Архив метки: Coronavirus UK Lockdown

The Liberal Solution to Anti-vaxxers

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

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

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

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

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

The Liberal Solution to Anti-vaxxers

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

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

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

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

This article has all the makings of a future historical document, something remarkably similar to those which, back in 1940s’ Germany, would have been served up in an emblem-impressed file and handed around to those who sat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

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

These are:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Liberal Solution to Anti-vaxxers

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

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

And, on the conveyor belt tonight!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Papers Please!!

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

Comment:

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

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

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Please Look! A Weird UFO off the Baltic Coast!

What is it?!

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

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

“It’s your wife!” my brother replied.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Greenpeace 30 years on” ~ a pointless exercise

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

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

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

“WHO?” ~ most likely

“WHAT FOR?” ~ don’t ask!

“WHERE?” ~ everywhere

“WHEN?” ~ never!

“Are you quite finished?” ~ No! Davos

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

Light reading:

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

Vaccination Rollout is not Russian but World Roulette

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 460 [17 June 2021]

Published: 17 June 2021 ~ Vaccination Rollout is not Russian but World Roulette

My sister wrote to me today from England and at the close of her letter asked, and I quote, “Just to touch on the most current topic … How is the [vaccination] ‘roll-out’ going in Russia?”

The answer that immediately sprang to mind was, I don’t know.

Vaccination Rollout is not Russian but World Roulette

The reaction to and media coverage of coronavirus in the UK is world’s apart from its counterparts in Russia. Even making allowances for the fact that we do not have broadcast TV and that I rarely read the news on the internet, my wife is an inveterate Facebook twiddler so news filters through to me, whether I want it or not.

One thing is certain: There is less hysteria here in Russia, both in respect of media coverage and the reaction of the populace to coronavirus. True, my wife reads news clips on Facebook, but she is more concerned with the ambiguities, ambivalence, seeming double-talk, twists, U-turns and general, what might be scientifically referred to as, arse-about-face of it all than she is in who has had their first or their 55^th jab, the proclamations of new strains and dire warnings of further mutations. She is diehard ‘anti-maskee’ and is always quoting, whenever I mention the vaccine, that never in the history of the world have governments embarked upon a global vaccination programme such as the one they have launched in the name of addressing Covid-19, which she finds suspicious, and she is more concerned with the impact that never-ending social distancing, lockdowns, isolation and general fearmongering is having on the psychological health and wellbeing of millions of people robbed of their need of personal and social interconnection, which in her philosophy is both the essence and hub of human existence.

It was she who sent me the following video link (after twenty-one years of marriage communicating by email is more popular than you might think!), telling me to listen to “what your favourite person [Katie Hopkins] has to say”: https://youtu.be/qQV1Ww9QGmU

It is not that my good lady wife disbelieves the existence of coronavirus or the potential of it pernicious effects, simply that she like many others questions the efficacy of the measures imposed upon us by ‘those in the know’ and like a lot of us is none too comfortable with the gold-rush mentality to be injected with something that has not been tested according to the usual standard protocols. In discussions on the subject, she likes to remind me that I was one of those who casually opined that come the vaccine come the silver bullet, whereas we now know ~ or rather are now told ~ that nothing much has changed and possibly will not change until 2023/24 and perhaps not even ever.

An article published by Elsevier¹ supports my wife’s criticism of me, the commentary clearly stating that ‘Vaccines are not yet a silver bullet’. And yet, I quote from the same article [my emphasis], “In other words, to help societies avoid transmission vectors and start imagining the “new normal”, continued communication about the need for face masks, personal hygiene, and social distancing is of instrumental importance.”

As I understand it, however, in the UK the new normal is resulting in a great deal of new suffering ~ psychological, physical and emotional ~ by those whose livelihoods are threatened, whose businesses are going under and many more who, because of coronavirus prioritisation, are finding that they are unable to gain access to the vital healthcare that they need if they are to survive existing illnesses, regardless of whether they get coronavirus or not.

Whilst controversy over the fallout from coronavirus restriction rules is buzzing around on social media as if someone has kicked the hive, a large vacuous hole continues to exist both in media spaces and authoritative places. Without answers, there are only rules; and rules without answers are there to be questioned, challenged and even ignored.

