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 …’
We all know a lot less than we think we knew when all this started
Published: 29 December 2020
So, here we are, coming to the end of the first year of the Coronavirus Age and my first 9 months of being a coronavirus self-isolator. Time for reflection, or, as Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise the comedians used to say, “What do you think of it so far?”
In 1992 the alternative rock group REM produced a hit record the chorus of which went, “If you believed they put a man on the moon … If you believe there’s nothing up his sleeve, then nothing is cool.”
The question today is ‘Do you believe that lockdowns, mask-wearing, social distancing and a worldwide coercive mass vaccination programme using vaccines which scientists and public health officials admit have been fast-tracked into existence and therefore, one presumes, not as rigorously tested as they would normally be, are manifestations of global humanitarianism or a totalitarian globalist agenda in which economic reset and culling the world’s population are two primary objectives? And apropos of this, do you believe that the misinformation and disinformation at the centre of public confusion is just a byproduct of the gabbling information age in which we live, the bungling inefficiency of the ruling elites or a carefully and meticulously orchestrated web of deceit and deception.
Take my word for it: I don’t know.
But there is no doubt that the traction gained by conspiracy theories is beginning to make them look and sound a lot less infeasible than the obfuscating quagmire into which the official narrative, in its failure to provide conclusive answers or even address people’s fears, sinks a little every day.
So, this is where I come to my What Do You Make About That? section ~ where I air alternative views to those presented in the authoritative script and leave you to make your own minds up: ‘Trick or Treat’?
Coronavirus Truth or Trickery Trick or Treat?
In this video clip taken from the Brexit party’s Facebook page we learn that the Nightingale Hospital at the ExCel Centre in London has disappeared. It has been dismantled, which is a mite odd as we are told that London is supposedly locked down tight, sinking into the abyss of yet another onslaught of virus virulence and, moreover, threatened by a mutated strain of Covid-19.
This clip is taken from www.bitchute.com {link inactive as of 12/04/2022} an alternative social media platform to Facebook. It sees controversial investigative journalist Gemma O’Doherty ‘proving’ that proof exists that coronavirus does not ~ in the most official sense ~ and, it would seem, that the efficacy of every preventative measure and precaution taken to limit the spread of this ‘non-existent’ disease has no basis in fact.
Here is a Gemma O’Doherty’ quote: “As part of our legal action we had been demanding the evidence that this virus actually exists [as well as] evidence that lockdowns actually have any impact on the spread of viruses; that facemasks are safe, and do deter the spread of viruses – They don’t. No such studies exist; that social distancing is based in science – It isn’t. it’s made up; that contact tracing has any bearing on the spread of a virus – of course it doesn’t. This organisation here – is making it up as they go along.” — Gemma O’Doherty
The article which claims that the British government ‘know what they are doing’ ~ “One should be wary of caricaturing Boris Johnson and the rest of his cronies perpetrating this crime on the people as ‘Grinches’. They are nothing so amusing or cuddly. They are far, far worse than that, and make no mistake about it, they know full well what they are doing.” ~ is strangely reassuring for, from the average Britisher’s viewpoint, they don’t.
So, here we are, coming to the end of the first year of the Coronavirus Age. Whether you believe that what is happening in response to coronavirus is all part of a well-orchestrated plan by the usual neoliberal suspects or just another example of where are the world leaders we used to have when you need them, one thing is universally certain, we will all be glad to see the arse of 2020 well and truly booted out. But, as one life and soul of the party said to me recently, do you really think that things are going to get better in 2001?
That is a tough one to be sure. If 2020 was the year in which a new disease was unleashed on us, and the year when all respect and trust in authority and the media died, 2021 looks set to become the year in which Big Pharma faces its greatest test of veracity and confidence since Charles Forde & Co beguiled us into believing that Bile Beans cured everything.
In 1979, The Police, no, not those ones who are told to look the other way when statues are being defaced and to arrest people for not eating Christmas dinner in a small room papered with old copies of The Independent (They don’t produce a print version anymore, do they. I wonder what their readers do for toilet paper?) —The Police rock group released a record called ‘Message in a Bottle’. Perhaps, this is where the answer lies, and we will not know the truth for certain until it comes rolling in on the tide of time.
Mick Hart’s Christmas Message from Russia (Not to be confused with the Queen’s Speech)
Published: 23 December 2020
When I see and read about the mushrooming angst as my fellow Brits try to come to terms with the first coronavirus Christmas in the UK, I breathe a sigh of relief that I am out of it. Lockdowns, tiers, enforced mask wearing, has any of it been proven to work? Is it just too complicated? Is it really a neoliberal plot to ‘crash the economy’? Most people that I know in the UK are following the advice of Frank Sinatra and doing it their way.
Here, in Russia, Christmas is not celebrated on the 25 December, it is celebrated on 7 January, since the Russian Orthodox Church uses the old ‘Julian’ calendar for days of religious celebrations. Under the Soviet Union, Russia was banned for the greater part of the 20th century from publicly celebrating Christmas. Christmas trees were singled out for special treatment. They were banned until the mid-1930s, at which time they made a comeback but rebranded as New Year Trees. Nobody thought to ask the trees what their opinion was.
This will be my first Christmas abroad, and the first time that I do not have to worry about how I should be celebrating it. I say ‘should’ be celebrating it as over the years I have reached the conclusion that Christmas is something that you have to celebrate, that you have to enjoy, that there is an onus on you, an unwritten but widely reinforced prejudice that Christmas must be enjoyed at all costs!
It is not dissimilar to the rules of any other party. You know the scenario: you are sitting in the corner quietly enjoying a drink and some life and (R)soul of the party rushes up to you and says: “Come on, cheer up, it’s a party!”
Not that I am averse to Christmas. Looking back to my youth, up until about my 18th birthday, we had some wonderful family Christmases. Indeed, when I was young, and right up into my teens, I looked forward to it, and not just Christmas Day but the lead up as well.
Coronavirus & The Ghosts of Christmas Past
When we were children Christmas was celebrated in the grand Victorian style. It kicked off at primary school, with Christmas carols and discussions about the meaning of Christmas from our esteemed headmaster, Ben Rowbottom, a man who clearly enjoyed Christmas himself. We made Christmas cards out of bits of cardboard, waterpaint and tinsel, and sometimes an Advent calendar, which we could proudly then take home.
As a member of the church choir, I would have been warbling Christmas carols for at least a month before the Christmas festivities commenced. One year we also performed a nativity play in church, which was received with such accolades that it was impossible not to concede that I was a second Laurence Olivier in the making.
We would decorate the school, decorate our home, choose and buy a Christmas tree ~ a real one, of course ~ sit down night after night to write our Christmas cards and even look forward to the not insubstantial task of Christmas shopping. Ours was a large family, and when friends and friends’ families were factored into the present-buying equation, Christmas shopping became a laborious task, but in those days it was looked upon as a labour of love, which, indeed, it was.
One of the most exciting moments in the run-up to Christmas was going to the supermarket to buy the Christmas booze. As I have said, ours was a large family and over the Christmas period three or four family parties would be thrown. I had no problem with this: family parties were enjoyable, others, alas, were not. Besides, Christmas was the only time of the year my father really pushed the boat out; for the other 364 days the boat was on a tight rope and very secure in its mooring.
Everything was so simple and so enjoyable then, so much so that it was easy to believe that Father Christmas would continue to drop down the chimney, eat the mince pie and swig the glass of sherry left for him, before depositing our main presents around the tree in the front room and the rest in boxes around the bed, until I was 65. All we had to worry about in those days was trying to sound convincing when we opened the Christmas presents: “Just what I have always wanted! (Sorry? What did you say? I can’t hear you over the noise of this very loud Christmas jumper)”.
Although Father Christmas stopped plummeting down the chimney at about the time we started to drink in the village pub, at the age of 14, looking forward to Christmas carried on until and into my teen years. As a teenager, I would spend Christmas Day with the family and Boxing Day (appropriately named) with my Rushden friends, a dodgy salt-of-the-earth lot if ever there was one, drinking over the odds at The Welcome pub.
The landlord of The Welcome, Ernie, was a cheerful soul. I can see him now standing on the elevated platform behind the bar, which made him look twice as intimidating as he really was, peering at the occupants of the bench seats that ran along the window. Old people used to sit there, and it was fondly referred to as Death Row. Said Ernie, cynically, eyeing the people seated on Death Row. “I hope they enjoy their Christmas. I wouldn’t bother if I was them booking a summer holiday.”
