An Englishman's Experiences of Life in Kaliningrad
Архив рубрики: Meanwhile in the UK
MEANWHILE IN THE UK
Meanwhile in the UK by Mick Hart, an expat Englishman living in Kaliningrad. A category of the blog expatkaliningrad.com
Meanwhile in the UK is a category of my blog expatkaliningrad.com. At its inception, I had fully intended it to be a minor category, allowing me to comment from time to time on UK current affairs but mainly to include innocuous pieces of a nostalgic or historical nature pertaining to life in the UK, possibly more as it was then than as it is now, and then along came coronavirus which, as we know, changed everything. At the time of writing (3 June 2020), thanks to coronavirus, this category would appear to contain as many if not more posts than some of the categories that I had envisaged would be salient, with due deference to my Diary category (2019/2020) which, again influenced by coronavirus, has expanded through my ‘Diary of a Self-isolator’ articles, a series that focuses specifically on Covid-19 in the Kaliningrad region and how the legal rules and social obligations enacted here to better control the virus have impacted our daily life.
MEANWHILE in the UK contains too many entries to preview in this category post, but as of 3 June 2020, the contents of this category comprise the following articles, arranged chronologically:
[caption id="attachment_1339" align="alignnone" width="225"] Hello! Hello! Hello![/caption]
[caption id="attachment_1228" align="alignnone" width="300"] UK Lockdown ~ a new board game to take your mind off lockdown[/caption]
I am aware that the tone and, indeed, the very composition of these pieces may not be to everybody’s taste. Quite obviously they are not supposed to be, so I shall not waste anybody’s time pretending that I feel in the least bit sorry about that. England is a great country ~ and the other chunks attached to it are not that bad either ~ BUT … (could this be an acronym for Britain Undermined Totally? Or is the only thing missing …TOCK?). He sang, didn’t he, ‘Let me take you by the hand I’ll lead you through the streets of London’. Well, yes, mainly London but also almost any and every UK city and town. Still, as the man who never deserved the Nobel Prize in Literature said (no, I am not referring to Obama, that was the Nobel Peace Prize, or Noble Appeasing Prize or something like that ~ but if the hoody fits, so to speak), ‘Times they are a-changing’. Let’s hope so, because for the UK at this present moment in time it is very much Paul McCartney, ‘Yesterday …’
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.
A response to ‘What to do about the Anti-vaxxers ~ there are three options’
Published: 20 December 2021 ~ The Liberal solution to Anti-vaxxers
The two things ~ two of many ~ that liberals are not very good at, but believe they are, is twisting their square-pegged ideology into the round holes of democracy and, when it suits them, which is most of the time, lathering a thick and sickly synthetic icing of Holier Than Thou on the cake that they want to have and eat.
Hence, the two-faced two faces of liberalism, in all its disingenuous and dissimulating tawdriness, emerges yet again in two media articles, one from The Independent (The Independent My Arse! Who said that?) and the other from The Guardian (The Guardian of what?), both articles seemingly wrestling with the question, how can people who are reluctant to have a ‘Friday afternoon vaccine’ pumped into their bodies be compelled to do so?
Unless you understand the liberal way, you might ask yourself the question, how could anyone of this political persuasion pursue such gross illiberalism and still try to pass themselves off as the champions of equality, human rights and civil liberties? It’s called ulterior motive.
The Liberal Solution to Anti-vaxxers
Let us take a gander at that first article, the one from The Independent1, and deal with the cynical iced-bun version in a later post.
What I personally enjoyed about the first article was its compromising headline. It immediately set the tone of the piece, condescending and arrogant, and left me in no doubt that what I was about to read would be a consummate example of illiberal neoliberalism.
Here is that headline: ‘What to do about the Anti-vaxxers ~ there are three options’1.
There is nothing new about condescension and arrogance from illiberal-liberal sources, it is their stock-in-trade, their signature, but what I did find interesting in the mindset of this piece and the ideological perspective from which it is written was the schematic way in which a solution to the anti-vaxxer problem had been approached, mapped out and presented.
This article has all the makings of a future historical document, something remarkably similar to those which, back in 1940s’ Germany, would have been served up in an emblem-impressed file and handed around to those who sat in judgement in the offices of Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse 8.
Before outlining and analysing the various solutions to the anti-vaxxer problem, the document pedals generalisations and pushes assumptions that would make even the most dissembling fact checker blush:
These are:
1. “The threat to society at large from Omicron comes not from the virus itself but from pressures on the NHS from rapidly growing numbers of serious infections among the unvaccinated.”
Do your own research, compile your own statistics: Ask yourself the question, how many people do you know who are double-jabbed and boostered who have still gone on to contract the virus? We know of several to date. We also know several unvaccinated people who have had coronavirus but had a mild version and treated themselves at home.
2. “The pressures are felt by NHS staff but also those whose treatment for other diseases is disrupted or postponed.”
Response: The NHS is under pressure, there is no doubt about that, but a substantial proportion of that pressure comes from hoards of terrified people running to doctors and hospitals in response to the terror tactics used by the UK media. Some have been wise to present with their symptoms; others have merely created longer queues and consumed valuable GP time, suffering from nothing more than abject panic. The majority of Brits who are vaccinated are putting further pressure on the NHS by running back to it in droves for more shots as instructed by their government, boosters which might or might not protect them ~ the degree to which they do, if they do, is unsubstantiated ~ from the unfortunate, but who can say not apt, anagrammatic Covid variant Moronic. How can the NHS not be under pressure, ie “GPs will be told to cancel appointments to dedicate resources to offering vaccines to every UK adult by the end of December2.”
It is painfully true that treatment for other diseases is being disrupted or postponed, which is inexcusable but quite understandable. It is a deplorable situation which came about when the National Health Service ceased to be the National Health Service and became instead the Covid Health Service. Note the following: “Britain’s National Health Service was stretched to the limit but never overwhelmed.” The NHS is stretched to the limit because it cannot cope on a day-to-day basis even without the Covid situation, the obvious reason being that the UK is over-populated, but, hey ho, any excuse, and let’s face it Covid is the best one yet. Even better now that the problems of the NHS can be dumped on the doorsteps of the evil unvaccinated.
How does this alleged political preoccupation with the wellbeing of the NHS and healthcare workers stack up against threats such as this: ‘60,000 care workers face sack after being told to get vaccine jab or lose job’3
3. “The idea that unvaccinated people should be treated differently and discriminated against as a conscious policy runs into several objections. The first is widely heard but weak: that people have a basic right to exercise a choice not to be jabbed. But if that exercise of choice harms others, it is not a valid choice. We do not allow motorists to choose to drive the wrong way down a motorway or allow people to choose to hold noisy, all-night, parties whenever they wish.”
Response in two parts: (a) Of course people have as much right not to be jabbed as Big Pharma, governments and policy makers pushing vaccine mandates assume that they have the right to hide behind a get-out-clause, a disclaimer, that protects them from all and any responsibility in the event of adverse side-effects including, but not exclusive to, fatalities. If the vaccine is perfectly safe, then the above organisations and our democratically elected representatives, should put up or shut up! ‘Papers Please!’ ‘Compensation Please!’ ‘Or even on trial for murder please!’ But, hey wait a minute, what about the scientific evidence that categorically states that the vaccine is as safe as houses (what was that crash? Negative equity?) What about the deplatforming, social media censorship, conflicting statements from once respected medical professionals and scientists. Sorry, I forgot, they all turned into conspiracy theorists. It happened overnight.
(b) “We do not allow motorists to choose to drive the wrong way down a motorway because they know that it would be a silly and rather dangerous thing to do.” Motorists do not need politicians to instruct them in this fact. By the same logic, they do not need politicians to tell them to drive over Vaccine Cliff.
“[We do not] allow people to choose to hold noisy, all-night, parties whenever they wish.” I can assure you that you do (dring, dring: “Is that the police? There’s a lot of noise coming from my neighbour’s house …”. “Sorry, Sir, that’s nothing to do with us.”) and, in certain cases it would seem, hold governmental parties whilst instructing the entire population of the UK that it must refrain from doing so ~ or else!
4. “Elected ethnic minority figures, such as the Mayor of London, have given strong, clear leadership on the need for vaccination.”
Response: He is fulfilling the political function that an ‘elected ethnic minority figure’ is paid to do. That is why he has been installed, precisely for this purpose. Sadly, but evidently, a lot of people just don’t trust the man.
5. “This is a classic case of the distinction between “freedoms from” and “freedoms to”. It is objectionable that the freedom of a majority from restrictions on their daily lives might be removed by the freedom of a minority to refuse vaccination.”
Response: This is a perfect example of twisting square liberal pegs into the round holes of logic, to which I referred earlier. It’s similar to ‘you must not discriminate against minorities’ and then arguing for ‘positive discrimination for minorities’ and being banned from social media for ‘inciting racial hatred’ when what you have really been banned for is posting something that challenges liberal fraudulence. In other words, it is playing with words to protect a flawed ideology and is a facile attempt to disguise the U-turn taken.
The distinction between ‘freedoms from’ and ‘freedoms to’ is a semantic nicety acceptable perhaps at the vicar’s tea party (keep your distance, please!) over a game of Scrabble, but when used in a debate on incarceration by Covid it simply becomes a ploy to entice the vaccinated into believing that their freedoms are inextricably linked to the opposing views of anti-vaxxers, when lockdowns, as well as other restrictions, are indiscriminately executed and at the proverbial drop of a hat. Case in point, it was announced today [18/12/2021] that a two-week ‘circuit-breaking’ lockdown could be brought into force before Christmas across the UK. This restriction on daily life will no doubt go ahead, and when it does it will affect everyone, despite the fact that the majority of UKers are labelled as fully vaccinated. This restriction, as with enforced mask wearing, has no bearing whatsoever on who is vaccinated and who is not. It is a State embargo on freedom, for which there is no trade-off.
In the real world, however, in real democracies, where ‘freedom’ is supposedly sacrosanct, you do not go around forcing people to take potentially harmful biological substances which, for the sake of expediency, or so it was originally reported, could not be effectively tested either for safety or for efficacy by normal standard protocols. If this is ‘fake news’, then lay the blame on mainstream media. As for the negative use of ‘minority’, ie “the freedom of a minority to refuse vaccination”, whatever happened to the liberal obsession with cossetting and protecting minorities?