Nevertheless, my sister’s comment about the ‘most current topic’ had left me feeling out of the loop, so I turned for the answer in the pages of The Moscow Times². Well, why not, for a change!

Accessed on the 17 June 2021, under the headline Coronavirus in Russia: The Latest News | June 17, here is my update:

~ Russia has confirmed 5,264,047 cases of coronavirus and 127,992 deaths, according to the national coronavirus information center. Russia’s total excess fatality count since the start of the coronavirus pandemic is around 475,000.

~ Russia on Thursday confirmed 14,057 new coronavirus cases and 416 deaths. Of today’s cases, 6,195 are in Moscow.

~ Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin on Wednesday announced mandatory vaccination for service sector workers, saying the measure is necessary as the city grapples with 12,000 hospitalized Covid-19 patients and levels of illness equal to last year’s peaks.

And there is more about closing bars and restaurants early and working from home.

But that is Moscow. What of Kaliningrad, where we live (I last checked about 12 weeks ago!). Here is today’s update³:

~ In the Kaliningrad region, 80 new cases of coronavirus were detected. The total number of infected reached 34 694.

~ 56 patients were diagnosed with ARVI, 15 with pneumonia. Nine more had no symptoms.

~ During the day in the region, 73 patients were discharged from hospitals after recovery. Since the beginning of the pandemic, 33,525 people have recovered, 538 have died.

So there you have it!

I think that the ‘most current topic’, as my sister refers to coronavirus and the issue of vaccination, is, like a lot of other things, evaluated in a markedly different way by the Russian population compared to the mindset in the West.

As usual, would-be pundits in the West are seemingly confused about why the take-up of the Covid-19 vaccine is not steaming along at full tilt as it is in countries like the USA and UK. I say, ‘as usual, because the inability of western Europeans to understand anything Russian, or to assume that they do not, is not a new phenomenon (understatement intended). Take a look at the screenprint (you may have to magnify the image) that I have included in this post, which returns from the Google search ‘vaccination in Russia’ [accessed 16 June 2021]:

Vaccination statistics for Russia 16 June 2021

In the circles in which we move in Kaliningrad, there is a lot to be said for my wife’s theory that people tend to judge the coronavirus situation, and personally react to it, depending on what is happening closest to them. In other words, each individual weighs up the pros and cons of the restrictions and vaccine-taking depending on how many people they know who have had a mild attack of the virus, a serious attack, how many people they know who have died as a direct result of contracting coronavirus and how many people they know who have not been infected at all, and then they act accordingly. In the UK, mass opinion is mobilised, and large swathes of people motivated, by what politicians tell them to do and by the national media’s complicity to bring about a desired result by whatever means it has and whatever it takes ~ and it does not take much.

On the wearing of masks, for example, here I have heard it said that most people who wear them, wear them to avoid a fine rather than give credence to the unproven science of their latent life-saving properties, which is possibly why most people wear them with their nose poking out or as under-chin accessories. In the UK, however, whilst some people wear masks for the same reason and in the same way, the majority of mask wearers wear them purely because they are told to do so. In the UK, compliance is king.

On the slow take-up of vaccination in Russia, as you can see from the following screen grab (you may need to magnify), which returns from the Google search ‘vaccination in Russia’ [accessed 16 June 2021], western media is more than happy to tie Russian vaccination reluctance to their efforts to discredit the Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine, which resulted from a fit of pique when Russia won the ‘vaccine race’.

My take on the low uptake from people I have asked is that no such specificity exists. It is not that the Russian people are crying out for western vaccines, just that they are more individualistic and selective in their approach to the whole question of vaccination safety and efficacy. I mean after the latest revelations about the AtsraZeneca vaccine⁴ …

Let’s face it folks, life is a roulette wheel. Whether the vaccine is running around inside you or not, until they finish those vaccine trials, which will not happen before 2023 or 2024 earliest, it is still a game of chance. So, fingers crossed.

Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets!