Coronavirus & The Ghosts of Christmas Past
These were the heydays of Christmas for me, after which, I am sad to say, it was all downhill. Then I entered a period of truly lack-lustre Christmases and even more appalling New Year’s Eves. However, I did get a perverse pleasure out of the office Christmas parties whilst I was working in London. At this time, I was skiving in the publishing industry, living my life in my own soap opera.
Let me say immediately, however, that office Christmas parties are truly the pits. After an entire year incarcerated together on No-Love Island (the office), all those people, who on any other day cannot wait to get away from one another, are now concentrated in one room along with their oppressions, petty grievances, festering confrontations, envy, resentment and old scores to settle, together with unlimited supplies of the Demon Drink. It is bound to go horribly wrong. How could it not?
There are many tales that I could tell on this subject, but my favourite has to be the one when after throwing a lavish Christmas office party with no expense spared, ie our boss hired out the function rooms at London Zoo with pre-dinner drinks in the reptile house (no comment), the following day at work both my friend, who was the production manager, and I, were summoned to the boss’ office, wished a cheery Happy New Year and then peremptorily sacked. My friend’s behaviour at the Christmas party had not gone down too well, particularly when the paranoid management thought that he was reaching into his inside jacket pocket for a gun when in fact he was about to submit his written resignation. He always did like a drama!
All’s well that ends badly, as they should say, and it was good, in hindsight, that this door slammed shut. Sometimes, especially in the early days of your career, you need to dust the boot marks off the arse of your pants to find that new direction.
Coronavirus & The Ghosts of Christmas Past
In later years, my Christmases followed the downhill trend. I never had much time for New Year’s Eve in England. It is a cattle market.
Once, whilst in London, I went out on New Year’s Eve day, and started drinking early in the pubs around Borough Market, the idea being that I would have had enough by six o’clock, would go home, crash out and miss the midnight hullabaloo. All went well at first. I was in bed before midnight as planned, but at midnight sharp a firework display at the Working Men’s Club at the rear of our house woke me up. The daytime booze had worn off, and I was unable to get back to sleep until five o’clock in the morning: Bah Humbug & Bugger!
Fast forward to the early 20s of the 21st century. My wife had been invited to go to Paris for Christmas, and I did not want to go. I tried to explain to her that the Paris that she was dreaming off, the Paris of high culture, of little Parisian cafés and atmospheric nightclubs with cabaret and table service had been sentenced to death by Adolf; it limped on into the 1960s and had since been swept away by the EU’s culture-destroying multicult tsunami. In short, the Paris of the past was no more. Like many other capital cities in the western world, it had been stripped of its heritage character and consigned to a predictable, unpleasant and ironic homogeneity. My wife learnt the hard way and wished she had never gone.
Nevertheless, off she went leaving me to spend Christmas Day alone (nice thing to do to your husband, isn’t it!). I spent it sitting in our antique shop office, watching through the security cameras as families and friends rolled up at our neighbour’s for Christmas. It was a surreal experience, made more so by the beans on toast I had for Christmas lunch. It felt as if the world was having a Christmas party and I had not been invited. In a word, it was blissful.
This time last year I was in England, staying with a friend. It was just the two of us. Christmas day brought brilliant sunshine. We went to the pub. The streets were deserted and even without coronavirus constraints the Banker’s Draft in Bedford was exceedingly quiet.
Mick Hart, Christmas Day 2019 in the Banker’s Draft, Bedford, wondering whether he had travelled forward in time to Christmas 2020?
The pub shut promptly at two o’clock, and the only people on Bedford’s High Street were two young Polish workers. I knew that look and that feeling: They had obviously had a damned good drinking session the night before, were well hungover and in need of a fix.
When they asked us which pubs were open, this was a tough one. After all, this was England, the land of childlike opening hours. It had not been that long ago when we had been led to believe that British pubs would be adopting continental opening hours. Pubs, we had been told, would be open all day and, as a result, the country would sink into the abyss of chronic alcoholism, anti-social behaviour and unspeakable depravity. It never happened, possibly because with or without the extension to the licensing laws, it already had.
The pub we had just exited from was on the verge of closing for the day, and the Polish lads had posed us a difficult question, but then good old Wetherspoons sprang into my mind, and the Polish lads were saved.
Bedford High Street, Christmas Day, 2019. Was this a rehearsal for this year’s Christmas lockdown?
My friend and I walked down to the Embankment in the hope that there might be some life there, but this wonderful old pub/hotel was as dark as Kipling’s chocolate cake, so there was nothing left to do but return to my friend’s house for a makeshift Christmas lunch. Luckily, our last bid gambit paid off. The nearby Ship was open, and open until 5pm.
Embankment Hotel, Bedford (2019).
I must confess that, with the exception of when I was young, Christmas has always been problematic for me. I’m not a Knees-up Mother Brown type, loathe loud, vulgar and jostling pubs and avoid parties like the plague.
In the run up to Christmas, the UK becomes a truly awful place. The pubs are packed, usually with a surfeit of people who, thankfully, you never see at any other time of the year. Drunken hysteria sets in, anti-social behaviour rockets, every street corner has a pool of vomit on it and all sense of dignity and social etiquette ~ what is left of it ~ runs for cover. I have never been able to fathom whether this Bedlam, this parody of a Victorian lunatic asylum, is the product of mass excitement leading into Christmas Day or mass despair as the anti-climax approaches. There is little doubt, however, that the hysteria stems from 12 months of wage-slave institutionalisation. At the end of the year, those who have slaved to make money for their bosses are given a two-week holiday to spend the money that they have managed to save in a bumper spending spree that will line the pockets of a privileged few. What does it matter if the masses all drink more, too much, and what is a bit of bad behaviour as long as it oils their purses and wallets and keeps those Christmas tills jangling!
This year even the Bah Humbugs have been deprived of their anti-pleasure. By all that is written and read, this year Brits face a Christmas so monstrous, so unbelievably harsh that even Scrooge himself would welcome the ghost of Christmas Past.
I know that you won’t believe this, but I am often accused of being one of that fraternity who regards half a glass of beer as being half empty and not half full, but I would argue otherwise. This festive season, for example, with its tiers, lockdowns, bubbles, restrictions, limitations … is truly a Christmas with a difference. It is the first Christmas of its kind, and may we hopefully say the last, so just try to look at it this way: You are taking part in history. You are living through an event which will be a source of nostalgic fascination and intellectual examination by generations to come. You are a living piece of history about which someone, somewhere out there in the future even now beyond your grave is already examining, re-examining and writing about ‘that difficult time’, the 2020s. They are digging for the truth and History will judge …
Thus, this is not just any old Christmas — it is the contentious coronavirus Christmas of the Year of Our Lord 2020. And when you think of it like this, somehow it seems to put everything clearly into perspective …
Feature image: ‘Marley’s Ghost’ in the Public Domain [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%27Scrooge_and_the_Ghost_of_Marley%27_by_Arthur_Rackham.jpg] {Link inactive as at 12/04/2022]
As they would say in Northamptonshire, Priti Patel has got them frit!
The Good News, The Bad News
Published: 9 December 2020 ~ So Frightened of Priti Patel
After almost a year of coronavirus bad news, it is inspiring to know that come 31 December the transition period will be over and we will be more out of the European Union than we felt we were back in January 2020. So, the Good News is, ‘We will be out of the European Union’.
And the Bad News is that we will not be as out of the European Union as most of us who voted to be want to be.
I think we can safely say that 99.9% (and the rest) of those who voted to leave the EU did so because they wanted an end to open borders, free movement, and to ensure that the implementation of stricter immigration rules and a fast-track system for the removal of illegal migrants is no longer hamstrung by the politically motivated agenda of the ECHU (European Court of Horribly-twisted Rights).
It would appear, however, that the EU has successfully bullied (let’s use a word that they are familiar with) the UK establishment into retaining the final say on movement and immigration by shackling the UK to the European Convention on Human Rights.
Amusingly, how they have manoeuvred the British government into this checkmate situation is by threatening to remove access to shared intelligence on criminals. Why is this amusing? Well, everybody knows that the European Court of Human Rights is the de facto enforcement arm of the EU’s neoliberal migration policy, the court that continually overrules attempts by the UK and other hapless members of the European Union to block and legally deport unwanted, illegal migrants, including unwanted criminal migrants. So, it would appear that the UK government has signed up for intelligence sharing on criminals for the dubious benefit of knowing who they are but not being able to do very much about it.