4. “Furthermore, the experience of France and other European countries is that, faced with serious barriers, large numbers of unvaccinated people drop their objections to vaccination very quickly. France was regarded as implacably anti-vax; but quite suddenly that has changed.”
Response: Wooh! Look at the arrogance and control-freakiness in that statement! ‘Faced with serious barriers’ = force, brownshirt bully-boy tactics, open confrontation. France is still ‘implacably anti-vax’. Hey, Mr Neoliberal have you forgotten to pay your TV licence?
Jack Boot was one of my favourite dancers; he really set the tone. And the tone having been struck in this ‘oh so very brimming over with the milk of human liberalism’ piece, we now come to the real nitty-gritty. The three proposals on what to do with anti-vaxxers.
The Liberal Solution to Anti-vaxxers
All rise. Court in Session. His Lord Justice Liberal-Lefty Presiding!
The whole thing had become so devilishly and blood-curdling juicy by the time I had read this far that I was compelled to put away the other fiction that I had been reading, penned by the Marquis de Sade, to focus solely upon what demoniacal torture the Chief Inquisitor had up his sleeve for those sub-human anti-vaxxers (clap of thunder off-stage and devilish laughter!!!).
And, on the conveyor belt tonight!
1. Compulsion through employment conditions [meaning get vaccinated with a potentially harmful substance or lose your job: very liberal, I must say!]
2. Changes to rights of treatment under the NHS [no treatment unless you are a prick ~ no doubt with a refund on NI contributions; well, I liberal never!]
3. A more comprehensive vaccine passport system [not allowed to go anywhere ‘Papers Please! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!].
The architect of the solutions document takes a pause at this point whilst he mulls over the consequences of brownshirt tactics but, seeing a dangerous precedent in this, resorts instead to name calling. “It is, of course, impractical and unacceptable to have ‘refuseniks’ (Ha! Ha! is this a play on ‘Beatniks’? Who remembers those? And what does that make the vaccinated? By default, Accepttwits?) dragged away, held down and forcefully injected. Oh shucks, come on, why not? Oh yes, I just remembered, we are supposed to be living in a democracy, aren’t we? And then, of course, there is that old but sensible adage: ‘Those who live by the sword die by the sword’ and ‘violence begets violence’ and lots of other unpleasant ‘don’t go there stuff’ to do with vendettas, revenge and repercussions. That’s a point? Are security details and personal bodyguards subject to the ‘condition of employment’ policy’?
The writer does note with unbridled satisfaction that NHS and care staff face forced vaccination as a ‘condition of their employment’. In other words ‘Get vaccinated or get the boot!’ He acknowledges that some ‘quality staff’ may not comply and will presumably ‘have to be let go’, but considers this eventuality to be perfectly acceptable collateral damage, when only a moment ago he was whacking anti-vaxxers around the head with the be-it-on-your-conscience stick, asserting in no uncertain terms that the NHS must be protected and that NHS staff face impossible stress and pressure. Er, doh, am I missing something here?
Surely, any examples that need to be made for the ‘condition of employment’ clause could be more effectively applied by rooting out those MPs who are refusing to take the jab or, better still, some of those who have indiscriminately had it and are pressuring others to ‘make the same mistake’. I am sure that the general public would welcome this with open arms, whereas they may not understand, with or without their jabs, how culling medical staff at a time when they are desperately needed solves anything, apart perhaps from justifying the daily death rate figures and blaming it all on anti-vaxxers.
Do you know, there is so much that is fundamentally wrong about this article that it makes you want to jump in the air and rejoice that the Liberal Party is where it should be, at the bottom of the bin just below the potato peelings. Let’s hope that North Shropshire is a blip on the protest vote graph: Heaven help this poor country if these twits are ever given the key to number 10!
Sorry for that emotional outburst. I hope I’m not turning liberal.
Moving on to point number two, ‘Changes to rights of NHS treatments’. This gets the writer into a ‘right old two and eight’. He starts badly with an inadmissible concept, waffles on in an attempt to prove that he really is a nice liberal and descends into nowhere land. So, no need to concern ourselves with that.
So, it’s on to point number 3, the final solution.
And, tonight’s star prize is … Yes, you’ve guessed it ~more extreme vaccine passports (demoniacal chuckle!!!)
The gist is that the nice liberal man who wrote this compassionate article is eager to see the ‘minimal’ model of vaccine passports adopted in England recast in the image of the more ‘extreme version’, which is the one that is causing riots and mayhem in totalitarian Austria. Chilling stuff comes next with his prophesising comment that “If the Omicron wave gets out of control the UK will move inexorably in [the] Austrian direction.” Place your bets, place your bets (Its, Others and What Have Yous), will the Omicron wave get out of control in the UK …? That’s as rhetorical as do we need a new script writer for the popular Covid-19 soap opera Coronavirus Streets?
“Not much happening on Coronavirus Streets tonight, love. Just a lot of people ignoring the lockdown laws, trashing the streets of the UK and those liberal-fascists running around in leather coats and trilbies, saying ‘Papers Please!!”
The article, ‘What to do about the Anti-vaxxers ~ there are three options’, fizzles, futts and farts out on the smug prediction that a more rigorous vaccination passport system (which, incidentally the UK government vowed we would never have ~ lucky then that Omicron came along, and just before Christmas at that), will, by effectively confining anti-vaxxers to their homes except for essential shopping ~ bog rolls, and the like ~ enable the ‘socially responsible’ (the ones that stand to attention on the command of ‘Papers Please!’ Woof, Woof) to enjoy all the freedoms that our wonderful democracy can offer, such as going to work, for example, presumably to earn enough money to pay the benefits of the 10 million minority or more squirrelled away in their homes.
The writer concludes his final solution project with the ultimate act of liberal hypocrisy by playing word games with what freedom is and freedom means, to wit (he is, isn’t he!) that by some strange twisting of square pegs into round holes, the systematic curtailing of freedoms for the obdurate few will eventually lead to freedom for all. Having delivered his ‘must be cruel to be kind’ curtain call, he then gazes steadfastly into his crystal balls and, like a new mutation called Prophet, let’s us in on the secret that we will all be where we want to be, or is that all be where they want us to be, come 2022.
Master plans such as this are about as funny as the prospect of the Liberals coming to power. Thankfully, from the way the tarot cards have been played in ‘What to do about the anti-vaxxers … ‘ , I think we can safely say that such an unmitigated catastrophe is unlikely to happen soon and, may we add, hopefully never will.
All you need to be aware of is that they are now saying openly what they have been thinking for a long time. It is your choice whether or not to go on swallowing the sugar-coated pill ~ ‘Freedom’, ‘Freedom of Speech’, ‘Democracy’, ‘Civil Liberties’, ‘Equality’ and so on ~ or reject it as placebo on the evidence of the totalitarian policies that they are implementing across Europe and also, unbelievably, in the UK. At least you have a choice with the sugar-coated pill, which is more than can be said for the Covid-19 vaccine. 😉
Papers Please!!
Please see my following post, scheduled after a beer or two, on the ‘sickly iced bun’ from The Guardian.
Comment:
As the vaccinated are still capable of catching and spreading the virus after the miracle ‘fast-track vaccine’, why not lock them down instead? What’s the point of them vaccinating hundreds of times, mixing with each other and then spreading new strains? By locking down the majority, more NHS workers can safely lose their jobs and with less people to care for we can protect the NHS, if only from bullshit. (Don’t forget to stop the boats arriving first!) Much better to have the majority under lock and key and the minority wandering around. They can be given Unvaccinated Passports and be made to go to work to pay for the keep of the obedient vaccinated. Just give the vaccinated congratulatory Obedience Certificates and let them lounge at home. Good dog! ~ Mr I.M. Crufts
Customer: That’s a small piece of freedom. How much is it? Purveyor of lies: 33 vaccinations and 16 boosters, please. Customer: When will Complete Freedom be available. Purveyor of lies: Soon, soon. In the meantime would you like another piece of Freedom. I hear it’s going up tomorrow by another 7 boosters!
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]
Great minds think alike and think for those who will not think
Published: 29 October 2021 ~ Are Progressives Progressively Less Progressive?
In my pursuit of all things bright and beautiful, which is about as hopeful and hopeless as the quest for the Holy Grail, I read all sorts of things from all sorts of news media sources, some more dubious than others.
This was how I came across a media outlet of which before I was blissfully ignorant, in which the contributors continually refer to themselves and their ilk using the self-elevating term ‘progressive’.
Sounds like a bit of back-slapping aggrandisement to you? Yes, me too.
So, what is the definition of ‘progressive’?
The first definition I encountered was this: “happening or developing gradually or in stages”. And the example given was, “a progressive decline in popularity”.
This is interesting, because when we think of the term progressive in relation to the word progress, which I am sure is how ‘progressives’ use the term, we think of positive movement, of ‘forward’ and ‘up’, not, as in the example given, ‘negative’ and ‘down’.
However, if we allow ourselves a little latitude of thought, how many times have we heard the word ‘progress’ used ironically and/or pejoratively?
For example, a beautiful Victorian house is demolished to make way for a 1960s’ block of concrete flats: ‘That’s progress!’
Or an old church or chapel is converted into a cattle-market nightclub: ‘It’s called progress’.
From these examples alone, we can infer that ‘progress’ is like the small-print easily missed by the naive when entrusting their hard-earned cash to investments on the stock market ~ ‘The price of shares may change quickly, and they may go down as well as up’ ~ and that by extension, progressives, who see themselves wholly in a saintly and hallowed light, up there on a pedestal, can also belong to the twilight world, down there in the deluding shadows of fanatical devotion.
So, in simple, layman’s terms, what is this thing that calls itself progressive? In language other than complimentary, you or I would probably be tempted to say that progressive is just a fallacious synonym for the colloquialism ‘liberal-lefty’ and that the users of the misnomer have merely forgotten how the latter is spelt.
Are Progressives progressively less progressive?
The article that I chanced upon which goaded me to examine this aberration of linguistic etymology was published by an American online source, but there is no reason to suppose that the misapplication of the term ‘progressive’ is any less misapplied in Boris- as in Biden-land.