References:
1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666354621000077?via%3Dihub [accessed 16 June 2017]
2. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/06/17/coronavirus-in-russia-the-latest-news-june-17-a69117 [accessed 17 June 2021]
3. https://kgd.ru/news/society/item/95599-za-sutki-v-kaliningradskoj-oblasti-vyyavili-77-sluchaev-koronavirusa [accessed 17 June 2021]
4. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2280446-astrazeneca-covid-19-vaccine-may-hinder-blood-clotting-in-rare-cases/ [accessed 16 June 2021]

Photo credits:
Roulette wheel
Photo credit: PIRO4D (https://pixabay.com/illustrations/gambling-roulette-game-bank-2001128/)

Globe
Photo credit: Arek Socha (https://pixabay.com/illustrations/earth-world-planet-globe-1303628/)

Репетитор английского языка в Калининграде

Running out of kitchen cabinets in the UK

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 365 [14 March 2021]
Anniversary of self-isolating in Kaliningrad

Congratulations to who, exactly? To WHO? Today marks my first anniversary of self-imposed self-isolation ~ of sorts. Three hundred and sixty-five days of watching where I go and who is standing three hundred and sixty degrees front, sides and back of me. Have I passed the test? And, if so, for whom and for what? And what should my reward be? A diploma in philanthropic consideration for my fellow man (no sexism intended) or a degree with honours in credulous compliance. Let History be my judge! And, of course, be yours as well!

Quite frankly, apart from this milestone, there is not a great deal to report about coronavirus here in Kaliningrad, Russia, certainly not about lockdown as there isn’t one. Everything in Kaliningrad appears to be functioning as normal and the only concession that I can see to coronavirus is the mask-wearing thing. And even then, I have noticed that the percentage of people wearing muzzles, as my wife refers to them, has diminished in the past few weeks.

A mask-wearing enforcement policy continues to operate on public transport, as I witnessed a couple of days ago, when a thoroughly inebriated fellow, who had been celebrating International Women’s Day (no gender discrimination here in Russia!), refused to put on his mask whilst travelling by bus. The young bus conductor did his level best to prosecute the law thanklessly handed down to him, but vodka is a wily opponent and the recalcitrant drunk would eventually fall off at the stop of his choice, still maskless but no less gracious, for even in his triumph of the common man over authority he chose not to stick up an offensive finger but holding up two thumbs saluted International Women’s Day as the bus full of masks roared off.

Running out of kitchen cabinets in the UK

Whilst almost everybody that I have spoken to here in Russia are of one mind: they consider lockdown to be a step too far, I cannot help but feel that Western governments do not approve. Not that anybody here cares a fig about them, but it is a point of interest that whatever the West prescribes the presumption is that the world should follow, even if its example runs counter to the common good. But that is the way that global liberalism works: in their language it is ‘intervention’ but you naughty cynics might want to refer to it as globalist interference. In the UK, it is not enough to say, “We don’t do lockdown!” because you have no choice. And even were you to add, “because there is no real proof that lockdown really works, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that it does more harm than good”, you still do lockdown because this, presumably, is the democratic way?

It is the epitome of irony that given the official mortality figures for coronavirus in the UK, lockdown has become, at least for liberals, not just a law but a religion ~ Woe betide anybody who questions its logic or the controversial efficacy of sticking a piece of cloth on your face.

Western authorities are sensitive to the fact that many of the methods chosen to combat coronavirus have no empirical evidence with which to back them up, which accounts for their pique when other countries try different approaches that are no less effective than their draconian measures and arguably equal or better.

Thus, we find in the world’s press recently an unsavoury little piece in which it is claimed that the coronavirus situation here in Kaliningrad is far in excess of what it is claimed to be.

The article to which I refer was published by a media enterprise which checks out on mediabiasfactcheck as ‘Left’:

“These media sources are moderately to strongly biased toward liberal causes through story selection and/or political affiliation. They may utilize strong loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes), publish misleading reports and omit reporting of information that may damage liberal causes. Some sources in this category may be untrustworthy.”

This is the same media source which suppressed information about the coronavirus situation becoming so appalling in the UK that the Co-op was running short of coffins.

I can report that I have been in touch with one of my brothers, who is a carpenter and cabinet maker by trade, and he has verified this shortage. Apparently, a UK government department asked him to convert the fitted kitchens, which he has been making in his living room, into caskets. Lockdown prohibits him from using his workshop so he has to work from home, and anyway because of lockdown no one has jobs and cannot afford to buy kitchens. As he has not sold anything for 12 months, he is only too keen to comply, but I am yet to be convinced that a send-off in a converted kitchen cupboard made from MDF complete with plastic handles will ever catch on. No doubt we shall hear more in due course from the reliable leftist media source that I mention in this article. (I have withheld the name of the media outlet so as to protect the gullible.)

These are the coronavirus case figures for Kaliningrad, 14 March 2021, since the beginning of the pandemic*:
29,294 cases of coronavirus identified in the region
26,863 people have recovered
328 deaths.

*Source: https://kgd.ru/news/society/item/94160-za-sutki-v-kaliningradskoj-oblasti-ot-koronavirusa-umerli-pyat-pacientov [accessed 14 March 2021]

Feature image attribution: Lynn Greyling. https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=84918&picture=cupboard-with-old-iron-amp-kettles

Russia aims for pre-Covid Near Normality

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 333 [10 February 2021]
or Russia’s Near Normal vs the West’s New Normal

Published: 10 February 2021 ~ Russia aims for pre-Covid Near Normality

There are a few weeks to go yet before I can legitimately celebrate my first Covid self-isolation anniversary, but as that peculiar milestone approaches there are other positives that merit raising a glass or two.

Top of the pops must be the worldwide thumbs up for Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine. Following news of its approval by one of the UK’s most prestigious medical journals, the Lancet, begrudgingly the West’s media has been forced to concede that Sputnik V flew first past the finishing post in their international vaccine race, proving against all odds that the classic adage ‘who dares wins’ is still the winning formula.

The ‘bugger, we got it wrong’ factor is almost palpable in hindsight, as the great bastions (I think that’s the right word?) of the neoliberal press twist and turn within themselves to corkscrew a last derogative spin out of what remains of their discredited cynicism, and inevitably in the process come away from it all looking and sounding rather mardy.

With the EU let down somewhat embarrassingly by a vaccine supply bottleneck and other problems with its two main vaccines, one developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, and another by Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech, let’s hope that neoliberal globalist politics will not get in the way should Angela Merkel’s welcome mat need to be rolled out quickly for Sputnik V. After all, the international nature of a pandemic requires international co-operation.

Pre-Covid Near Normality

Another reason for celebration, but one tempered by caution and common sense, is the understanding that daily coronavirus cases in Russia are down 50 per cent from their peak in mid-December 2020*. With infection numbers said to be travelling in the right direction, downwards, it would appear that in some parts of the country steps are being taken to relax coronavirus restrictions*, a move which represents an entirely different approach to the ‘no light at the end of the tunnel’ endless lockdown scenarios with which my family, friends and the rest of the nation are faced in embattled Britain.

In Moscow, limitations on opening times of pubs, restaurants and clubs are due to be removed (I should say so!), and full-time teaching in universities is to be resumed.

Cheering news for those who have been staunch and consistent critics of the efficacy of masking-up is that based on evidence of increasing immunity the days of mandatory face masks might soon be over in Russia. And not before time.

Recently, I was pulled up by a tram conductress ~ one of those large redoubtable babushkas ~ for being maskless on public transport. I had not forgotten to wear my mask, and neither was I making a formal protest; the face towel had simply chosen to leap from my pocket as I was boarding the tram. I did try to improvise by wrapping my scarf around my mush, but this stout defender of rules are rules was not the sort to take prisoners. Fortunately for me, my wife procured a spare mask from her handbag and honour was seen to be done ~ in other words, I narrowly escaped the humiliation of having my maskless arse kicked off the tram.

Had this happened it would have been a grave injustice, as I, for one, have found wearing a mask to be particularly useful recently, possibly not as a hedge against catching coronavirus but most definitely as an effective face glove, as temperatures in Kaliningrad plummet to minus 20. If the weather carries on like this debunking global warming, I will have no choice but to snip off the fur-lined flaps from the sides of my spare ushanka (hat) and attach two bits of elastic to them.

However, whilst we wait for this to happen, here is a quick recap of the latest response to coronavirus as reported in Russian media:

🤞There is hope in the air that soon we might all be enjoying more air as part of nationwide demasking.

🤞As there are no strict lockdowns in Russia, they will not be lifted, but spirits may still be lifted by relaxing what restrictions there are.

🤞Normal service is beginning to be resumed in the nation’s universities and, most importantly, in the bars, clubs and restaurants.

😁Sputnik V gets 10 out of 10 in the International Vaccine Race and quick to criticise critics 10 out of 10 for egg on their face. And doesn’t it serve them right!

*Sources
https://www.rt.com/russia/513951-measures-pandemic-slowly-receding/
https://www.rt.com/russia/514381-face-masks-ban-possible-lift/

No Lockdown in Kaliningrad Russia

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 310 [18 January 2021]
or Business as Usual

Published: 18 January 2021

There is no lockdown in Kaliningrad, Russia. In fact, I think I am right in saying, and I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong, that there is no lockdown across Russia, and it would be deceitful of me if I did not say that when I see what is happening back home that I breathe a sigh of relief that I left the UK when I did.

I am not talking about the numbers, the figures, the statistics the doom and gloom wreaked by the UK media’s representation of how bad the virus is supposed to be, but about the lack of transparency, unambivalent information and, of course, the notorious punitive measures which no one in authority seems able or willing to say are actually making a difference, apart that is from ruining people’s livelihoods and subjecting many it seems to psychological and emotional duress.

No Lockdown in Kaliningrad, Russia

Here, for better or for worse, things continue to be pretty clear cut. We wear our masks, some of us reluctantly and others with zealous intent, where we are told that we are supposed to wear them ~ some of us ~ and we try to avoid large crowds and crowded places ~ some of us ~ and some of us self-isolate.

Bars, restaurants and shops are predominantly open as usual. Hospitality outlets appear to be implementing a table-distance rule, and some establishments close early. Masks are required inside public places, such as in shops, the working environment and on public transport. Also, when I travelled by train last week from Kaliningrad’s main railway station, I was subjected to an electronic temperature check before passing through the security gates.

I am able to report that among our social circle we know about eight people who have had coronavirus, both here and in the UK, or, to rephrase that for accuracy, have had a seasonal respiratory illness that has been classed as coronavirus, and, I am glad to say, whatever it is they have had, they have had it mild.

So far, I know of no one here, in Kaliningrad, Russia, who has had the vaccine and only my mother, in the UK, who is no spring chicken, and a friend of ours around the same age also in the UK, who have had their first jabs.

No Lockdown in Kaliningrad, Russia

The situation here regarding voluntary take-up of the vaccine, and not just the Russian vaccine but any vaccine, is no different than it was when I wrote about it last month: lots of recalcitrants and one or two wait-and-sees. Me? The jury’s out. My wife? No.

So, for the time being, at least, its Carry On Mask Grumbling and keep on taking the homemade vaccine: a combination of quality beers and vodkas. Come to think of it, I must be about due for my follow-up treatment.

No Lockdown in Kaliningrad Russia: Beer & Face Masks — **TIME FOR YOUR VACCINE!**

Is Big Tech censorship a coronavirus clue?

Is the reaction to coronavirus just another symptom of liberal malaise?

Published: 12 January 2021

I hear tell that Joe Biden is destined to become the fraudulently elected President of the United States. I have also been told to believe that the crowd that gate-crashed Capitol Hill were a ‘mob’, whereas, in a bizarre comparison, Black Lives Matter are peaceful, praise-worthy protestors. There are even pictures to prove it, according to The Guardian and, of course, the BBC.

As intelligent readers you will not have failed to recognise the inequality and discrimination at work in these remarks and thus the tittersome irony.

We are told these things. But what do we believe?

‘DC police made far more arrests at the height of Black Lives Matter protests than during the Capitol clash’ ~ CNN Investigates

‘BLM v Washington DC riots: How were the police responses different?’ ~ BBC

So, Capitol Hill was a ‘riot’; BLM was a ‘generally peaceful protest’.

“Yeah, right …”

Ignoring for the moment that the unfortunate incident at Capitol Hill is being distorted in the most cynical way to cast fresh and potentially provocative aspersions on US law and order (Maxwell Smart: ‘Ahh, the old deflection trick, chief!’), we do know unequivocally that Big Tech unilaterally banned President Trump from Facebook and Twitter. This peculiar, but hardly unexpected, turn of events prompted this response from that bastion of free speach, my personal friend, Lord Wollocks:

“We all know that Facebook and Twitter have been ruthlessly implementing a partisan censorship programme in which anybody who rocks the neoliberal boat is given the big heave-ho. Nobody, not even the ‘useful idiots’, really believe that this ideological deplatforming is anything but censorship, even though it hides behind sanctimonious catchalls like ‘banned for inciting racial hatred’, ‘banned for inciting religious hatred’. As the old saying goes, ‘One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’. And mark my words: Arsebook and Twatter would take that comment down faster than a pair of a trousers on a self-proclaimed man.”

We do know that Black Lives Matter is not banned from social media platforms.

We don’t know what’s happening with coronavirus, or rather the way in which both the British establishment and the ‘sshhh, you suspect who’ State in America is managing it, mismanaging it or even stage managing it? But it is certainly disturbing that the two countries that pride themselves on being the world’s beacons of democracy are pissing on their own wicks, and that fewer and fewer people are inclined to believe that it is an accidental up-wind blowback but rather that what is being done to us is being done deliberately and with malice aforethought.

Certainly, hitherto unprecedented draconian police-state measures enacted in the name of controlling the Covid-19 virus are casting a long, dark shadow over the freedoms and so-called democratic rights of the beleaguered people of these two nations. In the UK, social distancing, muzzle wearing, lockdowns, limitations on the number of people who can mix together, even in their own homes, bring disturbing reports on a daily basis of police who are far too ready to exceed their celebrated policing-by-consent authority, and in some lackaday instances are acting in a brute-force manner not unlike the Stasi (see this video by Nigel Farage Say NO to a Police State).

Is Big Tech censorship a coronavirus clue?

So, we ask ourselves the question, and many people are asking this question? Are these punitive practices all part of a neoliberal globalist plot. Has Trump’s Presidency, Brexit, the imminent disintegration of the EU, all of which are symptoms of an increase in the shift away from liberalism to patriotism, triggered such a shit-fit among the neoliberal political elites that they have been forced to play their hand, to strike when coronavirus is hot! Ahh, the last resort of scoundrels!

Those who subscribe to the theory that the Kalergi Plan is an essential pillar of liberal hegemony, but one which has quite unexpectedly buckled beneath resilient patriotism, may well be of the opinion that as long as Hungry and Poland continue to hold out against intimidation from the Brussels’ mob who want to force them to open the migrant floodgates, dissatisfaction with the Federalist project in Spain, Italy and Denmark and the gathering traction for Frexit, indicates that the game in Europe is almost up. Is this then where the intervention of unbelievable philanthropic billionaires, Big Tech, the media and social control comes in?

**Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi** (image attribution: see end of article)

Now it would be easy for me at this point to force-feed you my opinion, but why resort to mainstream media tactics when opinion on social media, that heaving crust on a hot volcano ready to erupt, offers a far more accurate insight into the mood of the people. I like nothing better than to wassail around on the internet ignoring mainstream media but dipping into it now and then to read the comments of readers. I am also more inclined to go looking for the truth, or the best thing to it, in the journalism provided by independent, alternative media outlets and only resort to Twitter and Facebook in search of those endangered species, the brave few struggling to speak their minds before they are caught in the dragnet of liberal censorship.

For example, here is an interesting comment posted recently on Facebook (Note all quotes from other sources here have been copied verbatim and with no censorship on my part):

‘Over 70 billionaires got together on Trumps inauguration day to determine the future (& to make certain it wouldn’t be trump). They each pay dues of 250 million a year to a Soros organization (he has over 100) They meet annually. They will only get richer & control us more. They are all, every last one of them, in bed with the Democrats. Their goal = power. control, $$$$, and to supplant america with their values, their desires, their economics, their health system, their business methods, banking systems. etc..& put in an overwhelmingly large bureaucratic government that can be transitioned into a global one when they are ready. This sounds like science fiction, or a conspiracy theory, but sadly it is not.’

Read this article, With unilateral censorship of a sitting US president, Big Tech has proven it’s more powerful than any government. Does it lend credence to what has been claimed above?

The following quotes have been taken from the ‘comments’ section of the above article:

‘They [UK/America] allowed socialism and feminism to ruin their society and family values. Now they pay the price.’

‘The big tech is already a branch of the “Shadow Government/Deep state” that has complete control of Congress overall. The big tech social media have been infiltrated by the CIA just like the major corporate news have been for some time now. Read the book “Press-titutes Embedded in the Pay of the CIA”(2019), by Udo Ulfkoette. Stay away from Facebook, Twitter and such. I have never used them. Find other alternatives. We cannot allow freedom to perish. Peace.’

‘Wait till the Democrats pass their ‘hate speech’ laws. