Архив автора: Captain Codpiece

How to deal with a vaccinated liberal family member at Christmas

They forgot to leave a forwarding address …

Published: 23 December 2021 How to deal with a vaccinated liberal family member

Preamble

As the stigmatisation of the unvaccinated steps up a gear, creating that two-tier society which Nigel Farage so accurately predicted a few weeks ago, the relentless drive to coerce people into having a vaccine which they neither trust nor want takes on a more cynical and sinister nature, targeting families in a blatant attempt to pit one member against the other using sanctimony, fear and guilt as weapons. Thus, we see yet another article following in the footsteps of the two I examined earlier in my posts, The Liberal Solution to Anti-vaxxers and Don’t let that man spoil your vaccinated Christmas!, titled ‘How to deal with unvaccinated family members at Christmas’¹ from The Independent (Independent my arse! Who said that?).

In order to level the playing field a little, I thought it only fair that consideration should be given to the conundrum of how to deal with an unwanted guest from the point of view of an unvaccinated family, whose only wish is to spend a normal family Christmas free from the constraints and self-righteous sermonising that so often is par for the course with the uneasy vaccinated. I make no apology for wedding the vaccinated example in my ‘How to deal with …’ version to a specific ideology as, from what I hear, see, read and experience, it is generally people of this persuasion who are the most vocal, vociferous and intransigently bigoted and, therefore unsurprisingly, the most obsessed and controlling. It is what fear does.

How to deal with a vaccinated liberal family member at Christmas

Christmas comes but once a year and with it that old chestnut of yet another coronavirus variant. Last Christmas it was just plain old Covid-19, but for Christmas 2021 it’s been given a jolly name, Omicron, known by its friends as Moronic, and news of its alarming rate of transmission, dramatic and sensationalised, is continuing to spread rapidly around the UK, thanks to the UK media. Bad news sells, folks!

A figure pulled out of nowhere claims that more than a million people will ruin their Christmases by subjecting themselves to self-isolation, which is good news for lonely guys who will not feel half as embarrassed sitting at home with the budgerigar, a meal for one, no children, as the courts gave custody to the wife, whilst spending Christmas in a rented flat as the wife got the family home. It’s called equality ~ of the liberal kind.

Never mind, they can always console themselves with a daily dose of Coronavirus statistics. Friday 17 December was an important day in the coronavirus statistic watchers’ calendar. On this day, so the media solemnly swears, there was more coronavirus infections than on any other: 93,000 (so they tell us!). But take heart, rumour has it that two pricks of Pharter’s Covid-19 vaccine offer a whopping great 70 per cent protection against whistling off to hospital, and a man who plays Bingo, and knows all about numbers, has said that it also gives 33 per cent protection against getting it. But he’s a lonely guy who works for a liberal newspaper, so he probably doesn’t get it, or get it very often, and even if he did get it, it would most likely be in a place where most of us would not want it.

And it really wouldn’t be a Coronavirus Christmas without mentioning boosters, so let it be known that ‘early tests’ indicate ~ and let’s face it, everything about the vaccine is an ‘early test’ (too early) ~ that yet another Pharter’s prick, a booster, may be all that’s needed to convince omicron to sling its hook and go and look for a less polluted body.

In the meantime, you could not do any worse than click on the government website, where it is suggested that getting fully vaccinated is the best way of protecting yourself from continual harassment about getting vaccinated.

Funnily enough, not everybody is buying it. It was written on a fag packet that one-third of Londoninstaners (‘Oh, maybe it’s because they’re not Londoners …’) were sticking two fingers up at all of it and adopting an attitude of, ‘Well, you can F!*K Right Off!’. But this hasn’t stopped the boats coming.

Nevertheless, the chances are that when families get together this Christmas, with no intention of self-isolating ~ who is going to miss out on all that free grub and booze ~ some of them might be vaccinated! There is also the possibility that some of them might be liberal!

This could be a cause for real concern, since, according to what everyone knows, mixing with vaccinated liberals means that you’re 20 times more likely to be subject to ranting, raving, frothing at the mouth and scenes of toy-throwing hyperventilation than you are of catching coronavirus.

But how do you tactfully approach the subject with family members that have this misfortune? And what if they, the vaccinated, are suffering from the delusion that you are willing to let them doss at your home over Christmas? And is there the slightest possibility of avoiding boring conversations about coronavirus bullshit when you know full well that even an unvaccinated liberal (if there is such a thing) can never resist bringing his, her or its, Guardian-inspired nonsense into the house, even when you have asked them to wipe their boots.

Dealing with a vaccinated liberal family member at Christmas

A man who always wanted to be a counsellor (he’s liberal) but didn’t know how to spell it so ended up a councillor instead, came out with the best understatement that anyone has heard since Waddington’s invented the family game Rowopoly, namely that Christmas can be a stressful time.

“Considering that last year we were all lucky not to spend Christmas together,” said this man, “the usual family rows that we would have had may well have been simmering for a good twelve months. Add to the toxic mix a family member, or two, who are vaccine control freaks and readers of The Independent and someone could well end up flying across the festive table. Being aware of this, and coming prepared with a first aid kit and, if you live in London, a stab vest or two, could be prudent.”

The man, whom everyone is rather glad is not a family member, for if he was coming for Christmas dinner he would be the first to have his head pushed into the trifle, went on to counsel that the issue of vaccinations will certainly come up if one or more of your vaccinated family is a liberal, as they won’t be able to keep their gobs shut ~ do they ever!

Not wanting to make us any more neurotic than we are at present, thanks to endless twaddle about coronavirus, the man, who would do better keeping his pseudo-psychology to himself, suggested that the best thing we could do to prepare ourselves for a heated Christmas row was to practice what it was we were going to say to the vaccinated lefty and get the boot in first. A beginner’s course in martial arse would be advisable, which you will not be able to take without a vaccination passport. The prickless will just have to rely on the way they usually deal with conflict, which might mean falling back on those stress-relieving breathing exercises or, alternatively, unwrapping that baseball bat Christmas present ahead of the festivities.

Asking yourself questions like, “How do I usually approach conflict? What triggers my anger more than anything else?” won’t help any if the answer is a self-righteous vaccinated lefty, but at least you could say so, later, in court.

In the last and honest analysis, heated discussions have the unfortunate habit of breaking out when they want to, so nothing that you do to prevent one from happening will work, especially after you’ve stuffed yourself with mounds of grub, knocked back several G&Ts and swilled two bottles of red. The best thing to do is ditch the psychobabble and brace yourself for a bumpy ride. After all, it is Christmas, and a good old family bust-up is as traditional as wrapping the cat in holly and clipping a piece of mistletoe to the belt buckle of your trousers.

If the vaccinated do bring up the topic of vaccination, which they will, stay cool, be curious, pretend to listen to what the other person is saying, no matter how stupid it is, don’t jump to the right conclusions ~ keep them to yourself ~ and if all else fails offer the argumentative vaccinated more roast potatoes, using your roast potato mandate.

Just to ensure that there is no possibility of avoiding a family rift, which will divide the family for ever, you could always take the following steps.

Health advice on enduring Christmas with vaccinated family members (especially if they are liberal)

Don’t ask everyone to wear masks unless it is part of a silly Christmas party game

Apparently, some clown from a university in America has advised that if you are a vaccinated family inviting unvaccinated family members to join you on Christmas Day, you should insist that everyone wears masks, including children over two years of age. As there is no real evidence that masks are effective and, in fact, may do more harm than good, our advice is stick to the paper hats. They are a lot jollier and, unless you want to look especially stupid on your Christmas photos this year, more so than when wearing a paper hat, common sense and logic would suggest that what the gentleman from the university in America is telling you is a lot of unfortunate bollocks. Conversely, therefore, if you are an unvaccinated family and can think of no way out but to invite vaccinated relatives, by all means let them wear masks. Eating and drinking may be a little tricky for them, but at least by combining these activities with a mask the possibility of receiving a lecture on why you should be wearing one and choking along with them should be considerably reduced.

Ask vaccinated liberal guests to provide proof of a recent psychiatric test

The same man from the American university, Professor Twat, suggested that in the case of a vaccinated family inviting unvaccinated guests, the vaccinated should be ordered to take a lateral flow test? Why would anyone want to have their drains inspected just because its Christmas? Oh, yes, with all that gutsing and swilling it could be a good idea.

