniques, brewing traditional beers to traditional recipes using natural ingredients and talented brewers.

Its efforts have garnered it various prestigious awards including: the World Beer Awards; the International Beer Challenge; Gold Awards, the DLG Quality Test for Beer and Mixed Beer Beverages, Frankfurt am Main, 2016; Monde Selection 2017 awards; and awards in the ‘International Tasting Competition’, The Beer Awards 2017.

Soft Barley beer in Kaliningrad Russia

😁TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS
Name of Beer: Soft Barley
Brewer: Trisosensky brewery
Where it is brewed: Ulyanovsk, Russia
Bottle capacity: 1.5 litres
Strength: 4.2%
Price: It cost me about 127 rubles (£1.31)
Appearance: Pale golden
Aroma: Very nearly silent
Taste: Lightly bitter, mellow, buttery
Fizz amplitude: 6/10
Label/Marketing: Naturalistic
Would you buy it again? I would and I have.
Marks out of 10: 8

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

Hotel Tchaikovsky Kaliningrad is Nothing to Sneeze at

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 272 [11 December 2020]

Published: 11 December 2020 ~ Hotel Tchaikovsky Kaliningrad is Nothing to Sneeze at

Psychological problems resulting not from contracting Covid-19 but from the social prohibitions orchestrated and, in some instances, enforced in the name of spread containment and personal safety appear to have affected some people more than it has others. Indeed, scientists and health professionals alike, not to mention conspiracy theorists, postulate that ‘extreme measures’ such as lockdown and diminished social interaction have had and are having serious adverse effects on the mental-emotional well-being of a large cohort of people who feel that they have better things to do than imprison themselves in their respective homes playing John Wankerson’s Clueless for the rest of their unnatural lives.

Speaking for myself, the restrictions, self-imposed by ‘informed guidelines’ and/or edict, have left me bamboozled (What’s that? You’ve never experience it? You don’t know what you are missing? Vote Labour and find out!), the puzzle being, am I really responding as I perceive I should be to the exigencies of the pandemic or, as time goes by (good song that!), have I allowed my guard to slip?

Yes, I know, here I go again, getting myself into a mucking fuddle about whether my coronavirus precaution corollary justifies me calling myself a bona fide self-isolator. I would like to think that the ambiguity is simply a matter of semantics ~ self-isolator, social-distancer, reluctant mask-wearer, anti-social misanthropist using coronavirus as an excuse to hermiticise myself, whatever ~ but the crux of the question is, are divergencies allowed? Does one have to be an either/or? Either self-isolating or not self-isolating? Or can one be self-isolating some of the time but not others? A sort of part-time self-isolator or one on day release?

For example, given the reported rising tide of coronavirus cases, I am still inclined to err on the side of caution, and, in fact, I continue to do so by resisting all temptation to frequent the bars and licensed premises that I would normally have patronised a couple of times a month was it not for coronavirus. Whilst this inexcusable retreat is as injurious to Kaliningrad’s hospitality trade as the decision to close or restrict the opening hours of pubs has been to the UK’s equivalent, I have worked out, even with the handicap of a Grade 9 CSE in maths, that from a purely economic standpoint my bar-patronising reticence has put a smile on the face of my piggy bank.

However, as I have confessed in previous posts, my self-inflicted isolation falls somewhat short of perfect and, insofar as restricted social contact is concerned, I know of a number of people who are far holier than thy in their fastidious observation of the social distancing rule.

There are occasions when it is not impossible but is still difficult to swerve in the opposite direction to the norms and mores that bind us, where, just as it was in the pre-coronavirus age, we find ourselves obliged to proceed in a manner not entirely in keeping with our own convictions, and, at such times, are compelled, I am afraid to say, to throw caution to the wind.

Thus, it came to pass, a few weeks ago, that a strong gust in the form of a birthday celebration and the traditional expectations that such engenders, whipped my caution away like an unstuck toupée, and I found myself faced for the first time in umpteen Covid months with the arguably risky prospect of dining and drinking out.

Hotel Tchaikovsky Kaliningrad

The occasion was my wife’s mother’s 80^th birthday. We had discussed with her how she wanted to celebrate this milestone in her life, and she had shown great favour in the suggestion of going to a restaurant. The idea was that three other friends of hers, roughly of the same age group, would join us, all of whom at the outset expressed an interest in doing so. However, come closer to the day, as news began to percolate of escalating Covid cases, one by one these friends dropped out.

Admittedly, their example made me think that perhaps it would be best if we followed suit and instead of the restaurant settle upon a quiet celebration at home, but my wife’s mother remained unphased. She still wanted us all ~ what there was left of us ~ to go to the restaurant, and so the restaurant it was.

My wife, Olga, had chosen the Hotel Tchaikovsky as the venue. Hotel dining rooms tend normally to be less populated than restaurants per se, so I could see the logic in this. Of course, going anywhere without first strapping on our muzzles would have been so 2019 don’t you think? And as I had not dined in a restaurant for quite some considerable time, I found myself wondering how exactly one would be able to eat one’s food with a mask slapped about one’s kisser?

As my wife’s mother is in her 80^th year, walking, cycling or running to the restaurant were less obvious options than taking a taxi. I remember the time when travelling by taxi was looked upon as an innocent luxury as well as the best expedient, but in the coronavirus age taxis, as with every other mode of transport requiring third-party involvement, is where the risk-taking starts.

Hotel Tchaikovsky Kaliningrad

The Hotel Tchaikovsky is situated on a Königsberg street, which backs onto the city’s Zoo. It was a cold, wet and inhospitable evening, so my observations of the hotel’s exterior were minimalised by the need to get inside. There, it was light, charming and warm. Not only that, but there was something, whilst not exactly ‘decidedly’, vintage going on. In the hallway leading to the main reception, an impressive array of old suitcases had been stacked, two rows and several high, the uppermost cases garnished with clocks, and there was an upright parlour piano standing in the corridor. Vintage was going on at the same time as something almost antique, and also almost classical, as reflected in the reproduction 19^th century furniture, impressive walnut servery and glass chandelier-style ceiling pendants.

**Something vintage this way comes: the reception room at the Hotel Tchaikovsky in Kaliningrad, Russia**

Even with the threat of coronavirus hanging over us like the proverbial Sword of Damocles, I was still able to take this in, whilst applying disinfectant to my mitts from one of those pump-action dispensers, which had been strategically placed on a small console table prior to the dining-room entrance.

The hotel dining room consisted of two rooms, which was handy Andy, as between each there was a pair of glazed French Window-style doors, which kept things bright and airy whilst enabling the hotel management to comply quite handsomely with coronavirus distancing rules.

The first room had one engaged table, a family gathering, the adult occupants of which glanced apprehensively at us as we strolled in, passing within millimetres of their social distancing space. But they need not have stressed themselves. Two waitresses in regulation mask attire were ushering us courteously but firmly and swiftly into the adjoining room, where there was nobody else but us.

Since every table was unoccupied, it made the task of choosing where to sit virtually impossible. Each and every location was appraised and, by the time we had settled for the seats in the window, I felt as if we had sat everywhere else simultaneously.

The window seats turned out to be the perfect coronavirus cubby hole. They were literally seats, together with a table, placed inside the special dimensions rendered possible by a rectangular bay window, and being given to private corners of this type, I would have chosen to have sat here even if coronavirus was not half the threat that we have been led to believe.

So, we sat down, Olga’s mother done up to the nines, sporting her best jewellery and looking far more relaxed than we could ever be, even though every other table was only almost occupied by us and nobody else. We had no beef and Yorkshire pudding with that; only Olga’s mum seemed disappointed that the rest of Kaliningrad was not in the same room. I do wish that she had not said as we entered the restaurant, “There’s not many people here. It can’t be that popular”. But if you cannot insult the hotel management on your 80^th birthday, when can you?

It was about this time, as we were sat there, in the bay window, with only us and our reflections as company, that I heard the ghostly voice of my long dead auntie Ivy saying, “Hold hard, Michael!” (How I wished she could have used a different expression!), “What about the cutlery and glasses?” And she was right, we had not brought those antiseptic wipes with us for nothing! So, out they jolly well came, and yours truly set to with a vengeance wiping the wipes around the ends of the eating implements and around the rims of the glasses. That should do the trick! ~ none of us believed.

We were alone long enough for me to talk myself into the fallacy that I was still, technically, self-isolating, when a young waiter-me-lad appeared, wearing his mask in a Constructivist fashion. He took our order and scooted off to the kitchen. This was the real test, I thought: kitchen and kitchen staff coronavirus cleanliness.

It is quite frankly amazing how a couple of swift glasses of vino can transform melodrama into maladits (perfection!). By the time the waiter reappeared, bringing with him my vegetarian dish and Olga and Olga’s mum’s meaty options, apprehension had almost completely given way to restaurant rhapsody. The wine was excellent, if not a tad expensive, and we would soon discover that the food at the Hotel Tchaikovsky was crisp, fresh, first class and delicious.

With such culinary conviviality going down, and Olga having ordered three glasses of apricot brandy, which was sympatico, Covid, or rather the morbid dread of Covid, had been well and truly kicked up the arse.

Somewhere, at some time, during the indulgences, auntie Ivy had spoken again, and, in compliance, I had whipped out the wipes and shot them around the brandy glass rims, but no repeat performance was forthcoming as regards dessert spoons and later the shot glasses brimming with vodka.

Hotel Tchaikovsky Kaliningrad is Nothing to Sneeze at

Amidst all of this post-normal abandon and frivolity, a couple had come into the room and were occupying a table to the outside right of ours. They were over a metre away, so niet problem there then, but suddenly, with no warning, quite out of the blue, Olga’s mum developed a sneezing fit!

The first rendition had my head shoot round at a nervous pace. There was a pause, and there it was again, a second sneeze! I shot a glance at our neighbours. It was alright, they had not noticed it or, if they had, they had not reacted. I think they were secretly restraining themselves, preferring a diplomatic reaction to demonstrative rebuff. Then came another sneeze, then another and another, during which the potential recipients of this respiratory outrage had begun to look rather less comfortable.

At first, I had tried to placate their unease in that embarrassed way that we English do, by giving them an insouciant smile, which, by the second eruption, however, had tightened itself into a gritty-toothed grin. Meanwhile, Olga’s mum was holding a tissue to her nose, as if it was a white flag, but the performance was not yet over. There came a sneeze, and another, and within seconds ~ it must have been the wine ~ I was doubling up with a fit of the giggles. I did not know what to do. I would have put on my mask, but it was not big enough to hide behind, and yet I felt certain that in the current climate of fear and dread we would be frog marched out at any moment by several men in protective suits armed with pump-action spray guns and there, in the carpark, disinfected.

The crisis past, however, as crises often do, without further ado or incident, and the young waiter, who had obviously taken cover behind the bulky servery or piano in the corridor, now emerged not with the carafe of vodka that we had ordered earlier but with three of those nice tall glasses which hold a lot of vodka. It had been I who had suggested the carafe since the vodka was all for me, and I thought it would look better, would make me look less of a lush, presented in this fashion. But I ended up with three large glasses in front of me and the most surprised, amused and delighted look on the face of the youthful waiter ~ well, let us rephrase that and say in his eyes, as I could not see his face for one of those blasted muzzles!

I was just getting into my drinking stride when out came one of the senior staff to inform us that the witching hour was nigh. Apparently, coronavirus has got a thing about infecting you after 9pm, so they had to close the restaurant.

With about five minutes left at my disposal, I had to down three big glasses of vodka as if I was a real Russian vodka drinker, instead of a sipperoonee anglichanin.

Apart from the hurried exit, which was no fault of the management as they were just following orders, we all agreed that the service, fare and atmosphere had been top notch. It was a shame about the sneezing and Olga’s mum’s last words as we ambled off the premises, “There wasn’t a lot of people. It can’t be that popular.” Well, if you can’t say that on your 80^th birthday, when can you say it?

The toilets in the Hotel Tchaikovsky, Kaliningrad, are atmospherically located in the basement of the building. The arched red-brick ceiling and walls are exposed in all their original glory, and the loo interior has been sympathetically constructed to preserve and highlight its historic ethos. Note the copper-bowl washbasin, matching distressed-framed mirror and the reflection in it of the no-longer distressed Englishman, who had just downed his first glass of vodka.

For a self-isolating experience with a difference, including good food, good wine, good apricot brandy, good vodka (in tall glasses) in an elegant ambience and with good service, dine out at the Tchaikovsky Hotel, Kaliningrad.

Essential details:❤❤

Hotel Tchaikovsky
43 Tchaikovskogo Street
Kaliningrad, Russia

Tel: +7 (4012) 67-44-43
Email: reception@tchaikovskyhotel.ru
Web: https://ageevgroup.ru/hotels/tchaikovsky/

So Frightened of Priti Patel

As they would say in Northamptonshire, Priti Patel has got them frit!

The Good News, The Bad News

Published: 9 December 2020 ~ So Frightened of Priti Patel

After almost a year of coronavirus bad news, it is inspiring to know that come 31 December the transition period will be over and we will be more out of the European Union than we felt we were back in January 2020. So, the Good News is, ‘We will be out of the European Union’.

And the Bad News is that we will not be as out of the European Union as most of us who voted to be want to be.

I think we can safely say that 99.9% (and the rest) of those who voted to leave the EU did so because they wanted an end to open borders, free movement, and to ensure that the implementation of stricter immigration rules and a fast-track system for the removal of illegal migrants is no longer hamstrung by the politically motivated agenda of the ECHU (European Court of Horribly-twisted Rights).

It would appear, however, that the EU has successfully bullied (let’s use a word that they are familiar with) the UK establishment into retaining the final say on movement and immigration by shackling the UK to the European Convention on Human Rights.

Amusingly, how they have manoeuvred the British government into this checkmate situation is by threatening to remove access to shared intelligence on criminals. Why is this amusing? Well, everybody knows that the European Court of Human Rights is the de facto enforcement arm of the EU’s neoliberal migration policy, the court that continually overrules attempts by the UK and other hapless members of the European Union to block and legally deport unwanted, illegal migrants, including unwanted criminal migrants. So, it would appear that the UK government has signed up for intelligence sharing on criminals for the dubious benefit of knowing who they are but not being able to do very much about it.

Here is a quote, verbatim, unedited by me, which appeared recently in the comments section of one of the mainstream UK online news feeds:

The ECHR has no rights outside of the EU. It is just yet another court set up by the EU and fully enshrined into UK law by that corrupt Tony Bliar. As for the rule of law, the EU have never ever followed the rule of law, the only rule of law they follow is what Merkel dictates. Johnson should have totally scrapped the HR laws in the UK, it just gives these corrupt lawyers and judges that practice HR laws and twist them in favour of the criminal a further excuse to shaft the UK government. It is all this human rights rubbish that is preventing all these illegal immigrants and the bogus asylum seekers from being deported.

As Johnson has not got the backbone to scrap the HR laws completely and caved into the political dictatorship, then I feel that his days are numbered. There are many Tory MP’s that will be absolutely fuming of not only caving into the EU, but because it is on Human Rights. What about the taxpayers human rights, where we have to keep paying more and more taxes to keep these waste of space peers, corrupt judiciary and all these bogus asylum seekers and illegal immigrants very comfortable. Do our human rights not matter? I think Boris needs to start looking for another job, this is the start of the big cave-in and the EU are taking the pee out of us. Johnson is showing what a weak has been he is.

This comment is worth repeating again:

HR laws in the UK … just give the corrupt lawyers and judges that practice HR laws and twist them in favour of the criminal a further excuse to shaft the UK government. It is all this human rights rubbish that is preventing all these illegal immigrants and the bogus asylum seekers from being deported.

“Now look here, that’s just not true, innit”

Headlines from The Sun, 4 December 2020:

‘Priti Patel blasts lefty lawyers and ‘do-gooding’ celebs for keeping Jamaican killers & rapists in UK’

This report tells how at the last minute when 23 criminals originally from Jamaica where about to be deported, a last-minute legal challenge blocked the Home Secretary from kicking the undesirables out.

To quote The Sun¹:
“More than 60 MPs, mostly from the Labour Party, had urged Priti Patel to abandon the flight, saying of those being deported: ‘Britain is their home.’ And Labour backbencher Kim Johnson described the deportation as ‘obscene and irresponsible’.” Well, she would, wouldn’t she, because she’s a member of the political party that Cosets the Perpetrator, Blames the State, and Forgets the Victim.

The legal challenge that has been launched in order to ensure that these criminals, some of them rapists and murderers, can remain in the UK is of course underpinned by human rights laws (yawn, aren’t they all).

To quote The Sun:

“A large proportion submitted legal challenges, with new claims including human rights appeals and allegations that the criminals had been victims of modern slavery.”

You might ask yourself, on reading the article, why 82 ‘celebs’ ‘signed an open letter demanding the flight did not take off’. You might also ask yourself, in reflection on Brexit, why the majority of celebs threw their monied status behind the Remain camp. And you might arrive at the right conclusion that most celebs by virtue of their wealth consider themselves to be safe, secure in their Ivorine-towers, removed from what is happening to ordinary Brits on the UK’s increasingly violent streets. And you might want to remind them about lessons in history, that when society breaks down through mob violence, national lawlessness, coups and revolutions the money and the status that protects them during ‘peaceful times’, times of law and order, then become entrapments of their own destruction.

But we are not here to talk about poetic justice. We are here to consider the Good News and Bad News.

And the Good News is that we have Priti Patel ~ a tough, no-nonsense Home Secretary, who is determined not to be cowed by a politically correct oriented neoliberal elite.

Although it goes without saying that the liberal establishment, and its vampire media, are hovering bat like over everything Priti Patel says and does, it certainly helps from a purely PC perspective that she is not white English and male but the daughter of Asian shopkeepers, who were taken in by the UK after Idi Amin, the Uganda dictator, expelled them.

And the Bad News … Her courage, veracity and Eliot Ness-style incorruptibility, her unwillingness to cop out under duress or virtue-signalling inducement, has placed her in the cross hairs of those who pull the strings, hurling her into the proud position of PC Enemy Number 1.

But the Good News is …. The more adverse publicity she receives the more they reveal who they are and what they are really up to! The neoliberal gloves are flying off this year faster than bog rolls from supermarket shelves in a panic-buying pandemic, not because they want or can stomach an open fight but because desperate people from imploding ideologies need to feel as it all slips away from them that there is something left to cling on to.

As it was for Donald Trump, watch out for those sharpened knife-headlines in the latest instalment of The Fear of Priti Patel!