Here is a quote, verbatim, unedited by me, which appeared recently in the comments section of one of the mainstream UK online news feeds:
The ECHR has no rights outside of the EU. It is just yet another court set up by the EU and fully enshrined into UK law by that corrupt Tony Bliar. As for the rule of law, the EU have never ever followed the rule of law, the only rule of law they follow is what Merkel dictates. Johnson should have totally scrapped the HR laws in the UK, it just gives these corrupt lawyers and judges that practice HR laws and twist them in favour of the criminal a further excuse to shaft the UK government. It is all this human rights rubbish that is preventing all these illegal immigrants and the bogus asylum seekers from being deported.
As Johnson has not got the backbone to scrap the HR laws completely and caved into the political dictatorship, then I feel that his days are numbered. There are many Tory MP’s that will be absolutely fuming of not only caving into the EU, but because it is on Human Rights. What about the taxpayers human rights, where we have to keep paying more and more taxes to keep these waste of space peers, corrupt judiciary and all these bogus asylum seekers and illegal immigrants very comfortable. Do our human rights not matter? I think Boris needs to start looking for another job, this is the start of the big cave-in and the EU are taking the pee out of us. Johnson is showing what a weak has been he is.
This comment is worth repeating again:
HR laws in the UK … just give the corrupt lawyers and judges that practice HR laws and twist them in favour of the criminal a further excuse to shaft the UK government. It is all this human rights rubbish that is preventing all these illegal immigrants and the bogus asylum seekers from being deported.
“Now look here, that’s just not true, innit”
Headlines from The Sun, 4 December 2020:
‘Priti Patel blasts lefty lawyers and ‘do-gooding’ celebs for keeping Jamaican killers & rapists in UK’
This report tells how at the last minute when 23 criminals originally from Jamaica where about to be deported, a last-minute legal challenge blocked the Home Secretary from kicking the undesirables out.
To quote The Sun1: “More than 60 MPs, mostly from the Labour Party, had urged Priti Patel to abandon the flight, saying of those being deported: ‘Britain is their home.’ And Labour backbencher Kim Johnson described the deportation as ‘obscene and irresponsible’.” Well, she would, wouldn’t she, because she’s a member of the political party that Cosets the Perpetrator, Blames the State, and Forgets the Victim.
The legal challenge that has been launched in order to ensure that these criminals, some of them rapists and murderers, can remain in the UK is of course underpinned by human rights laws (yawn, aren’t they all).
To quote The Sun:
“A large proportion submitted legal challenges, with new claims including human rights appeals and allegations that the criminals had been victims of modern slavery.”
You might ask yourself, on reading the article, why 82 ‘celebs’ ‘signed an open letter demanding the flight did not take off’. You might also ask yourself, in reflection on Brexit, why the majority of celebs threw their monied status behind the Remain camp. And you might arrive at the right conclusion that most celebs by virtue of their wealth consider themselves to be safe, secure in their Ivorine-towers, removed from what is happening to ordinary Brits on the UK’s increasingly violent streets. And you might want to remind them about lessons in history, that when society breaks down through mob violence, national lawlessness, coups and revolutions the money and the status that protects them during ‘peaceful times’, times of law and order, then become entrapments of their own destruction.
But we are not here to talk about poetic justice. We are here to consider the Good News and Bad News.
And the Good News is that we have Priti Patel ~ a tough, no-nonsense Home Secretary, who is determined not to be cowed by a politically correct oriented neoliberal elite.
Although it goes without saying that the liberal establishment, and its vampire media, are hovering bat like over everything Priti Patel says and does, it certainly helps from a purely PC perspective that she is not white English and male but the daughter of Asian shopkeepers, who were taken in by the UK after Idi Amin, the Uganda dictator, expelled them.
And the Bad News … Her courage, veracity and Eliot Ness-style incorruptibility, her unwillingness to cop out under duress or virtue-signalling inducement, has placed her in the cross hairs of those who pull the strings, hurling her into the proud position of PC Enemy Number 1.
But the Good News is …. The more adverse publicity she receives the more they reveal who they are and what they are really up to! The neoliberal gloves are flying off this year faster than bog rolls from supermarket shelves in a panic-buying pandemic, not because they want or can stomach an open fight but because desperate people from imploding ideologies need to feel as it all slips away from them that there is something left to cling on to.
As it was for Donald Trump, watch out for those sharpened knife-headlines in the latest instalment of The Fear of Priti Patel!
Watson: The EU have shared their criminal intelligence, its Jack the Ripper from Obogobadamland! Holmes: There’s no point in unmasking him. The liberal-lefties & their European Court of Human Rights will only rule that he can stay! [* see picture credit}
Published: 5 December 2020 ~ Will Boris’ Bubble be Pricked this Christmas?
Back in the UK, meaning England, as no one has the foggiest what’s happening the other side of Hadrian’s Wall this Christmas, although it may involve whisky drinking and wearing a kilt ~ ask the Bubbling Jock ~ the dissent over bubbles that has been bubbling just below the surface ~ hubble bubble trolls and trouble! ~ and looked as if it would bubble over into a row the size of the South Sea Bubble has been blown away by bubbly Boris’ double bubble of allowing bubbles from one household to get together with other bubbles in other households, thus removing the risk of getting bubbled by the neighbours ~ a process known as bubbled and squeak ~ meaning that you will not have to think of ways of beating the bubblewrap for bubbling about at home with other people’s bubbles. The bubbliness of this is that depending on the size of your house, you will be able to have as many bubblechums in it as you like, even big bubblies with enormous bubblegums, and, if it is that kind of Christmas party, blow bubbles to your hearts content. Don’t mention the bubble car and the air bubble in its tyre! What does this mean, well it means that we will all be able to bubble off this Christmas, even support bubbles, those wearing stays and trusses, instead of sitting lonely at home eating mounds of bubbles sprouts and blowing bubbles in the bath. You will be able to eat more, drink more, get sloshed more and afterwards, with Alka Seltzer and Andrews Liver Salts bubbling up your glass, be prepared for the bubble to burst in 2021.
Whether this is good news for people in the UK, we are not altogether sure, but it is very good news if you happen to be a bubble or feel that you have been trapped inside a bubble for the last 10 months due to contradictory coronavirus cluelessness from bureaucratic bubbleheads.
Oh, and by the way, Happy Christmas!
Will Boris’ Bubble be Pricked this Christmas?Olga getting the support she needs from a Bubble Car.
Surely, the irony cannot have escaped anybody’s attention, that is to say the date on which Boris Johnson proposes to submit England to a new round of severe lockdown restrictions. When? November the 5th. Talk about pissing on your fireworks! Let’s hope that Guy Fawkes doesn’t own a time machine!
For me, personally, the sudden but by no means unexpected surge in coronavirus cases has solved one puzzle. It has ended my indecisiveness as to whether or not I should change the title of one of my post series from ‘self-isolation’ to ‘social distancing’.
Would I be resident in the UK, the choice would no longer be mine to make. The new title would be lockdown. But here, in Kaliningrad, Russia, no such lockdown exists and, as at the time of writing, there is no intimation of one being implemented sometime soon.
Nevertheless, this seemingly clear-cut situation compared to that in the UK has done nothing to ease the difference in opinion that persists between myself and my friend and sparring partner, Ginger Cat Murr, about how we approach life now that coronavirus is once again in the ascendancy.
The difference is a nuanced one. Both of us are batting from the same wicket when it comes to lockdown. We share the belief that any benefits derived from such draconian measures, and there aren’t any, at least proven ones, are offset by the detrimental psychological impact that lockdown is having in its breakdown and fragmentation of normal human relationships ~ proof of which there is plenty.
We both believe, therefore, that the role of those in authority should be to guide and not dictate, and that the decision to what extent he or she decides to isolate themselves should be a matter of individual choice.
Admittedly, at the outset of coronavirus, earlier this year, I fully supported lockdown, as it was, without doubt, a sensible precaution to take as we travelled into the unknown. But that was then and now is now. In moving on we would do well to consider the almost 100-year-old maxim: adapt, adopt and improve.
Thus, as much as I balk against using such media catchphrases as New Normal, if it has taught us anything it is that Covid-19 is here to stay and that there is not only no quick fix but at the moment no fix, full stop.
Less than three months ago, the media was awash with vaccine-race stories, the implication being that at any moment the Lone Ranger would be riding on down to rescue us from Black Hat Corona. Now, we are told that although the vaccine, or myriad vaccines, are on course and will be rolled out soon, there is no silver bullet. It makes you think that someone should be given the bullet, and that it would not be a bad thing if whoever it is fired at it should ricochet a while throughout the world of science and the media.
That being as it should, back to our argument; I mean the debate between Ginger Cat Murr and myself on the pros and cons of lockdown.
Where our opinions diverge is that whilst we are both anti-enforced lockdowners, I have no problem at this point in time of entertaining a limited period of house arrest in order, if it works, to take pressure off the NHS and to give the science community and pharmaceutical companies time to test, develop, produce and distribute the once-vaunted vaccines/drugs, even if, as realists suggest, the end result will be less of a precision hit as we have been led to believe and more like the discharge from a sawn-off shotgun. Well, better hit and miss than no hit at all.
Ginger Cat Murr, on the other hand, sticks like glue to the mantra that the policy should be to protect the vulnerable as best we can and allow the rest, those who do not fit into this category, the freedom and intelligence of individual choice, taking up the logic cudgel that shutting some venues, like pubs and restaurants, whilst keeping other places open is a bit like being in first gear and reverse at the same time. In other words, Ginger Cat Murr is firmly behind the Great Barrington Declaration.
England Lockdown Déjà Vu Scare
In the UK, the debate appears to be going the way Brexit went. The country is becoming polarised into two distinct camps: those that want and welcome lockdown and those that don’t. And here there is a funny (as in bizarre) thing happening. Take a look at these headlines from the UK’s online media:
The Independent [2 November 2020] ~ ‘We need better leadership to beat the virus – not more of Boris Johnson’s false promises’
The Guardian [2 November 2020] ~ ‘The Guardian view on a second lockdown: what took him so long?’
The Independent [1 November 2020] ~ ‘This lockdown is better late than never, but it would have been even better in September’
Making allowances for the usual, and inevitable, ‘party political broadcast on behalf of …’ does it appear to you that it is primarily the liberal left who are rooting for lockdown? If so, how strange? I would have thought that the very word ‘lockdown’ would be sufficient to ignite cries of totalitarian agenda from the usual suspects, and that any government, but particularly a Tory government, advocating such policies would be condemned out of hand for launching an assault against our sacred ‘uman rights! But then, as we all know, liberalism and rationale …?
England Lockdown Déjà Vu Scare
The insult-to-injury kernel of this nut, the lockdown debate, not partisan politics, and what I would hazard a guess will prove to be the enduring symbol of early 21st century angst, by which history will judge our governments, scientists and media, has to be the face mask.
Who would have thought, before coronavirus came along, that this little piece of material slapped across your face would be such a bone of contention? It alone defines the division between those who do as they are told and those who do otherwise? But it represents more than that, a great deal more.
The mask symbolises the confused messages that have launched a thousand conspiracy theories; obfuscated the issue like no other; completely and totally undermined our trust, not only in politicians but also, and more importantly, in the credibility of our scientists, whose case for and against mask wearing veers from claims that masks can trap the virus to masks are perfectly useless, with the disturbing caveat that in the worst case scenario the improper use of masks can aid and abet viral transmission.
What is the proper way of using and wearing a mask? Don’t ask, because once you have the answer you will realise that unless you are a walking ‘laboratory condition’ living in a hermitically sealed sterile environment, your chances of success are about as odds-on as winning the lottery.
Do I personally wear a mask? Don’t we all? [Leonard Cohen: “And if you want another kind of love, I’ll wear a mask for you.”] Well, that all depends, of course, on what I am doing and where I am. But in the ongoing struggle against coronavirus, I do just as much as the rules necessitate, albeit without conviction (in both senses!)
To end on a more personal note, I must confess that I do derive a certain degree of amusement from observing the relationships between individuals and their masks.
Whilst there are some people whose masks seem to have become a sort of never-to-be-removed fungus that they have assiduously adhered to their mug, others do seem to have adopted a loose, indeed very loose, definition of what mask-wearing entails and, by default, what they expect to achieve by it. The best example of this are those that plaster their masks about their mouth but have their noses hanging out, as if the proboscis during this particular pandemic has ceased to play any meaningful part in the respiratory process.
I remember seeing something on Facebook that compared wearing a mask in this way to the unlikely practice of men wearing their pants with their willy over the waistband. (I’m sorry? Have you something you wish to confess to, comrade?)
It would appear that coronavirus mask-wearing has led some of us to completely reinvent our faculty for breathing; why else would anyone wear their mask on their chin or tuck it into their throat as if it is a cravat? And what of those naughty people who in spite of ‘rules are rules’ deliberately flout them and do not wear a mask. Are they rebels? Selfish anti-social miscreants? People who have a justifiable grievance against mask-wearing, ie they believe that they facilitate viral transmission rather than prevent, or cannot wear a mask for medical reasons? Or, in the last analysis, could they be mask wearers of an unconventional kind, ie wearing a mask but not on their face!
Ask yourself this question: Every time you see someone without a mask, is he or she really maskless or have they got one secreted about their person, wearing it in the most unlikely of places? So far, I have not seen any authoritarian rules about how to wear your mask, only that you must wear one! So, where and how you wear it is open to interpretation. And there are cases, of course, where people should be exempt. Take The Invisible Man, for example, there would be as much logic in him wearing a face mask as, er, repetitive bouts of lockdown?
Updated: 12 March 2022 | Published: 23 October 2020
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.
UNLESS you are a Russian oligarch, and reading this humble blog you most likely are not, moving to the UK is not a decision that should be taken lightly*. As with emigrating anywhere, there is a number of important considerations to chew over, especially with regard to where you would want to live, where you can afford to live, and where you can afford to live and most definitely would not want to live unless you are very adventurous or there is something wrong with your head.
In this article, we will focus purely on where you most likely want to live and the cost of living there.
Russians Moving to London: Costs / Jump to Section
Most Russians, when moving to the UK, understandably head for London for three reasons: it is where the money is, the action is and it is probably the only place in the UK that you know very much about.
Let us assume then that the majority of you who are heading to the UK optionally will invariably have your sites fixed on London, unless, of course, you are being sent to the UK on a company relocation scheme, in which case the choice may not be yours.
For the sake of argument, this article will suppose the former, that you are moving on your own volition, are in it for the money and that as you know little or nothing about the UK, London is your destination: you know that the Queen lives there, that the buses are red, the cabs black and that there is an awful lot of nightlife in the West End.
What you are probably not aware of is that London, albeit the capital city of the UK, the seat of government and centre of finance, is, in terms of attitudes, political prejudices, behaviour and mindset, the least representative place of the UK as a whole. In fact, London, economically, socio-politically and demographically, is so removed and distant from the rest of the UK that if it took off tomorrow and landed somewhere on Mars, not a lot of people would be surprised and some might not even miss it.
As the celebrated English comedian John Cleese stated, London is no longer an English city. It is claimed that white ethnic Britain’s are now a minority ethnic group in London. The division is reinforced further when you consider the fact that most London boroughs voted to remain in the EU in contradiction of the socio-political bias of the rest of the country, which mostly ran in favour of Brexit.
All things considered, the best way to consider London in its relationship to England and the UK in general is as a state within a state.
It thus follows that your experience of UK life, of living in London, will be an entirely different one than if you were to reside, say, in Scunthorpe. Where? Precisely!
Thus, for the purpose of this article, I have intentionally dealt with London and England as two separate entities. Why? Because they are.
I have also narrowed the geographical scope to include only London and England, as I have never been to Ireland, visited Scotland once on a flying visit and know very little of Wales, except for its shape on the map. So, let’s stick to what we know.
Russians Moving to London: Costs (Photo credit: George Hodan / publicdomainpictures.net; https://www.freeimg.net/photo/1484282/bank-broken-break-pig)
Russians Moving to London: Costs ~ Money
In this post we will consider that all important criterion, ‘Money’, taking into account the cost of renting or buying a flat/house and the cost of living when living in the capital, and how much you will need to earn to live comfortably. I know that there are guides out there, viz ‘How to holiday/live in London on a budget’. Forget them. If you are visiting London and, more importantly, planning to live and work there, you will want to enjoy the experience, and for this you will need money. If you want England on a budget, forget London and try somewhere else, like Wellingborough instead.
By far the greatest drain on your financial resources on moving to London will be the cost of accommodation. Is it expensive? No. It is extortionate. Whether renting or buying, you can expect to rob yourself of at least one-third of your monthly wage just in providing yourself with a roof over your head.
Let’s look at renting first, and some of those jolly statistics.
Russians Moving to London: Costs ~ Renting property in London
The amount you are willing to spend, or can afford to spend on renting, will determine the nature of the accommodation you rent and its location. Obviously, the financial outlay for a bedsit (everything sandwiched into one room), a house share (who’s nicked my milk from the fridge?), a self-contained flat or a whole house to yourself will attract different tariffs, as will where you live, ie renting a self-contained flat in the City will cost significantly more than, say, one in Brixton (you hope!).
Before starting out, remember that in addition to one month’s rent in advance and a whacking great deposit, you are going to need references, usually at least a character reference, ie from someone senior in the company where you work and from your bank.
Invostepedia.com1, states that “Housing costs are normally one of, if not the, largest expense in any budget. This is particularly true in London.”
It goes on to exemplify that a two-bedroom flat in the centre of London will set you back, on average, $2500 per month. The article is obviously addressing the American market, but at the time of writing this translates into approximately £1940, give or take a few pence. The same article goes on to say that outside of the centre, the cost of accommodation falls, and uses the expression to as “low as $1,400 dollars per month” ~ which in my book is still a substantially high £1083 per month ~ remember, we are talking about a two-bedroom flat, not a family residence.
Metro.co.uk2 tells us that the cheapest average rent to be found is in the Upper Edmonton district, and says that in the second quarter of 2020 the average rent was £538 a month. Now, at first sight, this seems to fare well with rented accommodation in other parts of the UK, until you read on and find that for £538 a month you get a room in a shared house (please, turn that music down!!)
The same article cites the St Paul’s area (EC4) as being the most expensive to rent at £1,316 per month, followed by South Kensington/Knightsbridge at £1,110 per month. How’s that for a room in a shared house! What did you say, where is Wellingborough? Don’t ask, or I might just tell you!
So, what will it cost you to rent a two-bedroom flat in the cheapest part of London ~ let’s forget about Knightsbridge!
According to comparemymove.com3 you can rent yourself a two-bedroom flat in Bexley for £1,152 a month.
So what is Bexley like. According to finder.com4 “The borough with the second-highest crime rate increase is Bexley, with an average increase of 7% over the last six years. Despite the increase in the number of crimes, Bexley still has a low number of crimes compared to other boroughs.” [article updated Aug 18, 2020]
Make of that what you will, but, from a purely economic point of view, remember that high-crime rates areas are reflected in the price for home insurance.
Thus, the cost of the area in which you choose or, indeed, can afford to live should not only be measured in £££s. The website ilivehere.co.uk5 has this to say about Bexley: “There were a total of 319 street level crime incidents in Bexley in August 2020. The largest category was Anti-Social Behaviour, followed by Violent Crime.”
So much for renting a flat in London. What about buying a home?
Russians Moving to London: Costs ~ Buying a property in London
The most desirable, and therefore the most expensive, boroughs in London are continually cited as Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster and Camden. Kensington and Chelsea appear to be in the lead as a place where most people cannot afford to live, with the price of an average home now in excess of £1.5 million6.
Conversely, the cheapest borough in London is said to be Woolwich, with the average price of a house around £322, 0007. (Presumably a three-bedroom house?)7.
What’s Woolwich like? I could tell you, as I lived nearby when I first moved to London, but that was quite some time ago ~ perhaps it has improved?
If you are looking to buy a house in London on a mortgage basis, which you would only be able to do after a rigorous assessment of your means to support that mortgage, including your credit rating, how much cash will you have to put down?
The lowest down-payment that you can expect to make is 5% of the mortgage loan, but 15% is considered to be a more reasonable figure. The simplest way of approaching the issue is to bear in mind that the larger the deposit you are able to afford the more certain you can be of obtaining a mortgage and the more favourable the interest rates will be8.
There are various ‘schemes’ to assist you in purchasing a home in London, such as the appropriately named London Help to Buy scheme, Shared Ownership, Rent to Buy, First Dibs for Londoners and the Starter Homes Initiative. But in the end, it all comes down to £££££££. This article by which.co.uk9 should either help you or help to put you off. In here, you will also learn about the option and pitfalls of buying a property not too far from London and commuting into the city each day. The upside is that you will get more property for your money and the mortgage is likely to be significantly less; and the downside? Any advantages that you are likely to accrue from a lower property purchase price, and therefore a lower mortgage, will, given the inflated cost of rail travel, be lost on your monthly travel fare. Drive into London? Only if you are a stress junky, like sitting in traffic and have no qualms about paying for those out-of-this-world parking fees, oh, and don’t forget the congestion charges!
For the time being, however, let us hypothesise that you have found a place to call home, have stumped up the down-payment and acquired a mortgage. The next thing on the money hit list is council tax.
Russians Moving to London: Costs ~ London council tax
Council tax is a tax levied on domestic property, in other words a tax on your home (and any other domestic properties that you may own). It is demanded by and paid to your local council, the administrative body for the area where your property is located. It is said that the revenue collected, which is paid to the council in monthly instalments, usually spread over a 10-month period for each year, is used to finance local services, such as schools, rubbish collection, road maintenance, street lighting and so on. That is all well and good, but rent and mortgage payments aside, or included, council tax takes a not inconsiderable chunk out of your monthly pay packet.
In London, every property is allocated a council tax band according to the property’s capital value. There are 8 bands in all, identified alphabetically from A to H, with ‘A’ being the lowest rated band and ‘H’ the highest.
In Barking and Dagenham, for example, if your property is valued as falling within the ‘A’ band, you can expect to pay £1,077.91 a year, and if it should fall in the ‘H’ band, a whopping great £3,233.74 a year10,11 .
By comparison, in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea, if your property has been evaluated as a Band A property, you will be charged £824.55 a year and for Band H, 2,473.76 per year12.
But, wait a moment, isn’t Kensington & Chelsea supposed to be one of the most expensive boroughs in London in which to buy and rent a property? Yes. You’ve tumbled it ~ council tax just does not make sense. To understand it properly, you need to know all about ‘stealth taxes’13?
The irony is, of course, that if your property falls into Band H in Kensington and Chelsea, your £2,473.76 charge is not likely to worry you too much, as you would not be living there if you did not have the means to do so, whereas the £3,233.74 for a Band H property in Barking and Dagenham would no doubt be seen as an horrendous expense, wherever you live ~ never mind Barking and Dagenham!
Suspect you are being ripped off? Take heart, it’s the name of the boat we all are in.
If you think this ‘extra mortgage’ is bad, don’t ~ it gets worse. Next on the wage-packet mugging list comes your monthly or quarterly utility bills.
Russians Moving to London: Costs ~ Utility bills & living expenses
According to bystored.com, the average monthly cost for gas, electricity and water is about £160, so £1920 a year14. If you need Wi-Fi, then you should factor in an additional £20–£40 per month. In fact, utility bills are quite competitive in London compared to other areas in the UK ~ which is a blessing, because in some areas they are crippling.
And now we come to the nitty-gritty: everyday living expenses.
How much will I spend each month whilst living in London on everyday necessities, such as food and little luxuries, that is on going out for a drink or a meal? How long is a piece of string?
However long that piece of string is, you do not want to throttle yourself with it. Your monthly expenditure all depends, of course, on your habits and expectations. How much you eat, where you eat, how much booze you put away, do you like to go clubbing or are you a sit at home type ~ which you might have to be, if you have not got the ackers!
There are many websites out there that will give you a blow-by-blow account of how much specific things cost, from food prices to entertainment, two of which you will find in the reference section at the end of this article. And although London is one of the most extortionate cities in the world today, like anywhere else, you can budget yourself.
But, to give you a taster, so to speak, let us confront the most important things first. The average price of a pint of beer in a public house in London is around £4.60, but beware! ~ in some swanky eating and drinking places you can get really ripped off and pay as much as £22 a pint!
Russians Moving to London: Costs ~ Cost of travel around London
One of the greatest drains on your everyday resources is the dreaded cost of travel. Driving around London is a mugs game. You simply cannot get anywhere quickly and the difficulty of finding convenient parking is as ridiculous as the cost. Oh, and do not forget that nice Mr Sadiq Khan’s save-the-planet congestion charges!
It is generally agreed that the cheapest way to zip around London is to purchase an Oyster card. This will allow you to keep costs down at the same time as giving you travel access to all parts of London, whether you are travelling on the Underground, using the Docklands Light Railway (DLR), by overground rail, some river boats and on London’s buses.
To give you some idea of what you will have to fork out for an Oyster card covering Zones 1–6 in London that can be used at any time, it will cost you £12.80 per day15.
How much do I need to earn to live in London?
So, in conclusion, the all-important question is, how much do you need to earn before tax to live comfortably in London? If you trawl the internet on the basis of this question you will find the accumulative answer to be about £50,000 a year before tax. Of course, the definition of ‘living comfortably’ is a subjective one, and at the end of the day ~ at the end of everyday ~ it all depends upon what you call living and the lifestyle you aspire to.
Summary about cost of living inLondon, United Kingdom: Source of data highlighted below: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/London {acessed: 23/10/2020}
Four-person family monthly costs: 295,573.04руб (2,975.49£) without rent (using our estimator). A single person monthly costs: 83,347.81руб (839.05£) without rent. Cost of living index in London is 173.46% higher than in Kaliningrad. Rent in London is, on average, 899.30% higher than in Kaliningrad. Cost of living rank 41st out of 573 cities in the world. London has a cost of living index of 82.60.
*I should not have to say it, but I will. This series of articles is based upon the ever diminishing hope that some day soon our Covid-infected world will assume some sort of acceptable normalcy. Obviously, given the catastrophic Covid situation in London, and the UK in general, at the time of writing, any right-minded person would be better off avoiding it. For the time being, Robinson Crusoe and the lonely guy orbiting the Earth in a space station would seem to have it all! But, as they say, Hope dies last!
Stay tuned for my next post on moving to the UK, as distinct from moving to London.
Additionalreferences Comprehensive tabulated data on cost of living in London. No publishing date, but it appears to be current! [accessed: 23/10/2020] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/London
Pubs and homes made illegal in four new coronavirus regions including Beatlesville
Health Secretry Mel Hotcock announced emergency lockdown changes for Beatlesville, Whoreington, Hilterpool and Mindlessborough as loss of common sense continues to surge
Health Secretry Mel Hotcock announced today that if you don’t live together, then you can’t mix together. From one minute past half-past three today, give or take thirty seconds, non-mixing, other than between consenting mixers in the same home, will be legally banned from mixing ~ which includes cakes and cement ~ in private homes, private gardens or indoor venues in the afore-named regions. Mixing in communal areas, on street corners, in air balloons, on the side of the Great North Road, or anywhere else where the police can’t catch you and fine you 200 quid, has been cited as a jolly good alternative to everyone moving in together and mixing willy-nilly.
Beatlesville and Whoreington already have laws in place to prevent people meeting in private homes, which has led to a lot of crowded doorsteps, and there is strict guidance about meeting in pubs and restaurants, although this has not affected the ‘lonely guy’ who sits on his own in the corner.
So, how does it work?
Do you really expect an answer?!
Offenders face £200 on-the-spot fines, which is bad news for exhibitionists who like to keep their curtains open. However, people who share a bubble car or have childcare needs are exempt, as are schools and workplaces, as it has been scientifically proven that coronavirus only targets non-home mixers and people in pubs and restaurants in groups of more than six.
However, mixing in parks or beer gardens, whilst breaking guidance but not the law, is acceptable, as long as there is only six of you. What to do with the seventh is not clear but will suit some who are having an affair and want to get rid of the wife or return to those good old days at school where bullying by exclusion is a veritable institution. No government advice has been forthcoming about getting into beer gardens if going to pubs is made illegal, but by parachute is not illegal providing you drop in no more than six at a time. Anymore will break guidance rules but not necessarily the law.
Not attending sports matches is recommended, and no more than six players are allowed on the field at any one time, providing that they are living together and observing the one-metre distancing rule. {The FA, RFU and England and Wales Cricket Board were all available for comment, but we simply dare not publish what they had to say. Here is a hint: the FA said FA, the RFU said FU and the England and Wales Cricket Board cried middle wicket and bails.}
Mixing in pubs & home illegal
Good news! You can visit care homes, but only in ‘exceptional circumstances’ (whatever they are?) but take care not to break ‘non-essential’ travel rules. If you must travel then it is possibly best not to, unless you are a celeb whose star is fading fast and is desperate for publicity, whether good or bad. Of course, travelling to work or school 60 to a bus, or packed like sardines in a rail carriage, is quite permissible.
Stop press (and mixing!): We understand that local authorities in the four areas effected will be given £7 million, but we have not been told why? Do they know something we don’t? And who is going on holiday?
A Labour MP for Mindlessborough made a completely silly statement about mixing being the ‘root cause’ of everything ~ and no one listened to him, and probably won’t vote for him again. And the mayor of Mindlessborough, smitten suddenly by what the Daily Shunter described as another mysterious symptom of coronavirus, told the government to go and do one.
The introduction of a new ‘traffic light’ system, whilst it may not have the slightest chance of ending the confusion, will, it is confidently believed, add substantially to the confusion that already exists, and, besides, it just sounds good.
The three tier system, which will be applied to towns and cities according to all sorts of things — ie tier 1 very tight restrictions; tier 2 not so tight restrictions; tier 3 restrictions about as tight as a pair of pants with no elastic — have come under fire from people who just don’t get it ~ or haven’t got it yet ~ with Liebour questioning whether people in tier 1 and 2 towns will simply flout non-essential travel bans, drive to tier 1 towns and move in with other people — a ‘highly likely’ scenario (thank you Mrs May) if the pubs are open late.
Mixing in pubs & home illegal
Concern that the new pub curfew is piling people onto public transport at the same time — where social distancing is impossible to adhere to, non-essential travel questionable (what’s the point of going home where you can only mix with people you don’t want to) and where you can be fined £200 for mixing in an indoor venue, ie a bus — has invoked the logic that if there was no curfew people could just enjoy themselves and catch coronavirus in the pub instead of on the buses, or could easily catch it later were the pubs to close at normal times.
Liberal activists have accused the government of discrimination, arguing that in deciding where and when the public can and cannot catch coronavirus is a clear violation of virus’ rights.
So far there has been no legislation to combat the allegation that coronavirus is selectively racist or that the virus places men more at risk of fatality than women. It is hoped, however, that if the first finding leads to riots, that riot mixes will be limited to crowds of six, preferably from the same household. The government has already taken the precaution of hiding all statues behind giant face masks. As for the man thing, any suggestion that the virus could be sexist has been effectively dealt with under the Positive Discrimination Act.
Whilst everyone should do their utmost to obey the letter of the law ~ known by most as the ‘C’ rate ~ the public are advised to beware of scams, such as where policemen disguised as policemen try to fine you 200 quid.
Remember, there is a subtle difference between breaking the guidelines and breaking the law (200 quids worth of subtlety), but one thing the government has not made clear (amongst the many other things) is whether breaking wind is exempt or not, but laughing about it certainly is, unless you are breaking wind with others in your own household group, where, after several months of lockdown, it has probably ceased to be funny.
In summary, what we think, but don’t know exactly, is now happening in the four areas:
What was previously lockdown is now more lockdown than previously
Previously you could be breaking guidance, but now you can break the law instead (£200 please)
Previously it was illegal to mix with people in private homes and gardens, now we are all related and have much larger extended families
You can go to the pub with everyone from the same household with whom you have been rowing and getting on each other’s nerves for months, but if you mix with others, such as the man or woman behind the bar, you risk a fine of £200
You can mix in parks or beer gardens if there is no more than six of you, but the government advises against it in case the man sweeping up leaves or the girl collecting the beer glasses gets too close, thus making it seven people (£200 please!)
Exemptions for people in bubble cars, saying that they are childcare supporters, or working from home in pubs or parks must not look like MPs or else they will have to resign
Non-essential travel, which does not include trips to the outside toilet where no more than six from the same household are allowed to congregate for fear of contracting a social stigma, is at ‘guidance’ stage, but just when you get used to it, it could suddenly change at half-past-four-and-a-half and become a criminal offence (£200 please)
If in doubt don’t be an amber gambler, consult the government’s traffic-light system!
Red ~ you must not go anywhere or do anything, but you must go to work
Amber ~ you can go somewhere, but we are not sure where, but if you go, go in sixes
Green ~ go now, and go quickly before the lights change to red!
Updated: 12 March 2022 | Published 29 September 2020
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.
It is not easy for Russians to emigrate to the UK, although it has been cynically suggested that possession of an extremely large bank account might go some way to oiling the wheels. Failing that, you could always apply the right shade of make-up, throw away identification and thumb a lift on one of those little boats that roll daily into Dover. However, if you are not into making things up and have no desire to be treated as a VIP, you could always try the normal route, which is? At the end of this article, you will find a reference section containing a list of UK Government websites outlining the daunting process which you must undergo should you wish to enter the UK, apply for Leave to Remain and possibly later citizenship.
Not that I am trying to put you off or anything, but the following account is taken from my diary. It is a personal record of what we had to go through, my wife and I, in order for her to live with me in the UK. Admittedly, all this took place a long time ago, back in 2000/2001, but I have no doubt that the process today is no less turgid, complex and frustrating.
Advice for Russians moving to the UK
As outlined in my first post I met my wife to be, Olga, when, as an English language teacher, she brought a group of Russian students to London for a month’s cultural visit.
I visited Olga in Russia, Kaliningrad, during the Christmas holidays and New Year celebrations at the end of 2000, and I returned to Kaliningrad again in 2001, staying twice for a month at a time.
A few days later we separated, and I returned to the UK to prepare for my interview at the British Embassy in Moscow, where I would have to go in order to obtain a British visa for my wife.
For Olga this meant a long train journey from Kaliningrad to Moscow; for me, it meant flying back to Russia about two weeks after returning to England.
Advice for Russians moving to the UK
From the time we decided to wed until mid-September 2001, I had spent six months or more compiling a dossier on Olga and myself which I would need to present to the British authorities in Moscow as proof that our relationship was ‘kosher’, in other words that our marriage was legit and not an arranged immigration scam.
As well as the official bumph, for help on which I had engaged the services of an immigration solicitor, it was necessary to include documents and evidence of a more personal nature, such as photographs of us together on outings and social occasions with family and friends, as well as copies of our private correspondence. It was a labour-intensive, costly and time-consuming task, and once completed the documents assembled easily filled one of those large Lever Arch files.
On my flight to Moscow, I could not resist comparing my situation with the thousands of so-called asylum seekers that Tony Blair & Co were importing into the UK on an almost daily basis. The irony was inescapable. Here was I, a British citizen, my English lineage stretching back over hundreds of years, having to go cap in hand to the British Embassy in Moscow to beg them to allow my wife to join me in England, whilst immigrants from every corner of the globe were being shipped in wholesale to shore up Tony’s indigenous electoral base, which was destined to collapse once the Socialist faithful tumbled that New Labour was in fact nothing to do with old Labour at all. The irony made me smile. I felt that I had been left on the shelf to make way for Labour’s ‘Buy into it now and get another thousand free’ policy.
Notwithstanding, I made the most of my time in Moscow. I had never been to Russia’s capital city, and I had furnished myself with the luxury of taking a few days off from work to ‘see the sites’ and recuperate once the ordeal was over.
It was an ordeal, make no mistake of that, but, like most things in life, it had its satirical moments.
We arrived at the British Embassy in Moscow at the appointed time. Outside and inside the doorway there was a group of Asian-looking fellows being corralled by three or four military-looking personnel touting automatic weapons. I rather stood out from the crowd as I was wearing a blue suit with a needle-point pinstripe and carrying a black briefcase. One of the soldiers, espying me at the back of the horde, came forward and asked, “Can I help you?” I showed him my British passport and explained that I had an appointment at 4 o’clock. He must have presumed that I was some sort of official diplomat or other, for he and his colleagues suddenly became extremely polite. A route was cleared for us through the crowd and, with a cheery and civil “Come this way, sir”, we were taken past the stairway, shown into a lift and saluted most decorously as we took off.
Well, you know what they say ~ every dog must have its day!
It was a different kettle of bureaucratic fish when we arrived in the vast open-plan waiting room upstairs. Once we had ‘booked in’, we were sat there for one hour before our interview and almost one hour afterwards. As with all bureaucratic institutions, making the public wait seems to be de rigueur. Admittedly, this protraction gave us plenty of time in which to get our story straight. What I mean by that is that we had been alerted to the fact that it was standard practice for the Embassy authorities at some point in the interview to split couples up, and whilst one person went back to the waiting area, the remaining person would be asked various personal questions about the other. Then, the role was reversed: the waiting person would be wheeled in and asked the same questions about himself or herself to see if the answers tallied.
You are no doubt familiar with the axiom that ‘it is the waiting that is the worst’, and our two hours waiting at the British Embassy proved the rule not the exception.
Down one side of the waiting area there was a series of doors leading to the interview rooms. The appointments worked on a numeric system, in other words you were issued with a ticket with a number on it and when your number was up ~ so to speak ~ as shown on the electronic indicator boards, off you not so merrily went.
During our wait, we saw several people enter the rooms. I am not sure whether they went in merrily, but what I can say categorically is that most of them came out looking anything but: at least one woman came out in tears and another looking distraught.
It was something akin to being at the dentists, with the patients ahead of you screaming whilst you nervously waited your turn
And then, suddenly, just when we had begun to suspect that they had forgotten us, it was our turn!
The little interrogation, sorry, interview room, could just about hold three people; there were four in ours ~ us and two interviewers ~ a man and woman. It was terribly claustrophobic.
Having witnessed the condition of interviewees prior to ourselves we were both ready for the third degree, but it never happened. From the moment we entered the room to the moment we left, the interviewers, contrary to our expectations, were the epitome of good humour, even joining in with and complementing my quips ~ which, I instinctively knew, I should not be indulging. There were formalities, with regard to the visa application and checking of sundry documents, but my Lever Arch file, so painstakingly compiled, hardly received a glance, and I was rather put out that they did not want to scrutinise it.
The questions that they asked each of us about each other individually were also taken in good part and raised a few laughs in the process.
At the end of the interview, we were not exactly told that Olga’s visa would be granted, but we were confident that things had gone well and reassured that we were on the right track from the advice that we were given on what we could expect officially when Olga arrived in the UK.
Whilst our visas application story has a happy ending, contrary to popular belief legal entry into and settlement in the UK is by no means guaranteed, and I cannot emphasise enough the need for assiduous preparation and the importance of taking legal advice.
In fairness, the UK is not alone in this: there are very few countries where legal entry with intention to remain is not onerous; it has certainly been no cakewalk for me moving to Kaliningrad, but like everything else in life, you must do your homework first.
In my follow-up article I will try not to deter you even more by outlining how much it costs to live in the UK ~ in London in particular ~ how much you need to earn to live, where your money will go and how fast your money will go.
A warning to the Curious (apologies to Peter Vaughan)
Updated: 12 March 2022 | Published: 24 September 2020
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.
Part 1
An article in The Moscow Times (12 February 2016), ‘ Russian Women — They’re Just Not That Into You’, tells the disheartening tale that Russia’s “fascination with foreignness” is over and that Russian girls no longer fantasise about being “whisked away by a foreign prince in Levi’s”. (How about a foreign knave in a pair of ‘skinnies’ cut-price from Peacocks?).
As a long-time married man of a respectable senior age, I really could not tell you whether this is true or not. However, an inveterate Facebook commentator, a Facebook friend of my wife’s, who never misses an opportunity to respond negatively to my wife’s more political Russian posts, has asserted on more than one occasion that Russian’s are queuing to leave Russia and live in the UK and America. Allowing for the obvious hyperbole, an interesting question nevertheless emerges from this statement: Do Russian citizens still want to emigrate to the UK?
I use the word ‘still’ purposefully, based on my own observations that the Russia of today is considerably different from the one I encountered twenty years ago, which was reeling from the fallout of perestroika and was a time therefore when the quality-of-life divide between the East and West was at its most dramatic. Then, it was understandable that people, especially young people, were looking for a way out and that the West, with all its lauded material trappings and projected hedonism, was not simply a land of opportunity but a seductive Lady Bountiful ~ Shangri La personified.
You can imagine the banner advertisement, ‘Move to the UK ~ a better way of life awaits you!’ But life in the fast lane has a funny way of slowing down, and it could be argued, with no small degree of credibility, that since then Russia has caught up with, if not in many instances, overtaken the UK, where almost every citizen is heavily in debt, young people outpriced from the housing market, too many people and not enough jobs, and where political, social and ethnic division, moral malaise and gratuitous violence has replaced the cohesion and respect of the past.
Advice for Russians emigrating to UK part 1
Nevertheless, the answer is ‘yes’. Of course, there are Russians, predominantly younger Russians, who continue to be attracted by the lure of the West, but the allure is no longer the promise of a substantially better or more stable life. The internet has put paid to that naivety. Today, the internet offers a window on the world and however the media spins it, the other side of the so-called western democracies, like Jekyll’s Hyde, is continually surfacing.
As life on the edge and the chance to become embroiled in the left vs patriot battles are ‘No Sale’, I think we can conclude that what allure there is, is strictly financial. The old sheen may have worn off the good-times chimera with the insurgence of unserviceable credit cards and unsafe streets, but the financial remuneration from certain jobs and professions continues to pull and, you never know, there is always the chance you will beat the House no matter how fixed the wheel.
This post, therefore, and those that follow in this series, are dedicated to those of you in Russia who are considering and/or seriously contemplating emigrating to the UK. You may still be wondering, should I really do this? Or you may already have made up your mind that you are off; either way, I trust that by shedding some light on what you can expect to find in the UK economically, socially and politically, that this series of articles will serve to alleviate any delusions and misconceptions that you may have adopted. And whilst these articles are primarily intended as a guide for prospective or potential emigrees, some sections may prove useful for those amongst you who are travelling to the UK on an international secondment or for the purpose of tourism.
Advice for Russians emigrating to UK part 1
In the following posts I will consider the bureaucratic, economic and social ramifications of moving to London/moving to England, and in it I will explain why I have deliberately chosen to deal with London as a separate entity to England as a whole.
“Wokey, Wokey!!” No, that can’t be right. Sorry Nigel, what was that? “A bunch of metro-liberals …” and? Sorry, I can’t hear you. I’m being shouted down by a rabble of Extinct Liberals. Wait whilst I close the window. Ahh that’s better. Thank heavens I paid the extra £33,000 and had Everest fitted.
The question I wanted to ask before I was so rudely deplatformed was, what was Billy Cotton’s TV show catchphrase? Oh, it was ‘Wakey, Wakey!!’
OK, so the next question is not so much whatever is happening in the UK but who is letting it happen? I knew I should never have left the country when it needed me, but I had no idea that the government left as well?
10 Downing Street is anyone at home?
Putting aside for the moment that the coronavirus crisis was placed in the hands of the Arse & Elbow Committee, we have seen Churchill’s statue and the Cenotaph vandalised, public statues chucked hither and thither, Black Laughs Matter rampaging through the streets virtually unchallenged and unchecked, Extinction Rebellion blocking newspaper printing presses … If the government is not responsible for giving the loony left a hall pass, who is? Now look here Mr S ….
But such decline is not without its humorous side. Take the Mail Online’s article ‘Furious row over appointment of Tony Abbot …’ An indepth analysis of the accusation that Tony Abbot is a transgressor of all PCisms. He is a ‘misogynist, he is sexist and a climate change denier’, so something from up North claims. Forget the fact that he has secured significant trade deals for the UK. Here is a man (that will work against him to be sure!) who had he a statue would be well advised to strap on its lifebelt quickly. But wait a moment, wasn’t the left’s anti-Brexit campaign almost entirely predicated on economic repercussions? Mind you, race, sexism and gender issues have always been Labour’s safety net. If in doubt, denounce it about. After all, the last thing leftist opponents to Brexit want to see are those good old trade deals coming in thick and fast.
British universities get a Phd in Predictability
On the BLM front the ball keeps rolling and gathering, er, snow. News is that British Universities are falling over themselves to issue solidarity statements. No news is good news and there is no news here. As everybody knows, the British education system is an industrial canning factory for liberal-left hobby horses.
The silver lining is that whilst we are young we tend to read The Guardian but later, when we leave university, when life becomes just that bit more real, and we have jobs to keep, houses to buy, children to look after, mortgages to pay, we wake (present tense of woke) up and suddenly find ourselves becoming more and more conservative, until we finally reach the stage where we are reading The Daily Mail. Well, you know what they say about liberalism, it is like a bad case of acne: some grow out of it and some are scarred for life.
It must matter to someone … surely?
Top of the amusement pops has to be the announcement by a young, black, female activist, a BLM leader, that she is planning to form the first black-led political party in Britain. Allegedly, whitey will be excluded from leadership roles and there has been some suggestion on Twatter of white enslavement. Someone should advise this young lady that the UK does not end at Lewisham and that if she intends to all-aboard the UK political bandwagon the first thing she needs to learn is the art of concealing her party’s true intentions behind a smoke and mirrors manifesto.
As for taking control of the country by the political route, all I can say is good luck with that one. Nobody else has ever pulled it off. And my advice to anyone attempting it, short of don’t bother, is if you ever clear the starting blocks watch out for that last minute election hurdle, the old ‘don’t throw your Labour or Conservative vote away on a small party’ trick. It works for the old two-party combo every time. As for slavery, I thought we were already slaves ~ slaves to political correctness. Time for a quick burst of the Rule Britannias!
It’s a funny old world, innit!
At this point I suck my teeth ~ that is one solidarity I learnt years ago ~ and it should stand me in good stead as we also learn that in the United States out of ‘respeck’ the most important association for teaching English in higher education has adopted the resolution that black students can ditch ‘standard English’ and focus exclusively on ‘Black language’ instead. I know I am now referring to the good old US of A, but as we saw with the BLM riots things tend to skim across the pond these days a good deal faster than they used to. It’s enough to make ‘me eddy at me’ (which is, to you, ‘make my head hurt’).
And finally (if only it was), again in the USA, but you can buy it in the UK through Amazon, is the latest solidarity act in the form of a new book called In Defense of Looting. No, this is not me attempting to be satirical. Like a man accused by the left as being unsuitable for the role of UK trade envoy, even though he has already secured ‘huge trade deals’, because he is ‘sexist’ and has said some naughty things, this book and the rest of the madness is actually, really out there, which only goes to show that if nothing at all else matters Political Correctness most assuredly does.
10 Downing Street is anyone at home? ‘Wakey, Wakey!!’
Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!) 23 November 2024 ~ Baltika 8 Wheat Beer in Kaliningrad Article 26: Baltika 8 Wheat Beer A wheat beer is a wheat beer is a wheat beer. That’s that then! No, not quite. This particular wheat beer,… Читать далее: Baltika 8 Wheat Beer in Kaliningrad
Rummaging in the Polish Revision Centre 16 November 2024 ~Is the Poland-Kaliningrad Border Open Yes But? The answer to the question is ‘yes’. Yes, it is possible to access Kaliningrad at the Polish-Kaliningrad border and vice-versa. The only caveat is that before you go, stock up on patience. Not too many months back, the bus… Читать далее: Is the Poland-Kaliningrad Border Open Yes But?
It turns out that Joe was not such a bad guy after all. He served a useful purpose in keeping Donald’s seat warm for him. 7 November 2024 ~ Welcome Back President Trump to the White House I don’t often cry Hallelujah, at least not first thing in the morning, but 6th November was an… Читать далее: Welcome Back President Trump to the White House
They said it would happen, and it has 4 November 2024 ~ Kaliningrad flea market has moved to a new location The Kaliningrad flea market that has occupied the pavement area close to the Central Market, and in more recent years spilled over onto a ribbon of disused ground bordering the moat of the Wrangel… Читать далее: Kaliningrad flea market has moved to a new location
Craft, Imported and Specialty Beers: 387 Osobaya Varka Mick Hart’s difficult job of reviewing craft, imported and specialty beers in Kaliningrad 31 October 2024 ~ 387 Osobaya Varka beer in Kaliningrad good or not? Have you ever wondered why Baltika Breweries number their beers instead of giving them a name, for example Russian Sausage or… Читать далее: 387 Osobaya Varka beer in Kaliningrad good or not?
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]