We suggest unvaccinated families inviting vaccinated guests not to be so stupid. We all know that vaccinations do not stop the spread of coronavirus but insulting the guests with apartheid-type requests prior to the big day could precipitate the very bust-up that you are trying to avoid, or at least save for later.

However, since we are led to believe that one in three people with Covid-19 do not have any symptoms, it is not inconceivable that one in three vaccinated family members might not show symptoms of voting Labour, although hard experience has taught us that asymptomatic Labour supporters are a very rare thing indeed. So just ask them to bring along proof of a recent psychiatric report on why they or anybody else for that matter would want to vote Labour and tell them as logically as you can that since they could be spreading the liberal virus without knowing it, testing themselves repeatedly, by reciting their doctrines in front of the mirror, might eventually lead to a full recovery from something they did not know that they had.

Try to limit the number of households

Professor T advises that limiting the number of people gathering at Christmas, especially the vaccinated, might not stop coronavirus spreading, but it will ‘sure as hell, boy!’ reduce the risk of someone getting punched on the snout. He fails to warn, however, that cherry picking who comes and who does not is a failsafe way of assuring that never again will the family be united. But then, isn’t this what it’s all about!

If possible, host events outside

With advice like this I hope to get a job as a UK government health advisor. But, as loony as it may sound, it is not without merit. As a method of avoiding coronavirus uptake by reducing the risk of airborne transmission it is spot on, especially if you are one of a group and you all sit upwind. Even better, however, is the possibility it offers for ‘dealing with’ that vaccinated liberal. It works whether your house has a garden or not. Just politely ask the vaccinated liberal to sit outside in the garden or, alternatively, on the pavement and close the door. If he or she is vaccinated, wearing a mask and you are treating him or her (or it, or other) to the six-foot distancing rule, there is nothing at all to complain of. Just make sure that the windows are closed, the double-glazing is of reasonable quality and pray for a fall of snow.

Lovely jubbly, job done. Now sit back and enjoy Christmas. You’ve earnt it!😌

Image attributions
Antiquarian Christmas card: TUCKDB // PUBLIC DOMAIN
Christmas balls: https://www.clipartmax.com/download/m2i8i8m2K9A0H7H7_free-holly-clipart-public-domain-christmas-clip-art-christmas-decorations-clipart/
Bear in snow: https://all-free-download.com/free-vector/download/winter_background_stylized_bear_flowers_falling_snow_icons_6837048.html

Reference
1. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/christmas/unvaccinated-family-members-christmas-how-to-cope-b1977260.html

Don’t let that man spoil your vaccinated Christmas!

It’s beginning to look a lot less like Christmas

Published: 22 December 2021 ~ Don’t let that man spoil your vaccinated Christmas!

In a previous post, The Liberal Solution to Anti-vaxxers, I promised that I would turn left towards The Guardian (Guardian of what? You may well ask, young white man!), and place before you, for your learned consideration, a big, sickly dollop of icing from the cake which the liberals want to have and also want to eat. Liberty, freedom of choice, civil liberties; or rules, regulations, restrictions ~ which is it to be?

The article in question, ‘Someone in my family won’t get the vaccine — should we still spend Christmas with them?¹’ is one of those agony aunt respond-type pieces, and believe you me it is agonising.

Some bod writes into Auntie complaining about an awful relative who refuses to have the vaccine, so what should they do? This naughty, naughty man horrified them last Christmas, when Mr and Mrs Fully Vaxxed and their fully vaxxed family objected to his unvaccinated presence in their self-isolation unit, aka home, where he could easily infect them with coronavirus (But I thought you said that they were all fully vaccinated?) and bugger me if he’s not about to do it again!

Auntie Agony actually solves the dilemma in the first sentence. Tell him that as he does not want to be vaccinated to shove off. Most likely he would rather not spend Christmas huddled up in a mask looking like a broken bauble hanging on the terror tree anyway. But the good advice from the Christmas tree fairy (bemasked, 6 feet away and fully vaccinated) suddenly becomes a vehicle for ‘Get Your Vaccination Now!’, citing all sorts of popular statistics, some pushed by some scientists, some pulled by others.

Shock and horror, however! The ‘refusenik’ (a liberal ‘thing’) as opposed to the ‘accept-twits’, may not be such a leper as the kids! For scientists tell us ~ those that have not been deplatformed ~ that children who have not been vaccinated, ie because they are too young, might be more dangerous Covid spreaders than the party-pooper with no prick.

Considering all the horrible stories coming out of the UK involving psychiatric-ward parents, we could venture that this is not the best time to demonise children in what might be misconstrued as an attempt to lower the age for mandatory vaccination, something surely which nobody, not even in their wildest liberal mind, would wish for?

Don’t let that man spoil your vaccinated Christmas!

In all fairness, one or two sensible points are made in this piece, but did they have to include that awful, cheesy stock photo of old middle-class gramps sitting in his armchair with a face mask wrapped around his mug, wearing that silly Christmas sweater whilst his granddaughter (One would hope it’s his granddaughter. He doesn’t work for the BBC, does he?) sits at the table unwrapping a Christmas present also happily swaddled in a regulation mug mask? It’s amazing what they put in Christmas crackers these days, isn’t it? Perhaps, not.

The Independent (Independent My Arse! Who said that?), not to be outgunned in the ‘let’s spoil Christmas for them’ department, ramps it up a notch with their own version of I’m Dreaming of a Vaccinated Christmas, with a similar article in which the family becomes a target for seasonal separatism along the divisive line of the ‘jabs’ and ‘jab nots’.

More about that later! 😂

Bedtime reading from The Lancet
COVID-19: stigmatising the unvaccinated is not justified
The Lancet is a peer-reviewed general medical journal published weekly. It is one of the world’s oldest and respected general medical journals.

Reference
1. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/dec/10/someone-in-my-family-wont-get-the-vaccine-should-we-still-spend-christmas-with-them

Image attribution
Snow globe: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Snowman-in-crystal-ball-vector-illustration/25170.html

Victor Ryabinin Art Exhibition Kaliningrad opens December 2021

An Artist who Can Hear Angels Speak

Published: 21 December 2021 ~ Victor Ryabinin Art Exhibition Kaliningrad opens December 2021

An art exhibition devoted to the works of our late friend Victor Ryabinin opens at The Kaliningrad Regional Museum of History and Arts on 23 December 2021. The exhibition will run until 31 December 2022.

He [Victor Ryabinin] was a breath of fresh air in my understanding of art. He was so alive in comparison with many of the other teachers. He ignited our imagination. He was not backward in pointing out our mistakes, but he inspired! And he took a sincere interest in our artistic development, which extended beyond the classroom.
Stanislav Konovalov, friend & art student of Victor Ryabinin

Details of Victor, the man and artist, can be found by accessing the links below:

Victor Ryabinin Königsberg Artist-Historian
Художник Виктор Рябинин Кёнигсберг
Victor Ryabinin Königsberg Kaliningrad
Дух Кенигсберга Виктор Рябинин
Victor Ryabinin the Artist Born in Königsberg
Stanislav Konovalov ~ student and friend of Victor Ryabinin

“When I wrote the draft to {Victor Ryabinin’s biographical essay}, I wrote that I believe there is no equal to him in Kaliningrad — I still believe he has no equal.”
Boris Nisnevich, author

Victor Ryabinin Art Exhibition Kaliningrad

The Kaliningrad Regional Museum of History and Arts is located close to the bank of Kaliningrad’s Lower Pond.

Originally Königsberg’s city hall (Stadthalle) and also a performing arts centre, the impressive, multi-roomed building was constructed in 1912 by the Berlin architect Richard Zeil.

In its pre-war glory days, the Stadhalle boasted three concert halls, a restaurant and a well-appointed garden cafe that looked out over the castle pond, Schlossteich.

As with most of Königsberg, the building suffered extensive damage during the Allied bombing raid that took place on 26 August 1944. It took five years to restore the building, from 1981 to 1986.

The museum has five halls, each one devoted to a different theme: Nature, Archaeology, Regional History, War Room & the Post-war History of the Region.

Essential details:

The Kaliningrad Regional Museum of History and Arts
236016, Kaliningrad, St. Clinical, 21

Tel: 8 (4012) 994-900; 8 (911) 868-31-76

Email: koihm@westrussia.org (director’s reception)

Website: https://westrussia.org/

Opening times
10am to 6pm Monday ~ Sunday
(Note cash desk open until 5pm)

The Liberal Solution to Anti-vaxxers

A response to ‘What to do about the Anti-vaxxers ~ there are three options’

Published: 20 December 2021 ~ The Liberal solution to Anti-vaxxers

The two things ~ two of many ~ that liberals are not very good at, but believe they are, is twisting their square-pegged ideology into the round holes of democracy and, when it suits them, which is most of the time, lathering a thick and sickly synthetic icing of Holier Than Thou on the cake that they want to have and eat.

Hence, the two-faced two faces of liberalism, in all its disingenuous and dissimulating tawdriness, emerges yet again in two media articles, one from The Independent (The Independent My Arse! Who said that?) and the other from The Guardian (The Guardian of what?), both articles seemingly wrestling with the question, how can people who are reluctant to have a ‘Friday afternoon vaccine’ pumped into their bodies be compelled to do so?

Unless you understand the liberal way, you might ask yourself the question, how could anyone of this political persuasion pursue such gross illiberalism and still try to pass themselves off as the champions of equality, human rights and civil liberties? It’s called ulterior motive.

The Liberal Solution to Anti-vaxxers

Let us take a gander at that first article, the one from The Independent¹, and deal with the cynical iced-bun version in a later post.

Papers Please!!
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What I personally enjoyed about the first article was its compromising headline. It immediately set the tone of the piece, condescending and arrogant, and left me in no doubt that what I was about to read would be a consummate example of illiberal neoliberalism.

Here is that headline:
‘What to do about the Anti-vaxxers ~ there are three options’¹.

There is nothing new about condescension and arrogance from illiberal-liberal sources, it is their stock-in-trade, their signature, but what I did find interesting in the mindset of this piece and the ideological perspective from which it is written was the schematic way in which a solution to the anti-vaxxer problem had been approached, mapped out and presented.

This article has all the makings of a future historical document, something remarkably similar to those which, back in 1940s’ Germany, would have been served up in an emblem-impressed file and handed around to those who sat in judgement in the offices of Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse 8.

Before outlining and analysing the various solutions to the anti-vaxxer problem, the document pedals generalisations and pushes assumptions that would make even the most dissembling fact checker blush:

These are:

1. “The threat to society at large from Omicron comes not from the virus itself but from pressures on the NHS from rapidly growing numbers of serious infections among the unvaccinated.”

Response: Read this: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/evidence-mounts-that-people-with-breakthrough-infections-can-spread-delta-easily

Do your own research, compile your own statistics: Ask yourself the question, how many people do you know who are double-jabbed and boostered who have still gone on to contract the virus? We know of several to date. We also know several unvaccinated people who have had coronavirus but had a mild version and treated themselves at home.

2. “The pressures are felt by NHS staff but also those whose treatment for other diseases is disrupted or postponed.”

Response: The NHS is under pressure, there is no doubt about that, but a substantial proportion of that pressure comes from hoards of terrified people running to doctors and hospitals in response to the terror tactics used by the UK media. Some have been wise to present with their symptoms; others have merely created longer queues and consumed valuable GP time, suffering from nothing more than abject panic. The majority of Brits who are vaccinated are putting further pressure on the NHS by running back to it in droves for more shots as instructed by their government, boosters which might or might not protect them ~ the degree to which they do, if they do, is unsubstantiated ~ from the unfortunate, but who can say not apt, anagrammatic Covid variant Moronic. How can the NHS not be under pressure, ie “GPs will be told to cancel appointments to dedicate resources to offering vaccines to every UK adult by the end of December².”

It is painfully true that treatment for other diseases is being disrupted or postponed, which is inexcusable but quite understandable. It is a deplorable situation which came about when the National Health Service ceased to be the National Health Service and became instead the Covid Health Service. Note the following: “Britain’s National Health Service was stretched to the limit but never overwhelmed.” The NHS is stretched to the limit because it cannot cope on a day-to-day basis even without the Covid situation, the obvious reason being that the UK is over-populated, but, hey ho, any excuse, and let’s face it Covid is the best one yet. Even better now that the problems of the NHS can be dumped on the doorsteps of the evil unvaccinated.

How does this alleged political preoccupation with the wellbeing of the NHS and healthcare workers stack up against threats such as this: ‘60,000 care workers face sack after being told to get vaccine jab or lose job’³

3. “The idea that unvaccinated people should be treated differently and discriminated against as a conscious policy runs into several objections. The first is widely heard but weak: that people have a basic right to exercise a choice not to be jabbed. But if that exercise of choice harms others, it is not a valid choice. We do not allow motorists to choose to drive the wrong way down a motorway or allow people to choose to hold noisy, all-night, parties whenever they wish.”

Response in two parts: (a) Of course people have as much right not to be jabbed as Big Pharma, governments and policy makers pushing vaccine mandates assume that they have the right to hide behind a get-out-clause, a disclaimer, that protects them from all and any responsibility in the event of adverse side-effects including, but not exclusive to, fatalities. If the vaccine is perfectly safe, then the above organisations and our democratically elected representatives, should put up or shut up! ‘Papers Please!’ ‘Compensation Please!’ ‘Or even on trial for murder please!’ But, hey wait a minute, what about the scientific evidence that categorically states that the vaccine is as safe as houses (what was that crash? Negative equity?) What about the deplatforming, social media censorship, conflicting statements from once respected medical professionals and scientists. Sorry, I forgot, they all turned into conspiracy theorists. It happened overnight.

(b) “We do not allow motorists to choose to drive the wrong way down a motorway because they know that it would be a silly and rather dangerous thing to do.” Motorists do not need politicians to instruct them in this fact. By the same logic, they do not need politicians to tell them to drive over Vaccine Cliff.

“[We do not] allow people to choose to hold noisy, all-night, parties whenever they wish.” I can assure you that you do (dring, dring: “Is that the police? There’s a lot of noise coming from my neighbour’s house …”. “Sorry, Sir, that’s nothing to do with us.”) and, in certain cases it would seem, hold governmental parties whilst instructing the entire population of the UK that it must refrain from doing so ~ or else!

4. “Elected ethnic minority figures, such as the Mayor of London, have given strong, clear leadership on the need for vaccination.”

Response: He is fulfilling the political function that an ‘elected ethnic minority figure’ is paid to do. That is why he has been installed, precisely for this purpose. Sadly, but evidently, a lot of people just don’t trust the man.

5. “This is a classic case of the distinction between “freedoms from” and “freedoms to”. It is objectionable that the freedom of a majority from restrictions on their daily lives might be removed by the freedom of a minority to refuse vaccination.”

Response: This is a perfect example of twisting square liberal pegs into the round holes of logic, to which I referred earlier. It’s similar to ‘you must not discriminate against minorities’ and then arguing for ‘positive discrimination for minorities’ and being banned from social media for ‘inciting racial hatred’ when what you have really been banned for is posting something that challenges liberal fraudulence. In other words, it is playing with words to protect a flawed ideology and is a facile attempt to disguise the U-turn taken.

The distinction between ‘freedoms from’ and ‘freedoms to’ is a semantic nicety acceptable perhaps at the vicar’s tea party (keep your distance, please!) over a game of Scrabble, but when used in a debate on incarceration by Covid it simply becomes a ploy to entice the vaccinated into believing that their freedoms are inextricably linked to the opposing views of anti-vaxxers, when lockdowns, as well as other restrictions, are indiscriminately executed and at the proverbial drop of a hat. Case in point, it was announced today [18/12/2021] that a two-week ‘circuit-breaking’ lockdown could be brought into force before Christmas across the UK. This restriction on daily life will no doubt go ahead, and when it does it will affect everyone, despite the fact that the majority of UKers are labelled as fully vaccinated. This restriction, as with enforced mask wearing, has no bearing whatsoever on who is vaccinated and who is not. It is a State embargo on freedom, for which there is no trade-off.

In the real world, however, in real democracies, where ‘freedom’ is supposedly sacrosanct, you do not go around forcing people to take potentially harmful biological substances which, for the sake of expediency, or so it was originally reported, could not be effectively tested either for safety or for efficacy by normal standard protocols. If this is ‘fake news’, then lay the blame on mainstream media. As for the negative use of ‘minority’, ie “the freedom of a minority to refuse vaccination”, whatever happened to the liberal obsession with cossetting and protecting minorities?

4. “Furthermore, the experience of France and other European countries is that, faced with serious barriers, large numbers of unvaccinated people drop their objections to vaccination very quickly. France was regarded as implacably anti-vax; but quite suddenly that has changed.”

Response: Wooh! Look at the arrogance and control-freakiness in that statement! ‘Faced with serious barriers’ = force, brownshirt bully-boy tactics, open confrontation. France is still ‘implacably anti-vax’. Hey, Mr Neoliberal have you forgotten to pay your TV licence?

Jack Boot was one of my favourite dancers; he really set the tone. And the tone having been struck in this ‘oh so very brimming over with the milk of human liberalism’ piece, we now come to the real nitty-gritty. The three proposals on what to do with anti-vaxxers.

The Liberal Solution to Anti-vaxxers

All rise. Court in Session. His Lord Justice Liberal-Lefty Presiding!

The whole thing had become so devilishly and blood-curdling juicy by the time I had read this far that I was compelled to put away the other fiction that I had been reading, penned by the Marquis de Sade, to focus solely upon what demoniacal torture the Chief Inquisitor had up his sleeve for those sub-human anti-vaxxers (clap of thunder off-stage and devilish laughter!!!).

And, on the conveyor belt tonight!

1. Compulsion through employment conditions [meaning get vaccinated with a potentially harmful substance or lose your job: very liberal, I must say!]

2. Changes to rights of treatment under the NHS [no treatment unless you are a prick ~ no doubt with a refund on NI contributions; well, I liberal never!]

3. A more comprehensive vaccine passport system [not allowed to go anywhere ‘Papers Please! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!].

The architect of the solutions document takes a pause at this point whilst he mulls over the consequences of brownshirt tactics but, seeing a dangerous precedent in this, resorts instead to name calling. “It is, of course, impractical and unacceptable to have ‘refuseniks’ (Ha! Ha! is this a play on ‘Beatniks’? Who remembers those? And what does that make the vaccinated? By default, Accepttwits?) dragged away, held down and forcefully injected. Oh shucks, come on, why not? Oh yes, I just remembered, we are supposed to be living in a democracy, aren’t we? And then, of course, there is that old but sensible adage: ‘Those who live by the sword die by the sword’ and ‘violence begets violence’ and lots of other unpleasant ‘don’t go there stuff’ to do with vendettas, revenge and repercussions. That’s a point? Are security details and personal bodyguards subject to the ‘condition of employment’ policy’?

The writer does note with unbridled satisfaction that NHS and care staff face forced vaccination as a ‘condition of their employment’. In other words ‘Get vaccinated or get the boot!’ He acknowledges that some ‘quality staff’ may not comply and will presumably ‘have to be let go’, but considers this eventuality to be perfectly acceptable collateral damage, when only a moment ago he was whacking anti-vaxxers around the head with the be-it-on-your-conscience stick, asserting in no uncertain terms that the NHS must be protected and that NHS staff face impossible stress and pressure. Er, doh, am I missing something here?

Surely, any examples that need to be made for the ‘condition of employment’ clause could be more effectively applied by rooting out those MPs who are refusing to take the jab or, better still, some of those who have indiscriminately had it and are pressuring others to ‘make the same mistake’. I am sure that the general public would welcome this with open arms, whereas they may not understand, with or without their jabs, how culling medical staff at a time when they are desperately needed solves anything, apart perhaps from justifying the daily death rate figures and blaming it all on anti-vaxxers.

Do you know, there is so much that is fundamentally wrong about this article that it makes you want to jump in the air and rejoice that the Liberal Party is where it should be, at the bottom of the bin just below the potato peelings. Let’s hope that North Shropshire is a blip on the protest vote graph: Heaven help this poor country if these twits are ever given the key to number 10!

Sorry for that emotional outburst. I hope I’m not turning liberal.

Moving on to point number two, ‘Changes to rights of NHS treatments’. This gets the writer into a ‘right old two and eight’. He starts badly with an inadmissible concept, waffles on in an attempt to prove that he really is a nice liberal and descends into nowhere land. So, no need to concern ourselves with that.

So, it’s on to point number 3, the final solution.

And, tonight’s star prize is … Yes, you’ve guessed it ~more extreme vaccine passports (demoniacal chuckle!!!)

Papers Please!!
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The gist is that the nice liberal man who wrote this compassionate article is eager to see the ‘minimal’ model of vaccine passports adopted in England recast in the image of the more ‘extreme version’, which is the one that is causing riots and mayhem in totalitarian Austria. Chilling stuff comes next with his prophesising comment that “If the Omicron wave gets out of control the UK will move inexorably in [the] Austrian direction.” Place your bets, place your bets (Its, Others and What Have Yous), will the Omicron wave get out of control in the UK …? That’s as rhetorical as do we need a new script writer for the popular Covid-19 soap opera Coronavirus Streets?

“Not much happening on Coronavirus Streets tonight, love. Just a lot of people ignoring the lockdown laws, trashing the streets of the UK and those liberal-fascists running around in leather coats and trilbies, saying ‘Papers Please!!”

The article, ‘What to do about the Anti-vaxxers ~ there are three options’, fizzles, futts and farts out on the smug prediction that a more rigorous vaccination passport system (which, incidentally the UK government vowed we would never have ~ lucky then that Omicron came along, and just before Christmas at that), will, by effectively confining anti-vaxxers to their homes except for essential shopping ~ bog rolls, and the like ~ enable the ‘socially responsible’ (the ones that stand to attention on the command of ‘Papers Please!’ Woof, Woof) to enjoy all the freedoms that our wonderful democracy can offer, such as going to work, for example, presumably to earn enough money to pay the benefits of the 10 million minority or more squirrelled away in their homes.

The writer concludes his final solution project with the ultimate act of liberal hypocrisy by playing word games with what freedom is and freedom means, to wit (he is, isn’t he!) that by some strange twisting of square pegs into round holes, the systematic curtailing of freedoms for the obdurate few will eventually lead to freedom for all. Having delivered his ‘must be cruel to be kind’ curtain call, he then gazes steadfastly into his crystal balls and, like a new mutation called Prophet, let’s us in on the secret that we will all be where we want to be, or is that all be where they want us to be, come 2022.

Master plans such as this are about as funny as the prospect of the Liberals coming to power. Thankfully, from the way the tarot cards have been played in ‘What to do about the anti-vaxxers … ‘ , I think we can safely say that such an unmitigated catastrophe is unlikely to happen soon and, may we add, hopefully never will.

All you need to be aware of is that they are now saying openly what they have been thinking for a long time. It is your choice whether or not to go on swallowing the sugar-coated pill ~ ‘Freedom’, ‘Freedom of Speech’, ‘Democracy’, ‘Civil Liberties’, ‘Equality’ and so on ~ or reject it as placebo on the evidence of the totalitarian policies that they are implementing across Europe and also, unbelievably, in the UK. At least you have a choice with the sugar-coated pill, which is more than can be said for the Covid-19 vaccine. 😉

Papers Please!!

Please see my following post, scheduled after a beer or two, on the ‘sickly iced bun’ from The Guardian.

Comment:

As the vaccinated are still capable of catching and spreading the virus after the miracle ‘fast-track vaccine’, why not lock them down instead? What’s the point of them vaccinating hundreds of times, mixing with each other and then spreading new strains? By locking down the majority, more NHS workers can safely lose their jobs and with less people to care for we can protect the NHS, if only from bullshit. (Don’t forget to stop the boats arriving first!) Much better to have the majority under lock and key and the minority wandering around. They can be given Unvaccinated Passports and be made to go to work to pay for the keep of the obedient vaccinated. Just give the vaccinated congratulatory Obedience Certificates and let them lounge at home. Good dog! ~ Mr I.M. Crufts

Customer: That’s a small piece of freedom. How much is it?
Purveyor of lies: 33 vaccinations and 16 boosters, please.
Customer: When will Complete Freedom be available.
Purveyor of lies: Soon, soon. In the meantime would you like another piece of Freedom. I hear it’s going up tomorrow by another 7 boosters!

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How to Weaponise Your Old Soviet Water Tower

Storks Lead the Way!

Published: 14 December 2021 ~ How to Weaponise Your Old Soviet Water Tower

Travelling through the former East Prussian countryside with your history head on means looking out onto a peculiar and unique scene, a hybrid landscape where two chunks of geo-political and socio-cultural history collide, the one German and the other Soviet Russian. One of the most prominent reminders of the Soviet era is the regular and recurring presence of tall, slim cylindrical objects, sometimes made of metal but mainly cast from concrete, that sprout up out of the ground in the most unlikely of places.

To look at them, the first impression is that the giant stork’s nests that sit on top are so dense with branches and twigs that nothing less solid could possibly support them, but these obtrusive objects are not a Soviet ornithologist’s answer to housing the region’s storks, they are, in fact, water towers, the expanded crests of which are routinely commandeered by the long-legged wading birds for conversion into high-rise flats.

The size of the nests and the size of their occupants never cease to amaze me, and although I have grown used to the concrete fingers on which these nests and their homesteaders sit, pointing up to the sky like prehistoric surface-to-air missiles, they bookmark a period of history for me in which concrete structures predominate.

Whilst nest, bird and concrete post vary little from one example to another, I recently came across a combination that possessed in its composition something remarkably different. It is the one depicted in this post’s opening photograph. I hardly need to ask you to look carefully at the photograph to determine what that difference is.

How to weaponise your old Soviet water tower

It would appear that this particular Stork family has not responded lightly to the latest round of NATO sabre rattling and has taken precautionary measures to ensure that it is not caught napping. I mean what else could that be protruding from the nest if not some sort of high-powered anti-aircraft gun or advanced missile defence system?

I am no authority on birds, migrating or otherwise, so I cannot say whether England’s south coast is a habitat for stork’s nests or not, but, if so, we would be foolish not to take a leaf out of the Baltic Region’s Storks’ Survival Handbook.

During the Second World War a series of radar pylons strung along the south coast of England was credited as having parity with the Spitfire in preserving the country from Nazi invasion. Today, raised atop the White Cliffs of Dover, ‘Stork’ installations would obviously make excellent radar masts and also jolly good gun emplacements to ward off any invasion inconceivably orchestrated from across the English Channel.

Just a thought …

Weaponising Your Old Soviet Water Tower could help to stop the English Channel migrant invasion,

Image attributions:
Welcome mat: https://www.photos-public-domain.com/2017/04/07/welcome-mat/ Anchor: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Ship-anchor-vector-image/13708.html
Pirate ship: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Pirate-wooden-sailing-ship/35822.html
Cartoon pirate ship: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Cartoon-pirate-ship/67990.html

Vaccination Passports Stop the Spread of Underpants

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 645 [9 December 2021]

Published: 8 December 2021 ~ Vaccination Passports Stop the Spread of Underpants

Diary of a self-isolator is one of a series of posts and thoughts on self-isolating in Kaliningrad. Links to previous posts appear at the end of this post.

It’s amazing isn’t it! Just when you were gullible enough to think that zippety zoo zah, zippity ay, I have had my two vaccines everything’s going my way. You read articles and see videos that claim* that:

a. Vaccinated people can catch coronavirus just as easily as unvaccinated

b. Vaccinated people can spread coronavirus just as easily as unvaccinated

c. Vaccinated people can catch coronavirus, become seriously ill and die just as easily as unvaccinated

d. Your two jabs are not enough, and you need to have another … and another … and another …

{*Don’t believe everything you read, see on the telly and is printed on underpants’ labels}

And then, just when you’ve consoled yourself with the barely consoling thought, well, hey ho, it’s almost Christmas, along comes the WHO with a deadly new strain of coronavirus, and its off the ladder, down the snake and back to square one again.

I am not too dismayed by these revelations as I never left square one.

Sitting here in Kaliningrad, the only strain that I am feeling is the strain on my underpants. Perhaps, I should elaborate. Sorry madam, what was that? Yes, I spelt it right, strain.

The one downside of self-isolating that is rarely touched upon is the toll it takes on your underpants, by which I mean from all that sitting. The wear and tear on a self-isolator’s underpants are possibly something that the office of statistics has not yet got to grips with. The upside of self-isolating ~ and by default one of the positives of not having a QR code ~ is that with nowhere to go you will definitely save on shoe leather, but the downside, in your pants, is where does that leave them? “Ahh soles!” you might think to yourself, if you are prone to too much rambling (Don’t bother saying it! I’ll get to the point soon enough!), but pants are pretty low, without elastic, and in one’s clothing-monitoring kecking order they are bottom of the pile.

Thus, it never occurred to me, as most likely it has never occurred to you, that two years of social distancing had taken it out of my pants. My word, I thought, peering into my underpants, they are looking tired and shabby.

Nevertheless, I didn’t give it a second thought. Why should I? The logical thing to do was to go out and buy a new pair. But sometime later, whilst reading about the anti-vaccine passport riots in Canada and Australia, something alarm-like went off. It couldn’t have been the elastic twanging in my pants, as there was not enough spring left in them. No, it was something far more dire than that. It was the impromptu possibility that pants were now off-limits! That the introduction of QR codes had rendered them non-essential!

My mind began to race. I felt like I was on the start line of Santa Pod Raceway, the drag racing strip in England, where I used to drink and work (and in that order). You could almost see the skidmarks (Richard Skidmark, damn good actor, almost as good as Burt Shirtlifter.). The chilling possibility that QR codes had effectively rationed underpants was a blow below the belt; it was the thought process equivalent of a ‘bleach burnout‘. Ahh, and what about bleach!? Could you still get it? Surely, bleach, like bog rolls, is fairly essential stuff. And what about bog rolls? How essential are they?

Vaccination Passports Stop the Spread of Underpants

How I laughed two years back at the maddening crowd of Brits who at the start of the so-called Pandemic rushed out mob handed to buy up the country’s bog roll reserves. The boot was on the other foot now. It was a silly place to put it, but I was in such a rush to find and recycle my old, used face masks that I had hung seven next to the toilet suspended by their straps before the thought occurred to me that since grub was deemed essential and toilet rolls and bleach were sold in every supermarket, access to this commodity could not be denied. All well and good, I thought, but where did that leave my underpants?

Taking underpants off (the essential list that is) just does not seem right. It’s unethical, not to mention unhygienic, but in these straitened days where essentials are defined by the right to bear a QR code, ease of access to underpants is no longer the civilised liberty that once was taken for granted.

Let us hypothesise that you are one of the QR codeless, and therefore unable to enter non-essential shops from which to buy your underpants. Would the answer to your dilemma be to entreat somebody else, someone in possession of a vaccination passport, to buy your pants on your ~~behind~~, behalf? Appointing a pant-buying proxy would certainly get them off the hook, but, as with everything to do with this pandemic, and equating it to the state of my pants, there has to be and is an inevitable snag.

The crutch of the matter is that here, in Kaliningrad, the size ratio of men’s underwear is a trifle obscure. If you were given to conspiracy theories, you might easily infer that underpants have fallen foul of the misinformation/disinformation industry and that the mere mention of them would be enough for Facebook to redirect you to a place which purports to sell you the truth about the size of pants in Kaliningrad. This may not be such a bad thing, as the last time I bought a large pair they fitted me like Houdini’s straitjacket! I returned to the market where I had bought them, and no, I did not ask to exchange them ~ I now use them as a pocket handkerchief ~ but I did say, with unabashed pride to the lady from whom I had purchased them, “Nice pants, but they don’t fit. I need an extra-large pair”.

Vaccination Passports Stop the Spread of Underpants

Between you and me and nobody else, I must confess that I was rather chuffed. I’d never bought a pair of XXL’s before, but somewhere between tearing back on the bus to try them on and getting home to do so, it occurred to me, quite sadly, that the reason why XXL pants are the only option in Kaliningrad is that all pants come from China ~ the one place in the world where smalls are what they say they are, small.

As the mystery of the extra-large underpants unravelled before my eyes, much to my chagrin, the ‘Made in China’ connection still did not explain how big burly Russian men manage to fit into such tiny pants. Had I just discovered the answer to the West’s rhetorical question: Why do Russians look so serious? If so, then my understandable disappointment at having debunked the myth that mine were a large pair was more than compensated for by my having stumbled upon the answer to a riddle as far reaching and out of sight as the Soch Less Monster question, “Do Scotsmen wear pants under their kilts?”

Alas, getting to the bottom of this one may forever elude us, as may the answer to the question how come more stockings and suspenders are sold in Scotland than there are females in the population? A statistical anomaly that may all change now that vaccination passports have been inflicted on the Scots (Well, you would vote old hatchet face in!)

The good news, proving the maxim that every pair of underpants has a silver lining, is that according to popular rumour, QR codes will not be extended to restrict access to public transport. Thank heavens for that. Imagine dusting off the old Soviet bike and rattling across the Königsberg cobbles on two flat tyres with the suspension gone in your underpants.

I imagine that bikes are not classed as essential items, and if they are not classed as essential items then without proud possession of a QR code you won’t be able to buy new tyres or buy yourself a bike to go with that saddle you bought last month.

But as my philosophising Indian friend is wont to say ~and say too often: “Every problem has a solution.”

Vaccination Passports Stop the Spread of Underpants

I had already worked out that if socks had been declassified as essential items, I would still be able to buy them, if not on the black market, then from the roadside market. Babushkas make lovely thick, warm, colourful, woollen socks. I am not altogether sure that babushka-made woollen underpants would be quite that lovely, rather like wearing a British 1940s’ teapot cover, but needs must when the Devil drives. “Hello, could you put through me to the Scottish Import Department, please.”

What else might be deemed non-essential in the new QR code age? I looked out of the window and noticed that our neighbour had been thinking along the same lines. He had a spare bog standing in the garden, just in case. He had also leant a long plank outside his house to enable his cat to climb up to the first floor flat where he lived. He had cut down the silver birch tree that the cat used to climb up, presumably because he knew something that we didn’t, possibly some obscure Covid-restriction connection between QR codes, cats, trees, planks and toilets in gardens.

Not 100% convinced that QR codes would not appear on transport, I put on my mask and went to the home of a used-car dealer who wanted to talk sales. On the way there I saw my neighbour sitting on a box in his front garden. He had not been able to get into his house for a week as he had lost his key, and, as you know, keys are non-essential items.

It was raining hard, and my neighbour’s arm was sticking up into the air. Normally, it would have had an umbrella on the end of it, but as my neighbour had no QR code, and as umbrellas are non-essential, he could not get into the shop to buy one, which serves him jolly well right! The last thing that you would want a conspiracy theorist to have is an umbrella!

At the used-car salesman’s place, after a glass or two of home-made vodka ~ Ha, who needs shops! ~ I became the proud owner of my first Russian car. It was a snip at twice the price I paid for what it is really worth. It has an irrefutable pedigree: One getaway driver, 2000km on the clock (which the seller told me he would let me have after he had finished working on it), a full tank of whatever it is, six months MOT valid until April 1967 and a tin opener.

I cannot wait to drink with him again. He is also selling a helicopter.

On my way back home, wondering why I had waited so long to pay twice as much for a car that any sane person would not have bought in the first place, at least not for that price, a thought crept into my head from the gaps around my face mask. It was that the coronavirus age had probably spawned a lot of bored people with nothing better to do than sit at home and count their bog rolls, as well as homespun philosophers like me, modern-day Kants, who sit around in attics writing at large and in-depth on underpants.

One thing I know for certain is that my wife’s belief that prickless people will be made to wear a yellow star to enforce their segregation is not worth the material that my underpants are lacking.

On the contrary, the unrepentant vaccine eluder will be instantly conspicuous from the serve-him-right effects of his inadmissibility. With his long hair, worn out jeans, brightly coloured babushka socks, his bikeless saddle thrust sadly between his legs and more holes in his underpants than Jodrell Banking arsetrologers could hope to see in a lifetime of peeping up their telescopes, should the unvaccinated leper still fail to catch your eye, then you really should consider taking that trip to Specsavers. A word to the wise, however, don’t forget to show them your vaccination passport or they might pretend that they cannot see you through the spectacles you are wearing.

“I wouldn’t be seen dead in a pair of underpants like those!” ~ shouted a man who had just been vaccinated. Tut, if only he’d bought the XXLs.

Image attributions:
QR Code: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Commons_QR_code.png
Toilet rolls: https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=53180&picture=toilet-tissues-isolated-background
Man in pants: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Underwear-man/73457.html

😉Some other posts to keep you out of mischief!
Old Tin Buckets & QR Codes
A New QR Code Era in Kaliningrad
QR Codes Enforced in Kaliningrad

Diary of a self-isolating Englishman in Kaliningrad
Previous articles:
Day 1 [20 March 2020]
Day 6 [25 March 2020]
Day 7 [26 March 2020]
Day 9 [28 March 2020]
Day 10 [29 March 2020]
Day 16 [4 April 2020]
Day 19 [7 April 2020]
Day 35 [23 April 2020]
Day 52 [10 May 2020]
Day 54 [12 May 2020]
Day 65 [23 May 2020]
Day 74 [1 June 2020]
Day 84 [11 June 2020]
Day 98 [25 June 2020]
Day 106 [3 July 2020]
Day 115 [12 July 2020]
Day 138 [30 July 2020]
Day 141 [2 August 2020]
Day 169 [30 August 2020]
Day 189 [19 September 2020]
Day 209 [9 October 2020]
Day 272 [11 December 2020]
Day 310 [18 January 2021]
Day 333 [10 February 2021]
Day 365 [14 March 2021]
Day 394 [12 April 2021]
Day 460 [17 June 2021]
Day 483 [10 July 2021]
Day 576 [11 October 2021]
Day 579 [14 October 2021]
Day 608 [2 November 2021]

Please Look! A Weird UFO off the Baltic Coast!

What is it?!

Published: 4 December 2021 ~ Please Look! A Weird UFO off the Baltic Coast!

Olga took this photograph last week on a very cold and snowy night on the Baltic Coast. “What is it?” we asked.

“It’s your wife!” my brother replied.

“I know,” I said, “but who’s that next to her, to the right of the photograph, on the right-hand side as you are looking at it?”

It could have been the Imp of the Flippant, but then again? Small settlements along the Baltic Coast are rich in folklore and teeming with legends about ghosts, ghouls and unexplained phenomenon, so believing everything that we read in the press, we put it to the test: we asked for second opinions from people in the UK on what the green-faced, bog-eyed monster might be.

“Oi, that’s no way to talk about your husband!”

To protect the not-so, never-were or never-could-be innocent, we have omitted the names of the respondents and replaced them with a brief description of ‘type’ in italicised text after each quote.

Responses to the question: What is it in the photograph?

“Whatever it is, it’s a different colour so you should be taking a knee” ~ a hairy-fairy quite contrary Wokist

“It looks to me as if it is an extra-large Covid particle specifically designed to lend some sense to the argument that wearing face masks can stop coronavirus” ~ a man with a three-week old face mask hanging below his chin

“I thought, ‘I’ve seen one of these before’. In fact, I had the distinct impression that I had seen thousands of them. And then it clicked! It was the rabid, barking, frothing, foaming at the mouth, hyperventilating pro-vaccination poltergeist, screaming get vaccinated now in order to save yourselves and the rest of society! If you don’t, I’ll murder yu!” ~ a man who has since received Facebook of the Year Award 2021

“I think you’re right! The last time I saw one of these they were carrying a placard with ‘Stop Brexit’ written across it!” ~ Mr Wagtale

“Leave it out! You know it’s me muvver in law!” ~ the last cockney geezer in London to know about white flight

“The green face symbolises the paranoid fringe to which vaccine-hesitant conspiracy theorists are driven via a self-inflicted disconnect from sane members of a beneficent social spectrum from which their psychosis has ostracised them due to a process which they are reluctant to confess is nobody else’s fault but the consequence of their own choice and actions and that blah, blah, blah, drone, drone, drone” ~ a pseudo-psychological nasty Nazi narcissist from the UK

“Well, I’ll be buggered, if it’s not George Sorryarse!” ~ A George Sorryarse spotter

“Well, I’ll be buggered, if it’s not George Sorryarse!” ~ George Sorryarse’s’ Reflection

“Well, I’ll be buggered” ~ someone (everyone) who believes that George Sorryarse is what western media says he is

“It’s such a bloody mess, it has to be the UK establishment’s plan to protect everyone from coronavirus” ~ the man who drew up the plan

“A pair of old fisherman’s underpants time travelling across the Curonian Lagoon” ~ a likely story

“It’s sexist! It’s racist! It’s an offence to gender neutrals! It’s Brexit! It’s a symbol of British Imperialism! It should be taking a knee! It’s homophobic! It’s anti-candle-lit vigil! It’s in violation of everything that Facebook cons us with! It’s inciting revisionist hatred! It’s inciting cancel-culture hatred! It’s everything I accuse others of, but which stares at me from my mirror! It’s liberal!” ~ a liberal

“It’s a red thing in a rectangle” ~ a recently graduated millennial-era student with a triple ‘A’ mark in all 45 subjects taken (which he did in a week, although his first language was Martian)

“I think its … “ {You have just been redirected to an article that tells you the truth about vaccination}

“It’s a vaccination passport with an inferiority complex who believes she has no friends” ~ the Dwarf from the North

“The last time I saw one of those I was working for The Guardian”~ an ‘it’ that is glad that ‘it’ no longer does

“What’s Green but got a satanic face?” ~ a Green Party MP

“Greenpeace 30 years on” ~ a pointless exercise

“You’ll never know the truth” ~ the UK media

“It could be a trick of the light?” ~ a world-leading virologist deplatformed for not towing the establishment line

“It’s the latest strain known as Sinoucret” ~ a WHO public health specialist with a developed sense of anagramism

“WHO?” ~ most likely

“WHAT FOR?” ~ don’t ask!

“WHERE?” ~ everywhere

“WHEN?” ~ never!

“Are you quite finished?” ~ No! Davos

[Answers supplied by an anonymous cohort of public health specialists and Big Pharma scientists handpicked by Establishment inc]

Light reading:

😁UK Lockdown Board Game
😂Exit Strategy ~ a new bored game
🤣Clueless! World Health Game

Celebrating the Memory of Königsberg Tour Guide Stas

In Memory of a Good Friend

Published: 1 November 2021 ~ Celebrating the Memory of Königsberg Tour Guide Stas

28^th November 2021. Today was the anniversary of Stas Konovalov’s death. After paying our resects at the graveside, a group, consisting of family, close friends and neighbours, were brought together by Stas’ mother for a memorial gathering. It was an emotional, at times difficult, and yet nevertheless, heart-warming occasion.

Encouraged and mentored by artist and art-teacher Victor Ryabinin, from an early age it seemed as if Stas would pursue a career in art himself. Some of his drawings and paintings, most of which he had created in his youth and teenage years, and in which the symbolic hand of Ryabinin is clearly apparent, were displayed by his mother at the memorial gathering today. His art showed promise and had not life intervened in that indifferent way that it does, he might very well have gone on to fulfil his artistic destiny.

Mick Hart with Stas Konovalov 's mother next to her son's paintings — Mick Hart and Stas’ mother with some of Stas’ artwork that he created as a student of art

One of Stas’s more bleak compositions, ‘What awaits us …’

Later, again under Ryabinin’s tutelage, Stas developed a love for the history of Königsberg and the region to which it belonged and went on to establish his own tour guides and tour-guide videos, which he worked, reworked and honed to perfection.

Among the complement of friends and neighbours who had gathered today to pay tribute to him were people who had known him for most of his life, some of whom he had been at kindergarten with. By comparison, Olga and I were newcomers. We had known Stas for less than two years, but we had taken to him easily and instantaneously and had formed an insoluble friendship.

It was Victor Ryabinin who had introduced us to Stas.

Stas told me afterwards that Victor had said to him, “An Englishman is coming to live in Kaliningrad. I think you should meet him. He is interesting, and I think you will find a common language.” I never did pay Victor for calling me ‘interesting’, but Stas and I did find a common language ~ in our love of the past and through our mutual and high regard for the history of Königsberg-Kaliningrad and its region. We also found a common language in the degree to which we found beer, vodka, cognac and good conversation agreeable!

Under the direction and guidance of Victor Ryabinin, we had arrived at Stas’ flat on a cold winter’s evening. The puddles on the road and pavement had turned to ice, and the snow underfoot was multi-layered and covered with a fresh fall. Victor pressed the doorbell to Stas’ flat and then began to perform star-jumps on a square of pavement next to the building where the snow had not penetrated. Each time he jumped, he clicked his heels together in mid-air, performing the ritual with a cheery grin.

The obvious question was why? And when asked, the not so obvious reply had been that Stas’ flat was possibly the only flat in Kaliningrad where you would not be asked to remove your shoes on entering, so Victor was doing Stas the honour of cleaning his boots before crossing the threshold.

Stas was a big man, who looked even bigger in contrast to little Victor, but it soon became apparent that this difference in size had no bearing on the common personality and interest denominators that both shared ~ in fact, which we all we shared.

Stas’ flat was an intriguing place. It bore all the hallmarks of expressive work in progress and was dotted about with Königsberg relics, more of which were proudly displayed inside a large, antique, cabinet. It was a home from home for me ~ the flat as well as the walnut cabinet!

Celebrating the Memory of Königsberg Tour Guide Stas

It was our mutual interest in history, relics of the past and the warm, open nature of our friend, Stas, together with the good memories of the times we spent together, that found us at his memorial gathering today. There were, perhaps, about 30 people in attendance ~ family, friends, neighbours ~ and most had tales to tell of their relationship with Stas or wanted to express their gratitude for knowing him in life and the sorrow they felt at his death.

I am always amazed at how proficient and adept Russian people are at public speaking and how openly and without reservation they bare their souls and reveal their innermost feelings. It is a lesson that we Brits, who are frightened to stray too far from banter and/or prevarication, could certainly learn from.

The individually rendered memories and tributes were sometimes moving, sometimes amusing and consistently complementary.

At times the tributes to Stas were so touching as to be almost overwhelming. I caught myself more than once glancing wistfully across at Stas, grinning from his photo-framed portrait behind the statutory glass of vodka with its piece of bread placed on top. Would he have been surprised at this gathering and to hear the tributes to him that were so touching as to be almost overwhelming?

All I know is that for me to accumulate so many well-wishers at my funeral or memorial wake, I would have to set up a trust fund or at the very least pay people in advance to attend.

Celebrating the Memory of Königsberg Stas

Stas was, as Leonard Cohen would say, ‘almost’ young when he died ~ too young. But if there is any consolation to be had, then it echoes in Stas’ own words. With characteristic magnanimity, he left a note asking people not to brood in the event of his death, affirming that he had lived a full and eventful life in which he had achieved much of what he had set out to do.

Gracious, selfless and sensitive to the needs of others until the very end, this was Stas Konovalov. We are proud that we can count ourselves among his many friends, who loved and admired him in life and remember him in death for the commendable person he was.

R.I.P. Stas.

(We wish Stas’ mother, family and friends well, and thank his mother for her gracious invitation to attend the memorial gathering.)

Amstel Bier in Kaliningrad

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

Article 17: Amstel Bier

Published: 21 November 2021 ~ Amstel Bier in Kaliningrad

So, if you don’t like pilsner what are you doing buying it? That’s easy. It was on special offer at my local supermarket, and as I am saving money to buy myself a ticket to Anywhere before the whole world is renamed Vaccination to make sense of the universality of the Vaccination Passport, at 90 roubles, less than a quid, as Abba used to say, ‘how could I resist you!’

Amstel Bier’s marketing strategy relies for its gravitas, if not its gravity, on that ubiquitous word of the beer-drinking world ‘premium’. Next to ‘love’, it is probably the most overused, abstruse, misunderstood and misappropriated word of all time. Although it occupies many a ‘premium’ slot, if not an entire chapter, in the Beer Posers’ Dictionary, it would not, in its day-to-day marketing application, be permitted as much as a footnote in the Dictionary of Truth (which is not published under licence to any of the Davos set).

Gold labels and award-winning medallions are often used in conjunction with the word ‘premium’, and it does not hurt any to lend to the product a date in antiquity, thus enabling it to draw from the not-so mythical notion that everything that was produced in the past that did not need a Vaccination Passport or be stamped with a QR code was quality or, to define ‘premium’, was of ‘superior quality’ ~ as was life itself ~ once. Thus, Amstel’s bottle incorporates the lot: the gold label, the word ‘premium’ and a date when the world was real ~ 1870.

The Carlsberg Company saw the funny side of this marketing coin many years ago. They flipped the irony of it into their award-winning marketing slogan, ‘Carlsberg, probably the best beer in the world,’ proving to the world that at least they could laugh up their sleeve, which is more than can be said for Watney’s, with it’s disingenuous, ‘Roll out Red Barrel, Let’s have a barrel of fun!’ ~ which drinking it was anything but.

When you see a product labelled in this way, especially a beer, the ‘premium’ promise first supposedly sells it to you and then, before you take the top off the bottle, influences your opinion, so that, unless you are really studying it, when swilling it back with your mates, this little gold word keeps ringing around your taste buds, going ‘Premium! [yum, yum] … Premium! [yum, yum]’.

Amstel Bier in Kaliningrad

With an introduction of this nature, you could easily jump to the wrong conclusion that I am now going to say that Amstel is crap, but that would be too easy.

Let’s take the top off first and check its ‘nose’, as the pretentious like to say.

My first reaction was to reach for my NHS Do-It-Yourself Coronavirus Testing Kit, because I couldn’t smell a thing. No, that’s not altogether true. I could smell something. I think it was a rat. I am not saying that the beer smelt like a rat, because I have never snorted rat. I use the term loosely, as I might, if I was a brewster, use the word ‘premium’. In other words, I could smell nothing, no rat no premium, and certainly nothing that could justify anything approaching the notion of ‘superior quality’.

I sniffed the top of the bottle with the cap off for such an inordinate length of time that Ginger, our cat, thought he must be missing out on something and tried to get in on the act. But after the briefest second, he walked away in disgust without so much as a ‘buy it again’ or just a ‘meeoww’ for that matter.

I didn’t want to end up with the bottle stuck to the end of my nose and be rushed off to hospital in one of those little white Russian ambulances with the siren blaring ‘snout stuck, snout stuck, snout stuck’, so I gave up after five minutes, concluding that I had detected a faint something or other, an intriguing cross, you might say, between musk and tinniness.

When I eventually poured it into my glass, I found myself staring at a pale amber liquid, with very little head, which, as soon as it saw me, made a fast exit. I think this is what is known in beer reviewers’ speak as ‘having two fingers’, or should that be giving two fingers?

Most people who occasionally drink pilsners but usually drink something else, tell me that pilsner appeals to their taste in summer because served cold ~ how else? ~ it is light, crisp and refreshing. From that statement, let us extrapolate the word ‘crisp’. Amstel Bier isn’t. No matter how you drink it ~ swig, gulp or roll it around your mouth ~ crispness doesn’t come into it, so, if that is what you are looking for, you won’t find it in Amstel. Make no mistake about that! (Oooh, he can be so manly when he talks about beer!)

However, Amstel is not without flavour: it is mellow, smooth, rounded and gives the lie to the notion that it is all about tininess and not about taste. Some beers, especially some lagers, go down like a lead weight, but the Amstel finish is not unpleasant. It doesn’t really justify the self-presumptuous handshake of the two chums on the front of the bottle leaning out of their stamps of approval ~ perhaps they have just been vaccinated and are about to open a Facebook account ~ but thin and wishy-washy beers never have an aftertaste (think Watney’s!), and this one certainly has.

In fact, Amstel has a two-phase aftertaste: the first is surprising and seems to hit the spot, but as it Victor Matures it does not so much as sock it to you as socks it to you. In Amstel’s defence, pilsners tend to do this to me generally, so it is by no means unique in this respect either, but in this particular case after five minutes had elapsed, I found myself looking for words to describe the after-aftertaste in my cockney rhyming slang almanac, where all I was able to find was something to do with Scotsmen.

I am not saying that Amstel needs to pull its socks up, as I hear tell that if it is not a popular lager on the other side of Hadrian’s Wall, the Greeks can’t get enough of it. This may have something to do with the fact that the Athenian Brewery in Greece is now owned by Heineken and as Heineken brew Amstel, well, work it out for yourself.

Amstel was originally brewed at the Amstel Brewery in Dutchland. It has a proud heritage, going back to 1870 (you can see the date on the Amstel bottles). However, it was taken over by Heineken International in 1968, who moved production of Amstel to their principal plant at Zoeterwoude in the Netherlands.

I am not sure whether the Chief Brewer, Jock Strap, still works for them or not.

😁TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS
Name of Beer: Amstel Bier
Brewer: Heineken
Where it is brewed: Zoeterwoude, Netherlands
Bottle capacity: 1.3 litre
Strength: 4.1%
Price: It cost me about 90 roubles (91 pence)
Appearance: Pale-amber
Aroma: Faint
Taste: It does have some
Fizz amplitude: 4/10
Label/Marketing: ‘Premium’
Would you buy it again? If the price is right!
Marks out of 10: 4

*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.

WWI/WWII German Gun Emplacement Polessk Kaliningrad

In the grounds of the Polessk Brewery, Kaliningrad, Russia

Published: 15 November 2021 ~ WWI/WWII German Gun Emplacement Polessk

In a post published on 8 November 2021, I wrote about the restoration of an old German brewery in the former German town of Labiau, now known as Polessk, located in the Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia.

The grounds of the Polessk brewery back onto the Deyma River (German: ‘Deime’). Contained within those grounds, facing the river, sits the dramatic remains of a wartime German gun emplacement.

WWI/WWII German Gun Emplacement Polessk Russia — **Polessk WWI/WWII German Gun Emplacement Kaliningrad** **region**

This chunky, reinforced concrete, above-ground bunker or blockhouse, which ever description you prefer, is one of the few survivors of a battery of such emplacements, more than sixty in total, which formed an awesome line of defence along the Deyma River.

The emplacements date to the First World War but were recommissioned during the Second World War as part of the formidable East Prussian defence system constructed by the Germans in preparation for the Soviet invasion.

WWI/WWII German Gun Emplacement, Polessk, Kaliningrad

According to what I have been told, after Königsberg fell to the Soviets in April 1945, the concrete fortifications along the Deyma were systematically obliterated in order to ensure that should the tide of military fortune ever be reversed they could not be employed again.

Relatively speaking, the surviving emplacement is in sound condition. Although the back has been taken out, the living quarters and the gunnery room are virtually unscathed, and the inside still retains the reassuring feeling of immense solidity. Cramped, some might think horribly, the bunkers were not completely devoid of some semblance, albeit slight, of ‘home comfort’. The existence of a metal flue shows that at least provision had been made for a source of warmth and possibly the means by which to make a brew and heat up food. The reinforced metal door to the combat room has gone, but the giant iron hinges on which it used to pivot remain intact as do other metal fixtures.

The gunners’ view from the front of the emplacement, which now faces the reed bed on the edge of the Deyma River, is, in every sense of the word, a commanding one. In theory it should have offered the bunker’s occupants a strategic advantage against any attack launched from across the water but as history has proved on many occasions the notion of an impregnable defence system is purely that ~ a notion.

View from German Gun Emplacement Polessk — **View from the WWI/WWII German gun emplacement in the grounds of the restored German brewery in Polessk, Russia**

History board German Gun Emplacement Polessk Russia — **Plan of the wartime gun emplacement in Polessk, Kaliningrad region, Russia, including medals awarded for Soviet bravery during the East Prussian campaign**

History boards on and inside the emplacement detail its method of construction, describe its operational system and place its fortification principle in the wider military context of the WWII East Prussian campaign.

Mick Hart in Polessk, Kaliningrad — **Mick Hart next to the history board in the WWI/WWII gun emplacement in Polessk, Kaliningrad region, Russia**

So, when you visit Polessk Brewery stave off your irrepressible need to imbibe knowledge on beer production, and when brewing recommences your overpowering need to imbibe beer too, and take a few minutes or more to lap up the historic information and martial atmosphere redolent in and around this monumental defence post. It is an intriguing and poignant window upon German/Soviet military history.