The article itself is not worth reading, so there is little point in referencing it, but the premise is a revealing one as it illustrates beautifully the way in which a progressive’s mind works, or does not work as the case may be, and the way that as a group, progressives have no option but to conform to an ideological status quo that is about as liberal as a straightjacket. Succinctly put, the presumption is that ‘good progressives’, ‘good liberals’, do what they are told to do, say what they are told to say and keep their minds shut whilst doing and saying it ~ although, as even the most cursory observation reveals, in average liberal circles (are there any others?) there is an awful lot more saying than actually doing.
What do you mean, you already know that!
Please, no heckling!
Are Progressives progressively less progressive?
The story starts like this: Once upon a time in America there was a progressive living out his life in the New Restrictive Coronavirus Age. This progressive was thoroughly adjusted. He believed in and followed unquestioningly every rule and regulation handed down to him from the neoliberal globalists on high. Lockdowns, mask-wearing and vaccination in perpetuity were things that he subscribed to and, as is the way with liberal dogma, if he subscribed to them than everyone else in the world, or at least his world, must subscribe to them too, or else!
Loyal, devoted and brainwashed, this progressive nevertheless recognised that there are and would be dissenters, but the last place, the very last place, that he thought that he would find them was in the progressive heartland of the town from whence he hailed.
Thus, when he discovered that a number, and quite a considerable number, of folk from the progressive place that he had once called home, contained people who, in spite of their ordainment, were ant-vaccine oriented, he was shocked to his liberal core.
Unthinkable as it was, a faction of the party faithful had turned their backs on the official narrative and instead of baahhing like sheep, ‘Jab Today Pay-For-It Tomorrow’, were standing together in opposition to enforced mass vaccination. What were these people thinking of? Why were these liberals thinking?! Baaaahhhhh!
Devastated and confused, the author of this painful piece twists, writhes and hand wrings his way through something that is evidently quite beyond his comprehension. His fruitless journey takes him not in search of answers but in a desperate need to find an excuse, something, he hopes, which will look like a hook on which he can hang his confusion and leave it out to dry.
The decree handed down to loyal liberal subjects from the neoliberal globalists on high is as plain as the muzzle on your face: everyone should vaccinate and never cease vaccinating until either the word to halt is given or when common sense has been eclipsed and the Earth has frozen over, whichever happens first ~ and I think, children, we all know which of the two it will be!
The progressive author of this progressive article openly admits, as if he is pinning a badge of honour to his rompers, that he has severed ties with people from the blighted town to which he refers ‘because of their views on vaccines’. By which he means views that do not expressly conform to his views and the ideological credos in which his views are parroted. “Thanks for being my father, but I can no longer speak to or see you again because your views on enforced mass vaccination are different from mine. Your loveless, progressive son, A.W. Anchor.”
Well, throw my rattle out of my pram! A typical progressive reaction: do not agree with what you say, do not want to hear what you say, want to stick my fingers up, er, in my ears!
He then asks (and note how illuminating this is about progressives!), I paraphrase: how can ‘vaccine-hesitant progressives reconcile their decision not to vaccinate’, presumably with a dogmatic, unyielding, inflexible ideology that says that they must vaccinate. Here is the punch line: do they, progressives, ‘abandon progressivism and put personal choice first’?
So, there you have it in a nuthouse: an either/or situation. The implication is that personal choice is not something you can exercise if you want to be considered a good liberal and remain within the fold. (There are those sheep again!)
Back to the self-illuminating manuscript: With no ladders in his progressive mind, the author of this curious work continues to slide down the slippery snake, until eventually, with nothing else to appease himself with and nowhere else to go, he lands on square one, which is occupied by a female liberal journalist. Unfortunately, this female progressive does not provide him with the answer that he so desperately wants to hear, but the frustrated witch hunt ends with her.
Poor, benighted, fallen-from-grace, gender-certain, female progressive ~ and you may all shake your heads sadly at this point ~ she does not see “any disconnect between” the progressive values she espouses and her willingness to lean towards the anti-vaccine lobby, which, as the media would have us believe, is a demoniacal cult that must be confined at all costs to the ghost town Conspiracy Theory, a town that they have conveniently buried many light years away in an arid socio-political wilderness, a town that bears, some say, more than a passing and chilling resemblance to Auschwitz, not least because of the motto raised high above the globalist gate: : ‘Mass Vaccination will set You Free’.
“Well, hello there! Aren’t you Enoch Powell?”
“Go! Hence from here, forthwith. This is no place for progressives!!”
{The sound of sheep can be heard in the background.}
This poor outcast of a woman becomes, in one fell swoop, the personification of the liberal paradox: a first-class liberal who yet possesses enough resilience and independence of mind not to cow-toe to stereotyping mandates.
To excuse, pardon and absolve this pathetic creature is more than clemency can brook. In Victorian times they would have had her committed. In days of yore they would have burnt her at the stake. But in 2021, the next best thing is to cast aspersions on her ideological credentials and curse her for eternity. Should she ever have the temerity to air her heresies again, she can be sure of falling foul of those juvenile snotty-nosed know-nothings who play at politics in university crèches, known as student unions ~ led in the UK, naturally, by Oxford ~ and, with the help of the ‘ban them, bar them, block them’ social media mafia, will suffer herself to be finally hanged on the public deplatform of her own making. And doesn’t it serve her right! The deviating Bitch
Thus for all their progressiveness, progressives, it would seem, are not so progressive as to eschew ritual or to emancipate themselves from thoughts and actions that repeatedly define them as tedious and predictable.
For example, when neoliberals, those saints, those Gods on high ~ you know who I am talking about, the billionaire philanthropists, technology tycoons and the super-rich banking families ~ throw crumbs from their banqueting table, their otherwise submerged progressive pets obediently rise from the depths where no thoughts of their own are allowed to exist and gobble up what’s tossed to them, hook, line and sinker. This is the liberal way.
Like fish in a fish farm they mindlessly swallow everything that is fed to them, mistaking the net that draws them in as their masters’ reward for loyalty rather than see it for what it is, and all the while the clock ticks down to the hour of harvest festival.
In conclusion, therefore, the article submitted by the angst-ridden progressive is nothing more than a touch of seismic disbelief: ‘How could this possibly be?’ ‘How dare they think out of the box?’ ‘How dare these liberals think?’ ‘How dare they?’ ‘Just how dare they?’ ‘How?’
Is this your last word on the subject?
Why not grant that privilege to Nigel Farage. He’s really rather good where last words are concerned, and if anyone can put a full stop to this, then surely he is the man!
Woke Watch PC UK! {Case 4} Those Magnificent Gender-Neutrals in their Flying Machines
“This is your Captain speaking, I may have a male voice, but don’t let that fool you! Welcome to flight B for Bandit, three letters starting with a B, 0707 gender-neutral heaven. We are currently cruising at 35,000 feet under a rainbow with pink varnish on our toenails. Our estimated arrival at the Isle of Person is recommended as the weather is bright and gay, so I am not allowed to fly you anywhere else. Please continue to keep you seat belts fastened, as we are expecting some politically correctly turbulence as we fly through EU air space and flak over Berlin. May I take this opportunity to welcome you aboard. Thank you, whatever you think you are and what Nature will never allow you to be, for flying Woke Airlines today.”
Just when you thought that the UK could not get more Woke, the country’s flagship carrier British Airways leapfrogs into the PC queue with its announcement that it is dropping the very British and very correct salutation, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’. Presumably, concerned that the whingeing, whining, hand wringing, bed-wetting gender-neutral brigade might shoot them down with accusations of being too binary, British Airways have scrambled to copy airlines from other woke-oriented countries, such as Canada, for example, and Germany, lifting off on a non-scheduled flight to destinations unknown ~ in non-woke speak they have jettisoned an age-old and perfectly respectful tradition without, according to media reports, having any clear idea of what they will replace it with.
WOKE WATCH UK!
When I first heard the news that the Jerries had dropped the phrase ‘Ladies & Gentlemen’, it came as no surprise to me. I mean the Luftwaffe are well known for dropping things, usually thousands of tons of high explosives on Western Europe and the Soviet Union, and, let’s face it, they always were inclusive. I mean when they were out on a bombing spree, they didn’t fly around and around attempting to miss LGBTs. And then someone corrected me; not about the Luftwaffe and LGBTs but that it was another German company, not the Luftwaffe, that had dropped ‘Ladies & Gentlemen’. Sigh, some things never change.
Those Magnificent Gender-Neutrals in their Flying Machines
But what-a mistake-a to make-a. My sincere apologies. I am not much of a flyer. I would never have known that British Airways was anything to do with Britain if it was not written on the sides of their aircraft, and now that ‘Ladies & Gentlemen’ is about to be replaced with, what? ~ ‘Good morning LGBTs, its, others, refugees, multicults, perverts, terrorists, knee-takers, statue-removers and ‘I’ve had my vaccine’ Facebook clones etc’ ~ nor would you.
If it wasn’t for the fact that my suggested salutation is a fair appraisal of where we are at in modern-day UK, you would not know who they are, who you are and what that thing sitting next to you is, would you? Will they include extraterrestrials?
In the words of my retired scientist friend, Martin: “It’s all so peculiar. What shall we do first, blow the satellites out of the sky or gas the sink estates?”
That is probably not the answer. But, instead of ingratiating themselves with the wrong uns, couldn’t British Airways and the other dominoes simply have replaced the no-smoking symbol with an illuminated red bar that lights up across the word WOKE as their planes prepare for take-off? Or even just edit the old signs: ‘No Smoking’ to ‘No Woking’ ~ being careful, of course, to ensure that whoever undertakes this task knows how to spell the word ‘Woking’. There’s no point in being too accurate.
Those Magnificent Gender-Neutrals in their Flying Machines
If it wasn’t so amusing, it would jerk out more tears than Gone With The Wind ~ which just about sums it up really. It’s nothing but a storm in a teacup, or should that be an airline company in a colander?
Whilst I wait expectantly for the gender-neutral sequel of Star Trek, “to gayly go where no man thing has gone before”, previous generations of legacy English ladies and gentlemen observing our world from a better past might find consolation in the incontrovertible fact that as any street after 11 pm in any town in the UK denotes, there are very few ‘ladies & gentlemen’ left to address. In the present twisted nature of things, we could always argue our case on the basis of minority, but there really seems little point. If we are to ‘gayly go’ at warped speed to the gender-bending place that they are so bent on sending us, why make the trip in a handcart when you can travel first class Woke. Just fasten your seat belts, extinguish political correctness and don’t forget to laugh. History certainly will.
Thank you, Ladies & Gentlemen, for reading my post.
Published: 10 October 2021 ~ £1000 Fines for Graffiti Vandals!
Republished with kind permission of Defacing Public Property Inc
Coronavirus may have grabbed the headlines for the past 18 months, but it is not only a sea of sensationalism and disinformation in which we are drowning, the societal disease litter pollution is on the rise and continues to go unchecked as does noise pollution and, as for the king of urban squalor, graffiti, instead of it being addressed as the behoodied plague that it is, the usual partisan suspects are more than content to talk it up as the next best thing to a boat full of migrants on their way to a 5-star hotel.
Consider this definition of graffiti from a certain British newspaper that neither you nor I would want to cut into squares and tie to a piece of string in our outside toilet even if the last roll of bog paper had been snatched up by panic-buyers in an orgy of ‘aren’t they all gormless, let’s just have their money’!
“From its roots as a means of visual communication for disenfranchised youth to both hide and be seen, graffiti has developed into a bona fide art form, a legitimate force for economic, cultural and social good …” [their emphasis]
Well, it goes without saying that if they say it is a ‘legitimate force for economic, cultural and social good’you can bet your life it ‘aint (the same as urban slang is not).
I suppose it all depends on whether it is your wall, your gate, your fence etc, etc which disenfranchised yoof are using as as an ‘art canvas’.
Legitimate, in the legal sense, it is not, although, because measures to tackle vandalism are taken lightly and hardly ever enforced, especially in the UK, for fear that the police and judiciary might have their work cut out and inadvertently step on too many ‘rights’ toes, nothing ever gets done.
In so-called disadvantaged neighbourhoods where the deprived don’t go to work and therefore have lots of time to run around defacing public property and lots of taxpayers’ money to spend on paint, great ugly globs of spray-can paint, garish meaningless scrawl and all manner of lols and innits, add to and reinforce the contemptible ‘art’ image much cultivated by sociologists, both professional and homemade, who it would seem have nothing better to do than get paid too much whilst they sit about applauding yobbos and celebrate acts of vandalism.
In better areas, the sort that the champions of such illegal practices despise, which is why they encourage it, shite on walls scrawled by the disenfranchised gormless using their dole money, lowers the tone of the neighbourhood, although it does have one positive, which is that it serves to remind us that as with the poor who ‘are always with us’ so, unfortunately, are the stupid.
£1000 Fines for Graffiti Vandals!
A quick, effective and timely expedient which would nip this pitiful practice neatly in the bud would be first to arrest the culprits (that would be a start!) and then sentence them, after a hefty fine, to a month of intense graffiti cleaning wherever it may be and, if necessary, make them restore the damaged surfaces to their original pristine condition.
The fine should be a meaningful one, say a thousand pounds, and the convicted should be made to wear high-viz jackets, preferably with graffiti sprayed across the back, ie ‘Lol what a Twat I am!” Something they would be sure to understand. Hmm, that’s not necessarily so?
As for the newspaper or its online media alternative who chose to publish such gnats’ bollocks, viz “graffiti has developed into a bona fide art form, a legitimate force for economic, cultural and social good“, I suppose that as they provide nothing worth communicating to anyone, the next best thing is graffiti.
If you suffer from graffiti in your neighbourhood and fail to agree with the Guardbunkle that it is a bona fide art form, or that it gives you a boner as it must do the staff of the (mention no names) Guardinnit, complaints should be written, preferably in spray paint, on your nearest police tunic, on the walls of the Guardbog or/and on the Benefit and Illegal Immigration Office at Number 10 DoNothing Street.
Here is an example of what to write: “Please do something!”
Please note: Graffiti originated in America, travelled to the UK through the porous borders of no common sense and then spread across the world like the benighted scourge in Roman Polanski’s Dance of the Vampires. Wherever it may be, it is up to you to stamp this evil out! 😎
Published: 20 September 2021 ~ Trust the Greatest Victim of Coronavirus
One year and six months into the coronavirus era or, according to your perception of it, the pandemic, plandemic, Great Reset, call it what you will, and the people of the world have gone from being recipients of ‘friendly’, almost parental, advice to stay home and stay safe, to being victims of emotional and moral blackmail, hinged to the requirement, mandatory requirement, to get themselves injected with fast-tracked vaccines, none of which have been conclusively cleared by the usual testing protocols.
In my native country, the UK, already divided along the socio-political faultline of legacy patriotism and social engineering, the imposition of lockdowns, masks and the big issue, vaccination, have galvanised attitudes and entrenched beliefs on either side of a great divide.
Some postulate that the Covid plan, or one dimension of that the plan, is based on the divide and rule paradigm that underpins mass, unwanted immigration for the ends advanced by Coudenhove-Kalergi, contemporaneously run in western liberal countries under the codename ‘diversity’ and sugar-coated as being the best thing since more curry.
Others lean towards the speculation that manifests from a suspected unholy alliance between the WHO, Bill Gates and the Big Pharma connection, or, to put it in its simplest form, discounting for the moment chipping people and culling the world’s population, profit.
This article, ‘While the Poor Get Sick, Bill Gates Just Gets Richer’, is worth considering if only because of this statement: “’The last person I would want to tell me if a vaccine was ready to go is a person who has an investment in the vaccine,’ Krimsky said”1. ‘The last person’ is a reference to Mr Gates; Mr Krimsky is a professor of humanities and social sciences at Tufts University.
And from the same article, “According to Forbes’s estimates, Bill Gates’s private wealth, estimated at around $115 billion, has increased by more than $10 billion during the pandemic. It is unknown if the Gateses have personal investments in companies working on Covid.”1🐷
Gates, his wealth and his objectives aside, it is the socio-ethical repercussions, the fallout from restrictions and new laws within the Covid orbit, that urgently need addressing, as differences in opinion regarding primarily mask wearing and co-opted mass vaccination is in the UK rapidly creating a two-tier society polarised by those who have been vaccinated and who, supposedly, willingly or unwittingly, support repetitive vaccination, and those who strongly oppose it.
The vaccinated are divisible into two sub-groups, determined by obedience and motive. One group consists of people who believe everything that the powers that be and their media tells them. They question nothing and do as they are told and then, having passed through the chrysalis stage, emerge as moral high-grounders, preaching to all in sundry who are hesitant to take or who are staunchly opposed to the vaccine that their recalcitrance is inexcusable, that it poses a threat to the health of others, and for this they must be blamed and shamed and subject to prohibitions.
The other vaccinated group consists of reluctant ‘volunteers’, those that have accepted the vaccine under duress of saving their jobs and livelihoods. In other words they have been coerced into having a foreign body injected into their body with no convincing assurance that it will not eventually harm them, possibly terminally.
The moral high-grounders, who unreasoningly follow the WHO, their governments and whatever the media tells them, condemn those who reject mass and mandatory vaccination outright on ethical and rational grounds by resorting to terminology custom-made for the purpose by ruling elites and their media factotums. Stigmastisation by the ‘conspiracy theorist’ label is the liberal equivalent of shouting ‘racist’, a means when all else fails of avoiding the issue and closing debate.
The moral low-grounding conspiracy theorists are averse to becoming one of the herd possibly because of the connation that herds are silly things that go willingly off to slaughter, but more likely because unlike the moral high-grounders they are suspicious of the links that exist between so-called non-government organisations, charitable foundations, Big Pharma etc.
Some of their persuasion believe that pharmaceutical companies, global investment groups and billionaire philanthropists deliberately conspired to instigate the COVID-19 pandemic; others that the conspiracy between them is more likely to have been formulated as an exploitation of Covid circumstances as and when they developed.
This ‘wait and see’ faction are less likely to concede that the practices of social media gurus to ‘protect’ vaccine vacillators from ‘false news’ and ‘false vaccine information’ is conducted on an equitable basis for altruistic ends, and more likely to consider the self-styled fact checking employed by social media giant Facebook and others as being a simple but effective means of censoring and suppressing legitimate, alternative, critical views on (a) the so-called protective measures adopted for dealing with coronavirus, especially, but not exclusively, with regard to enforced mask wearing and (b) more incisively, to the socio-ethical debate on fast-tracked and mandatory vaccination, where the term ‘mandatory’ encompasses not only legal directives but also the Orwellian implementation and ‘legal’ enforcement of vaccination passports, together with strong-arm fear mongering and emotional and moral blackmail.
The moral high-grounders believe what they are told to believe and do what they are told to do; the moral low-grounders question the validity and credulity of this approach, not only in regard to the approach itself, which is blind and unquestionable, but also from a critical analysis of the people doing the telling and the links between these people, their previous stated objectives and the ever-present profit motive.🐷
Trust the Greatest Victim of Coronavirus
The social media monopolisers, led by Facebook, now operate a blanket and in-depth censorship programme, which blocks content, eradicates comment and routinely reroutes readers to the WHO website or affiliated articles that purport to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Should anyone attempt to post anything that contradicts or challenges the official narrative on coronavirus, especially, but not exclusively, with regard to mask wearing and vaccination, they are vetted, censored and blocked. The same media groups encourage the compliant to advertise their compliancy by changing their avatars to virtue-signalling roundels, ‘I have had my vaccine’. For the initiated, one can only surmise that these rainbow encircled discs are worn as badges of honour; for those who are less easily led, or tend toward skepticism, they are seen as nothing more than misplaced trust and confessions of naivety.
“Currently, Facebook has more than 60 partners who fact-check content in more than 50 languages worldwide. As Remix News has previously reported, 18 out of 20 members of Facebook’s global fact-checking board have ties to George Soros, who has provided funding to liberal causes around the world, including over $50 million he’s spent on defeating President Donald Trump and efforts to undermine conservative governments in Hungary and Poland.”2
The man referred to in the quote above is the same man that the liberal-controlled western media is keen to refer to as a ‘billionaire philanthropist’ and is the same man allegedly whose non-government organisations (NGOs) have facilitated and continue to facilitate the mass mobilisation of people from third world countries into Europe. It is an irony of fate that this man is arguably the de facto precipitant of Brexit.
Eighteen months into the pandemic and the biggest casualty of all is Trust ~ misplaced or abandoned. By the time the ‘pandemic’ is over, by which I mean exposed for what it is or simply eroded by the passage of time and the demise of the main protagonists, will we ever feel able to trust them again? More to the point, do they really care? In the last analysis, trust is a silent commodity whereas money, as we know to our cost, talks …
Updated: 12 March 2022 | Published: 8 August 2021 ~ For Russians Moving to UK Towns not London
Warning! In response to Russia’s special operation aimed at ‘demilitarising and de-Nazifying Ukraine’, the UK media has embarked upon and is actively pursuing an intensive propaganda programme which is resulting in widespread anti-Russian sentiment and Russophobia. Aimed at cancelling Russian culture and demonising Russian citizens at every level, incidents of verbal abuse and physical aggression towards Russian nationals have been reported in various western countries, including the UK. This comes against the backdrop of reports suggesting that Facebook is greenlighting hate speech against Russians on its social media platform. You are advised to travel to the UK only for essential reasons and whilst there to exercise caution.
This is the third in a series of blog articles in which I provide Russian’s who are considering emigrating to the UK real advice, as opposed to the jaunty ‘I’m off to uni’ kind that has about as much gravitas as the WHO in the midst of a pandemic.
It is a ‘taken for granted’ that all who read this are fully apprised of the latest situation pertaining to coronavirus, as defined by the UK government, and equally are fully cognisant of UK travel and entry requirements regarding Covid-19 testing, quarantine and the many and numerous Covid-related restrictions that apply within the UK, especially with regard to ‘vaccination passports’.
This accepted, I write this guide with the honest but bemused assumption that in spite of common sense there are still people who, possibly because they have recently missed their psychiatric appointments, are yet to be dissuaded from moving to Plague Island, and it is with them in mind that I do proceed. Forgive me.
When anybody asks me in Russia where did I live in the UK, they expect me to answer London, and if I miss out the fact that I did live in London choosing instead to mention one of the 14 other places where I also lived whilst in the UK, they are either stumped or do not want to know. This is because most Russians, like a lot of other people around the world, confuse London with England and have precious little knowledge of anything else about the UK.
This is not their fault, because after all London is the capital city of the United Kingdom, but the disproportionate focus on London at the expense of the rest of the country has been a transformatory one, effectively turning London from capital into country and eclipsing England in the process.
The way in which the UK, and England in particular, is portrayed falsely implies that where London leads the rest of the country follows, which, as my Indian friend would politely put it, is ‘bullshit’! (He’s a real refuge from Idi Amin!) Everything, especially the socio-political makeup of the UK is filtered through a metropolitan media that writes about issues that have no relevance for anyone except a certain political class that lives in a world of virtual reality known to them as London. The UK media is little more than the public relations arm of what is commonly referred to as the ‘Islington set’, a catchall that speaks for itself, as Islington is the London borough that symbolises the unholy ground of neoliberal elitism.
What this means is that the behaviour, beliefs, dogma, political prejudices, attitudes, in fact most everything that you read about UK life as conveyed by its mainstream media is hopelessly skewed and distorted. It represents the minority view of a small percentage of people who live in the Island of London within the British Isles, most of which are as English as Genghis Khan (isn’t he the mayor of London?) and only just make British by virtue of a paper pledge bubble-gum stuck to rights that could be whipped away at a moment’s notice by any political wind depending on where it is coming from and the force of its emission.
Well said that man!
In order for you to know England, not the UK or the spurious Britain in which hardly any Britons live, you need to get out of London and go elsewhere in the country. I am not advocating that you give up on London altogether, far from it. For all its faults and pitfalls, London is ~ still is ~ an interesting and dynamic place, so not to go there would be doing yourself a great disservice. But going there does not mean that you have to live there; you might not even want to live there. So, by all means travel to London to see what it is like, buy yourself some union jack underpants, put them on smartishly so as not to offend the ‘minorities’ and, if you have any money left after you’ve paid your rail fare and been duly mugged in Enrichment Street, you can tell your friends you’ve been to London, and they will be impressed, if only because you’ve been to London and lived to tell the tale. Alternatively, you could save yourself the risk, the bother and the cash, have a cheap day out in Scunthorpe and tell a fib instead!
Experience over or conscience placated, it is now time to get a feel of what England is really like. I will say that again: what England is really like and what English life is about. To do this, you should venture forth, like the fictional character Blackadder, into England’s provincial towns and villages.
I am not suggesting that you substitute London for Manchester, Brum (Birmingham), Leeds and so on. A large city is a large city, and all of England’s cities have suffered the irretrievable fate of the ignominious liberal experiment. Of course, if that is what you have come to see and want to experience, then go to these places you must. But I should warn you that most sane people in the UK, those who have not been indoctrinated and are still free thinkers, most of whom live in the provinces, would only end up in these places if they accidently caught the wrong bus, and then they would not admit to having been there. However, as you are ‘not from ’round ‘ere’ no one can really blame you. I should mention at this point, however, that many of the UK’s smaller towns, especially those ‘up North’ also have the blight. Size is not a guarantee, but sometimes you might be lucky..
Methodology
In the scope of this post and considering that I want to go for a beer, it is not possible, you’ll be pleased to know, for me to ramble on about every town and village in England, so with this in mind, and that pint or six I’m waiting for, I’ll confine myself to outlines and pointers and then we’ll move on to housing costs.
For the sake of brevity and extremes, I am going to follow the simplistic plan of dividing England along its traditional faultline, North and South, but whilst skirting adroitly around London, please do bear in mind that there are many other towns, and indeed villages, from which you can learn about English life other than the two examples that I have chosen here.
For Russians Moving to UK Towns not London: Cornwall
We will start with Cornwall in the southwest of England. It is an interesting place for many reasons, one being that a small group of Cornish nationalists, whilst not pushing for complete independence from England in the way that the Crimea yearned to return to Russia to avoid becoming a vassal EU state, have none the less made protestations for their county to be granted some degree of regional autonomy. This is quite ironic, as I am sure I am not alone in my estimation that Cornwall (and its neighbouring counties Devon, Dorset and Somerset) is one of the most English places in England. I will underline that again English, emphasised because the term British has been hijacked, misappropriated and rendered virtually meaningless by invasion-abetted politics and its confederate appeasement policies.
Where Cornwall is exactly can easily be determined by a cursory glance at the map of the British Isles. It is the last county at the tapering end of the country, a peninsula of wild moorland, small atmospheric towns and ancient villages. Its two coastlines, no more than 22 miles apart, offer holidaymakers beautiful sandy beaches on the south side and a dramatic shoreline of precipitous cliffs on the north. The south coast, with its quaint harbour villages and sandy coves has earnt itself the name of the Cornish Riviera; the north as the place to go for dynamic seascapes and surfing. At the furthermost tip of Cornwall lies Land’s End, the most westerly point in mainland England. It is rugged, dynamic and a little bit spoilt by over-commercialisation but nevertheless remains one of the country’s most famous landmarks.
Like the sound of it already? Then let’s take a look at how much it costs to rent or buy a property in this little corner of southwest England.
For no other reason other than that I have been there, the first town that I have chosen for this exercise is Penzance.
For Russians Moving to UK Towns not London: Penzance
Penzance is the last major town in Cornwall before the land runs out at Land’s End. Hey, you don’t think that’s why they called it Land’s End, do you?! It is a market town, whose historical claim to fame is that in the latter years of the 19th century it was the only coastal town in Cornwall to have its own promenade. Also in the 19th century, the Great Western Railway reached the end of the line at Penzance, a culmination that swiftly diversified its age-old status as a thriving port to that of a major holiday resort. Some say that its holiday appeal has tapered off in recent years, but how much this has to do with the fickleness of tourist preference and how much with being locked down in your own home whilst wearing a mask and putting ‘I’ve had my vaccine’ on your rainbow-tinted Facebook avatar is anybody’s guess and, in all likelihood, tomorrow’s documentary.
What I can say is that to help me with my inquiries regarding renting and buying properties in Penzance, my first port of call was to what has been described as the UK’s largest online real-estate portal and property website. I can see that you are impressed!
Renting property in Penzance
Surprisingly, the largest property-search website in the UK returned no more than four properties to rent in Penzance, and this return was based on a non-filtered search query.
Bottom of the barrel and top of the least expensive list was a one-bedroom property at £460 per calendar month, offering the potential tenant a mouth-watering zero-deposit carrot.
About the deposit: In my previous article on renting property in London, I mentioned the dreaded deposit. This is a lump sum that the prospective tenant pays in addition to one month’s rent in advance as surety to the landlord that on leaving the property the bricks, mortar, fixtures, fittings and furnishings (if there are any) are in the same condition as when the tenant moved in.
The deposit is usually, but not always, equal to a month’s rent. It is a built-in safeguard for the landlord that the tenant treats his property with respect, based on a legal agreement that on vacation of the property should any damage or excessive wear and tear be evident, the cost of repair and/or replacement will be deducted from the deposit. In the event that the property is in tip-top shape on the day that the tenant leaves, theoretically the deposit that he or she has paid should be refunded in full.
This all sounds reasonable enough, until the time comes for you to leave the property. It is then that your scurrilous landlord, or rather the crooked estate agent acting on his behalf, accuses you of all sorts of vandalism, for which you have no redress, and consequently holds back a large proportion of your deposit to compensate for fictitious damage and/or depreciation. So, it is a real boon if you can rent a property in the UK where the deposit is waived, although my advice to you is deposit or no deposit, before you move in take as many photos as possible of the flat/house and all its contents and make sure the photos are date stamped. Even better, send copies to the estate agent, making sure to home in on any existing damage and anything else that is worn and jaded.
This property, the one-bedroomed one advertised in Penzance , offers the inducement of ‘zero deposit available’. Why ‘available’ and not just ‘zero deposit’ is I suspect a difference to be ultimately determined by the score that your credit-rating check returns, a game-changing factor which can ultimately make the difference between getting that flat you are after or being flatly refused. And incidentally, credit scoring is by no means as straightforward as you might think. If you have never had or never used a credit card, then you will have a zero-credit rating: that’s bad. If you have used your credit card(s) and missed payments, even once or twice: that’s bad. If you owe an awful lot of money but have consistently paid your lender back the capital you have borrowed plus their extortionate interest on top: that’s good. Just saying.
Back to the one-bedroom ‘property’ at £460 per calendar month. By UK standards this is not expensive for a one-bedroom flat. But wait a moment, this is not a flat. It is, and I quote, “a double bedroom in a house of multiple occupancy”? A ‘house of multiple occupancy’, whilst it might sound like a nice way of saying brothel, is, I am sorry to disappoint you, just a posh way of saying bedsits. Your ‘double bedroom’ for £460 per calendar month is in fact no more than a room in a converted Victorian/Edwardian house that has been rabbit-hutched into bedsits.
Note that the room is ‘single occupancy only’, so no migrants with eight children please, or a stream of live-in lovers. It is ‘fully furnished’, which means it has a bed, sofa, small fridge, bedside table and chest of drawers ~ cheap but perhaps not cheerful. There are five other rooms in this ‘house of multiple occupancy’ so let’s hope that you all get on with one another because the kitchen, which is small, is shared, as is the bog and bathroom.
Having been in bargain basement for longer than I cared to be, I then went up-barrel to see what a house would cost to rent in Penzance and found a two-bedroom terraced house at £850 per calendar month. Admittedly, this property, which is unfurnished, has been refurbished in a style that will be attractive to some, especially younger people (it would be interesting to see an interior photograph of this property as it was in the 1930s!), but it is still a terraced house. There is no garden, front or back, not even a few feet of owned space between the front door and the pavement. If this is unimportant to you, no sweat. What you see is what you will get.
Eight hundred and fifty pounds per calendar month for a two-bedroomed terrace house in Penzance would seem to compare favourably with the £1,152 you would need to stump up for a two-bedroom flat in one of London’s more down-market boroughs, such as Bexley, until that is you consider that the average wage in Cornwall is £28.8K1, which is pretty piss poor compared to the national UK average salary, which is alleged to be £38.6K (2020).
But what if you are not interested in renting a property in Penzance but want to join the UK’s masses in declaring your home your castle?
Most people in the UK want to buy a property these days because even with a barely supportable 25-year mortgage and all the entrapment and misery it brings, for a while at least you can enjoy the illusion of owning your own home even if in reality it is actually owned by the bank. It is well to remember, however, that UK castles are not impervious to debt collectors, county court judgements and bailiffs, hence the small print in your mortgage contract telling you that ‘your home can be repossessed if you fail to keep up repayments on your mortgage or on a secured loan’. For those perspicacious readers, and I know that you all are, the emotive use of the word ‘home’ instead of property will not have escaped your attention.
Buying property in Penzance
To assist me in finding an Englishman’s castle, I turned again to the superior property portal that I had consulted earlier, what’s it called? Wrongun, where I found instead a flat, the main features of which were listed as a double bedroom, open-plan living room/kitchen, shower room/wc, gas-fired central heating, glazing and no onward chain.
Before we go any further just a word to the wise: When considering any house purchase or rent, learn how to translate estate-agent speak. For example, what we have here is a ‘double bedroom’ (a room into which a double bed will fit ~ usually just), an ‘open-plan living room/kitchen’ (living room and kitchen lumped together without dividing wall), ‘shower room/wc’ (a room with a toilet not big enough to get a bath into), ‘gas-fired central heating’ (good point), glazing (does that mean double-glazing or that the windows have panes of glass in them?). The last feature, ‘no onward chain’, is an important one and also a good selling/buying point.
“A property with no onward chain is one which is ready to be sold straight away. The seller will not need the funds (or proceeds of sale) from an existing sale to purchase the next property or move on. For buyers, it’s an advantageous position to be in as, by and large, it simplifies the sales process.”2
The price tag on this double-bedroomed flat in Penzance with glass in the windows and ‘no onward chain’ is a mere £100,000, and I jest not when I affirm that in this day and age this is a good price in the current UK market.
However, before you break your piggy bank, take note that the tenure of this property is ‘Leasehold’, not ‘Freehold’. What does that mean exactly? It means that if purchased you will own the property but not the building or the land on which it sits. This will be owned by a ‘freeholder’ to whom you will be expected to pay ‘ground rent’. Conversely, should you purchase a ‘freehold’ property you own both the building and the land, which is really what you want if you want to call your home a castle.
Moving on, but not necessarily swiftly, I looked next for a house as opposed to a flat in Penzance and found one which was described as being “located in an exceptional position … ” which, knowing Penzance as I do, I can assure you from the description of it, it most certainly is.
Although this house with its ‘captivating outlook’ is offered as a two-bedroomed property, the description of it suggests that it has the flexibility to be three-bedroomed, which means, I assume, that with a bit of imagination and some DIY skills alterations could be made. With this house you get great views across the bay, gardens to the front and a carport at the rear. How much? £395,000.
At first you may think that the price tag on this property owes a lot to its location in Penzance and the rejoiceful views that it offers, but a quick skim through various property portals reveal that for a two-bedroom house in Penzance £360,000 is about the average minimum price that you can expect to pay, and as most of the ads for properties in Penzance are not cast-in-stone prices but ‘offers over’, ‘offers in excess of’ or ‘guide prices’, you can expect to pay much more. Now what was the average wage in Penzance again?
We conclude, therefore, that properties in Penzance though not half as expensive as in London are, in terms of like for like, still way beyond most people’s pockets. However, if you are not most people but a well-healed high-roller, houses and flats in Penzance make good second-home investments, and high-flying executive types forced to accept distance working because of coronavirus charades could find that working and living in Penzance, with its captivating view over the bay to St Michael’s Mount, infinitely more agreeable than watching statue-molesting thugs at work somewhere in downtown London.
Council Tax in Penzance
But we have yet to mention that second mortgage, the UK’s dreaded council tax, the devious nature of which I adumbrated in my previous post. Council tax bands in Penzance compare unfavourably on an income-to-expenditure ratio to what you would pay if you lived in London. But, hey, there has to be some compensation for living in one of the world’s most rip-off capitals!
The lowest council tax you will have to pay if you live in Penzance is £1361.31, the highest £4,083.90 per year3.
As for the cost of living in Penzance, whilst nowhere in the UK is the cost of living higher than it is in London, equally nowhere in the UK is the cost of living low. Penzance located in one of England’s most desirable holiday destinations is bound to mug your wallet and having a big one to enjoy what is arguably the best coastlines, best sea views, best historical venues and best of dramatic landscapes is not a surprising contingent.
Crime in Penzance
What is surprising is that on the flip side of beauty lies dread: “Penzance is among the top 5 most dangerous small towns in Cornwall and is among the top 10 most dangerous overall out of Cornwall’s 218 towns, villages, and cities. The overall crime rate in Penzance in 2020 was 73 crimes per 1,000 people. This compares poorly to Cornwall’s overall crime rate, coming in 41% higher than the Cornwall rate of 43 per 1,000 residents. For England, Wales, and Northern Ireland as a whole, Penzance is the 177th most dangerous small town, and the 1,300th most dangerous location out of all towns, cities, and villages … The most common crimes in Penzance are violence and sexual offences4.” So Crimerate.co.uk tells us. But the good news is, from the same source, that “Penzance’s least common crime is bicycle theft”. So, even if you are raped, beaten to a pulp or murdered, at least you can be fairly sure that your bicycle will be safe, but I wouldn’t count on it.
As I said in my previous article, and if I forgot to, then I should have said it, the UK’s famous North-South divide is nowhere more conspicuously reflected than in the price you have to pay to put a roof over your head.
For Russians Moving to UK Towns not London: Durham
In the second part of this article, I decided to go to Durham. Why? Two reasons. First, I have always wanted to know what it was about Durham that made the singer/songwriter Roger Whittaker want to leave it so much; and second, and more to the point, it is cited on many property prices and cost-of-living websites as being the most inexpensive UK city in which to purchase property.
Durham is a cathedral city, which means that is a town that has city status because it has a cathedral. Durham is the county town of County Durham in northeast England, noted for its Romanesque cathedral, Norman castle, low-cost property and Roger Whittaker’s insistent desire to leave it, leave it, leave it … (I know he said that leaving was ‘bringing him down’ but he did not sound at all convincing!)
Apart from its university, tourism and Roger Whittaker’s song, I know very little about Durham’s employment market. They no longer mine coal thereabouts and flat caps and racing pigeons are possibly not as chic as they used to be, but I have it on good authority (our cat told me) that one of its major industries has earnt Durham the title of the ‘City of Medicine’, named such for the 300 medical and health-related organisations that thrive there. Thus, I think we can say without fear of rebuttal, not the best place to be if you live in fear of compulsory vaccination but a tremendous city to live in should you want to get out on the streets to protest against the iniquity of vaccination totalitarianism.
But first you will need to live somewhere. According to the property and estate agents sites that I visited, the average house price in Durham is £174,841 as of August 2021. Flats sold for an average of £157,792 and terraced houses for significantly less, at an average of £135,425. But let us take a closer look.
Renting property in Durham
For some reason, the rental market in Durham is not particularly cheap. Our old friend Arightbigportal reveals that two-bedroom apartments (which means flats) are priced at £700 per calendar month. The one that I looked at online was, admittedly, ultra-modern and fully furnished to boot.
However, perhaps a better deal is the three-bedroom semi-detached house that I discovered on the same site. It is a modern gaff with a rental price of £575 per calendar month. Now, that’s more like it!
Well, it would be, until you consider these gloomy statistics provided by Payscale.com5. The average salary in Durham UK is £26K. Not as much as Bill Gates earns in his lunchbreak? But wait, there is more: “Trends in wages decreased by -100.0 percent in Q2 2021. The cost of living in Durham, England: Durham is 100 percent higher than the national average.” Gulp!
Buying property in Durham
Buying a castle in Durham, even a one-bedroom castle, does not bode well for those who have to subsist on the average Durham salary, but at least in Durham one can cut one’s coat according to one’s cloth. In other words, property type and prices vary and those variations are quite broad. An internet search revealed that one-bedroomed flats can be purchased between £65,000 and £85,000 and that there was a smattering of two-bedroom flats from £80,000 to £115,000.
Two-bedroom mid-terrace houses have an asking price of £140,000~£150,000, with the magic qualifier ‘offers in the region of’ (so, hows about £140,000.01?), rising to £250,000 depending on property type, ie Victorian, and area.
Things are better in the semi-detached bracket provided you have no objections to a modern housing estate. Here, you can pick something up ~ I mean a property ~ for less than £120,000.
Council Tax in Durham
You might be tempted to believe that given Durham’s ‘up North’ location that the one prime advantage of living there would be a relatively low council tax. Thing again, sucker!
Durham’s Band A council tax, the lowest band, is £1360.91 and its Band H, the highest (‘H’ for high, you see they are clever are British councils), is £4082.747, which means if you move from Penzance to Durham, travelling, for example, on your unstolen bicycle, you could end up saving yourself 40 pence at the lower band and £1.16 at the higher. ‘That’s it!’ I hear you cry, ‘Durham here we come!’
The price differential between any property type in Durham compared to similar property in London is as striking as the difference between respect and social cohesion in 1930s’ England and what there isn’t today, but this ‘advantage’ has to be weighed against Durham’s abysmal wage packets and what about its quality of life?
Crime in Durham
Apart from the insecurity of living there if you are not on better wages than the ones they pay in Durham, how does Durham shape up in the national crime stats? Allegedly, when compared to the national crime rate, Durham county’s crime rate comes in at a depressing 115%6.
And there’s more: “Most crimes, 39.5k crimes were violent crimes which is 33.3% of all crimes committed in the area. Violent crime rate is at 142% of national crime rate. Public order crime was the fastest growing crime and it increased by 12.5% over the last twelve months6.”
Little wonder then that the healthcare and medicines industry is a thriving concern in Durham.
Conclusion
In compiling this article, I obviously appreciate that the number of Russians hungry to live in Penzance and/or Durham might not be incredibly high. London with all its intrinsic peril and high-octane Woke has a great deal more to offer in every capacity than small regional towns and small cathedral cities and that ‘more’, most essentially, also includes job diversification and higher earnings opportunities, not to mention a ‘vibrant’ culture, albeit a rather dangerous one, and the kind of teaming nightlife that you’ll never be able to ever afford because of the cost of your rent or mortgage.
For those of you who are mega-wealthy or have a secure and reliable well-paid job, preferably working from home, the likes of Penzance or Durham may be a marriage made in Heaven ~ or somewhere. Otherwise, it’s sea fishing and amusement arcade operatives in UK coastal towns or in Durham, for example, NHS workers or prison officers.
At least we now know why Roger Whittaker left. He most likely left Penzance as well? And on the evidence of his most excellent intuition would most certainly have thought about leaving London before he ever went there.
Where do you want to leave? In considering life in the UK, you’ll never run out of places to choose from.
Now, I hate football with a vengeance and always have. I have hated it for as long as I can remember and from my earliest childhood, especially at secondary school level. There was something so odiously, if not inclusively, masculine about having to interrupt your academic day by running up and down a muddy field in your silly little short shorts booting a ball about, accompanied by a gaggle of inane whoops and shouts under the kindly ministrations of a retarded bully-boy games master.
In those days wearing rainbow colours in support of all kinds of deviant practices was unheard of and, besides, had it otherwise been the case it would hardly have been encouraged. You only had to say, “I don’t like football”, to be immediately on the receiving end of ‘poof!’, ‘queer!’, ‘homo!’.
Football was a masculine game; it was all about manly men, both on and off the pitch; it was a case par excellence of male camaraderie, of muddy and sweaty male bonding but strictly of the non-rainbow kind.
So, it is not without some curiosity that we arrive in the 21st century to find that under the guise and guile of racism traditional notions of masculinity are as much under attack on and off the football pitch as they are in almost every other UK walk of life.
I take as my lead on this treatise a recent article, ‘On racism and football, it’s England vs. their fans’, published online by Politico, a media resource described by AllSides media-bias rater as ‘Left Leaning’. Don’t take a spirit level to it, you will only tax your bubble.
The article in question is one of a plethora launched amidst the media-hyped hysteria about the so-called racist behaviour of a section of the England fans during the Euro 2020 final, which took place at Wembley Stadium in London recently (I haven’t a clue when exactly, as I don’t follow football?). But let’s leave that article for the moment and cut to the chase.
Keep Woke out of Football
The politically correct storm in a liberal-left teacup is all about ‘taking a knee’ (No, not in the groin. Don’t be silly. You all know what ‘taking a knee’ means. It’s so everywhere that it wouldn’t surprise me if Brits are not soon wearing builders’ knee pads to go with their facemask fashion accessory ~ isn’t the 21st century fun!!). Apparently, when the English team took a knee, some of the fans took to booing. At the end of the game, when England lost, allegedly certain members of the English team were subjected to racial abuse.
When Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, denounced the ‘vile racist abuse’, (I believe she was referring to the verbal offence not the act of booing) she was accused by black player Tyrone Mings of hypocrisy. Because Priti Patel had once described ‘taking a knee’ as ‘gesture politics’, and when asked if she would criticise fans who booed England players taking the knee, she had replied that it was their choice, Mings felt justified in saying “You don’t get to stoke the fire at the beginning of the tournament by labelling our anti-racism message as ‘Gesture Politics’ and then pretend to be disgusted when the very thing we’re campaigning against, happens.”
Whatever you might say about Mings’ game, joining the dots obviously isn’t it. He should stick to football, and possibly hone his skills, and Priti Patel should conduct herself in a manner befitting that of a home secretary, which is exactly what she is doing.
The problem with ‘taking a knee’ is that whilst some postulate that it as an anti-racism message, others see it as the political salute of an organisation described by The Telegraph as ‘a radical neo-Marxist political movement’. I refer, of course, to Black Lives Matter (BLM).
Patently, it is not within the remit of the British Home Secretary to endorse controversial brands.
The Politico article also alludes to Priti Patel’s refusal to endorse ‘taking a knee’ but at least has the decency to acknowledge that the reason one takes the knee is “in support of Black Lives Matter protesters”, which does not entirely dovetail with Mings’ vocalising of it as an “anti-racism message”.
The same article also offers an alternative, acceptable reason as to why some of the England supporters felt the need to boo, which is to “keep politics out of football”.
Booing for all the right reasons is not such a bad thing.
If only more people would boo for keeping politics out of wherever it is they do not belong, life might inch up a notch. We could certainly do with people standing outside our schools and booing and, if not exactly booing, demanding that we keep politics out of the UK education system, where it operates at every level subversively and with grievous intent to indoctrinate.
I booed, latently, when in the opening paragraphs of that article ‘On racism and football, it’s England vs. their fans’, I learnt for the first time that football, the game that I loved to hate, was, or was expected to be, as mixed up, convoluted and Woke-obsessed as British society itself. Why was the author of this piece rambling on about the virtuous things that some of the players did, were doing or had done when they were not booting a ball around and getting paid too much for it? It was not until I got to the bit about Jordan Henderson embracing LGBTQ+ laces and armband that the article raised a smile, a sigh of relief and a sense of where this was going. I checked the article’s attribution: aahh, ‘activist and editor at the New Socialist’ ~ mystery solved.
It would be naïve of me to suggest that LGBTQ has nothing to do with football and everything to do with people’s personal sexual proclivities, because some would Woke me up with, no it is all to do with inclusivity, others that is a gender equality message and still others a case of ‘gesture politics’, but, be this as it may, football, I would argue, is two teams of 11 men, 10 of them running around a field in pursuit of a plastic ball and the eleventh stood there like a dummy surrounded by three metal poles.
The Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries defines football as “a game played by two teams of 11 players, using a round ball which players kick up and down the playing field. Teams try to kick the ball into the other team’s goal”. There is nothing in this definition about sexual deviations, taking knees, knees up mother brown, or mother white, or one or other of the players giving sixpence a week from his not insubstantial salary to the local home for stray migrants ~ please send all donations to The Ritz …
Then comes the dogma and bigotry, the ironclad implication that if you do not wish to align yourself with a neo-Marxist group and believe that politics should be kept out of football then as sure as night follows day you must be far rightist. In fact, anyone who refuses to join in with the Riverdance foot-stamping and tantrum-inclined politics of the left, whether it manifests itself on the football pitch or anywhere else, can only be motivated by far-right sympathies. Like the game of football itself, you are either with us or against us, there is no middle way.
Thus, it comes as no surprise that the Politico article, as with many other on the left, links the ‘mindless violence of hooliganism with far-right sympathies’ ~ no mention here then of weeks of street rampaging, public disorder and the mindless vandalism against civic statues and Britain’s heritage that characterised the ‘mostly peaceful’ riots of BLM. You disagree? Go home and take the liberal tablet and whilst you are at it, take a knee.
WOKE WATCH UK!
Now spitting tar and feathers the Politico article navigates safely into familiar territory. Having satisfied itself that the disinclined knee-takers and stadium booers are far-right extremists, it full steams ahead up Shit Creek postulating on the way that “the far right have always preyed upon … forgotten working-class communities”. So, who are the football fans who dare go ‘boo’, warriors of the mythical far right or working-class victims that the far right have duped? Two considerations arise from the victim statement: one, that the majority of football fans are from working-class communities, which they are; and two, yes, they have been forgotten ~ forgotten systematically over the years by the very people who egregiously pretend that they are the champions of the working-class, call them the left, call them socialists, call them new socialists, call them what you want, this putty vocalist clan have almost always one thing in common, which is that the majority of their kind are bourgeois-emulating lush-living liberals who talk the talk but do not walk the walk.
These are they who have an awful lot to say about racism and about equality in our working-class communities whilst advancing and enforcing ideological doctrines, such as globalism and mass immigration, that are tailor-made to undermine cultural identity and social stability. Globalism, mass immigration, open borders, political correctness and Wokism serve nothing but an elitist liberal club and as such are no friends of England’s working-class communities.
But take heart! All is not lost! The article goes on to suggest that the naughty element tarnishing the otherwise good behaviouralist fans appear to be suffering from that strange malady that most people tend to contract after the age of 14, anachronism: they belong to “another era” and “struggle to find a way to adapt to the modern world”.
Oh, brave new world that has such creatures innit!
What ‘modern world’ is it to which we must adapt to earn ourselves our browny points? Presumably the world of Woke, where all and everything has to be subsumed into the importance of rainbow colours and the virtue-signalling of ‘taking a knee’.
“Most of the team’s supporters have spent the last few years going through an attitude change that they should be given credit for.”
This is like saying, ‘I’ve kicked your arse, now I’ll pat your head, you good sheep you”. Such delusive nonsense might make the writer sleep better at night, but in reality, it will take a lot more condescension than that to rub out the fact that the majority of legacy Brits will never cave in, not to accepting politics in football and in any other part of their lives where politics should not be. If the English majority had wanted Wokism, they would never have voted for Brexit and the Labour party would not have collapsed in the last general election.
Oh, and if you are left wondering, so to speak, of course Brexit has been blamed for the malodorous actions of those ‘far-right’ fans! Cue a nursery full of bawlin’ babies: “We want a people’s vote!”
True to liberal or ‘new socialist’ form the tone of this article then becomes more rabid and froth foamy as it implodes towards conclusion. Brexit, as I have said, has already joined the ranks of the ‘usual suspects’, but there are a lot of other liberal-lefty hobbyhorses that are still unaccounted for. And then, just when you are asking yourself why you have not been mugged by the usual neuroticisms and enrichment blandishments, your faith in liberal bias is restored. In profusion, as if the writer is worried that he (she/it?) forgot to include them ~ and inclusivity is a very serious matter ~ comes ‘right-wing’, ‘populism’, ‘borders’, ‘immigration’, and ‘gender fluidity’ (I don’t much care for the liquid sound of that last one, do you?).
And so, we end up with what the writer no doubt believes is much of a ‘tan-ta-rar’ but is really little more than a sorry descent into cliché, that “right-wing populist politicians, including those in the government, continue to sow the seeds of division and stoke the fires of hatred”. Rather than admit that it is our socially engineered society with all its isms, virtue-signalling and Wokeness that is sowing the seeds and stoking the fires.
But now, of course, it is all going terribly wrong. The architects have the divisions for which they have been working but are perplexed and frustrated that they have gone no deeper than the thin end of the wedge and what is more disturbing for them is that as society grows more ‘populist’ the more exposed their handy work becomes.
As with all fanatical idealogues they have overestimated their own capabilities and underestimated the strength of the resistance. The days when legacy Brits could be cowed into submission by accusations of racism and other PC nonsense never really happened, at least not beyond the sold-on delusion, and as it never happened in the hey days of Tony Blair when liberals were living the dream, they might as well accept that it is never going to happen, no matter how many toys they toss from the three-wheeled liberal pram.
Time was once that football was a man’s game. The players all wore shorts that were far too long for them, had skinny legs and nobly knees. The football was a big brown lump of leather inflated by a blow-up pig’s bladder, a vegetarian’s nightmare. The players were rewarded with three and thruppence a match, and nobody fell over and cradled their leg unless they really had to. In the days of manly football the stands were full of working-class white men in long brown macs and flat caps. They did boo, even though politics was nowhere to be seen, but the only people taking a knee were players who got one accidently in the centre forwards. But still they played the game. “Come on now, play the white man!”, would come the roar from the crowds, and no one criticised because no one cared, back in those bad old real days.
Football! It has about as much appeal to me as keeping racing pigeons whilst ferreting during opening hours.
I think real socialists, the old kind, possibly loved it, but not so it would seem new socialists, as the writer of the Politico article decries football, “as a sport that has always lent itself well to toxic masculinity, a staunch ally of right-wing populism”.
What to do! What to do! Presumably the only way to deal with this ‘toxic masculinity’ is to shirt-lift it out of existence and, whilst you’re at it, for pity’s sake don’t forget to take that knee!
London Woke Up to Khan ~ one day it might just wake up!
Woke Watch PC UK! {Case 2}
Published: 11 May 2021
On 8 May 2021, London Woke up to a new dawn of nothing new ~ another 3 years of Sadiq Khan as mayor. Another 3 years for the usual suspects to contextualise his re-election as a great day for inclusivity ~ never mind the downside!
As predicted, London, which the last national census of 2011 revealed is 55.1% non-white British (one can only imagine what it is now!) chose to ignore Khan’s abysmal record of mayoralty and instead, following their woke instinct, ticked the box next to the man under whose mayoral tenure the capital city of England has earnt itself the dubious accolade of being Stab Fest City of the World.
During Khan’s 5-year reign, serious crime in London has spiralled out of control: deaths by stabbing are at an all-time high; rape prosecutions have dwindled: nobody feels safe upon the streets anymore.
Political activists such as Laurence Fox, himself a candidate for the London mayor’s office, called upon the Metropolitan Police to ‘free up officers to police streets not tweets’, a reference to the disproportional importance that the Metropolitan Police under Khan’s stewardship seems to put on their politically correct credentials at the expense of combatting crime in the real world.
An insight into the extent of Khan’s wokeyness can be gleaned from a Spectator article headlined, ‘Revealed: the cost of Sadiq Khan’s woke army’:
“The number of staff at City Hall has swelled by 45 per cent in just four years, rising from 817 in May 2016 to 1,190 in April 2020. Among these include no less than nine staff tasked with responsibilities for inclusion, diversity and fairness – a ratio of one per 132 total employees.
“Posts include a Programme Director for Economic Fairness who earns between £70,241 and £76,029”
And if that does not convince you, The Spectator article goes on to mention Khan’s planned ‘commission for diversity in the public realm’, an exercise in pure woke that is expected to cost the taxpayer more than £1 million.
London Woke Up to Khan
Among the tasks that Khan’s commission has been charged to oversee is a review of London’s statues and street names in capitulation to the Black Lives Matter riots last year (2020). Now that really is money well spent! Apart from “Goodbye Piccadilly, farewell Leicester Square”, how on earth will London’s cabbies cope with all those foreign ooboogoogoo street names and disposed heritage landmarks? And what chance do we have of selling Churchill’s statue to the yanks for as much as it costs to fund a diversity manager, now that Biden has been string-pulled into office?
At least this proposed scheme goes some way to explain why the black gentleman, Shaun Bailey, the Conservative candidate for mayor of London, failed to cut the mustard, that and the £1.5 million Khan disposed of on a New Year’s Eve firework display in which he chose to illuminate London’s skyline with the paramilitary BLM emblem of the raised, clenched fist. I think the word is ‘pandering’ or is it just ‘sick’? Perhaps, when you stop to consider that this act alone provides a clue as to why violent crime in London goes unchecked, a better word would be ‘sickening’. One million quid spent on renaming streets and replacing statues is a lot to shell out to blackmailers. The money would be better spent on training and equipping a viable London riot squad or used for funding a long overdue addition to the UK’s national curriculum called Respect for the Host Country.
The BBC (which the Mail Online informs us backed Khan’s inappropriate but self-revealing firework display [Tories slam Sadiq Khan’s £1.5million New Year’s Eve light show | Daily Mail Online) tells us that “the mayor [of London] officially acts as the police and crime commissioner for London, which means the mayor has a role in setting out how London is policed and staffed.” Oh dear!
“The mayor appoints the Metropolitan Police commissioner, who is in charge of the day-to-day running of the police and holds them to account.” Oh dear! Oh dear!
“Finally, the mayor also works with different agencies and government departments to make sure London is prepared for … terror attacks.” Oh dear! Oh dear! Oh dear!!! [London elections 2021: What can the mayor of London do? ~ BBC (accessed 9 May 2021)]
The Metropolitan Police commissioner whom Khan ‘holds to account’ is one Cressida Dick ~ she must have had a hard time of it when she was at school, but then she became a police officer.
So, London has an Asian mayor and a female Metropolitan Police commissioner called Cressida Dick ~ and you and I wonder why mean tweeters are more at risk of being brought to book than serious street crims. Although, in case you need to know, the Stay Out of Jail Free card for mean tweeters is liberal affiliation and espousing liberal causes. No matter what you say or how you say it, you are guaranteed immunity.
When you read that the role of London mayor has the largest personal mandate of any politician in the UK and that Khan is the recipient, that is scary stuff indeed. But, before we write the UK off completely, let us not forget that London is a state within a state, a woke liberal enclave surrounded by a far greater real British population than the one that has yet to evacuate London, and that this same majority living in the provinces excommunicated London many decades ago. I suppose the day will finally come when we can leave multicultural London to its renamed streets and statues of a different hue and simply move the seat of government somewhere else ~ like Scunthorpe, for example ~ then campaign for LEXIT, set up a hard border and encircle it with a moat.
Whatever our opinion is of Mr Khan and his mayoral iniquities, we must concede that his re-election is merely grist to the woke mill. Laurence Fox, actor, political activist, victim of wokism and a mayoral candidate, never believed he would oust Khan in the London election for mayor, but by standing against Khan in the knowledge that he never represented a serious threat to Khan’s fifedom let alone pull his mayoral chain and flush him away, he effectively proved his point, that London is unequivocally the UK’s ‘Cathedral of Woke’. And there, as they say, you have it.
The beauty of living in a democracy (the UK’s kind of democracy) is that whilst you hardly ever get what you want, you often get what you deserve. So, let that be a lesson to you, London! Pass the vest and let’s all hold hands …
A T-shirt featuring the mayor and police commissioner hugging, with the emblematic BLM fist superimposed on the back, can be purchased from The Commission for Diverting Your Attention in the Public Realm, Blackhall, West Monrassa SW1A (turn hard and extreme left at Churchill’s empty statue plinth). Also on sale, 2021 mayoralty stab vests and candle-lit vigil kits, plus the Handbook on Mean Tweets ~ how to be liberal and avoid conviction.
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UK Lockdown ~ a new board game to take your mind off lockdown[/caption]
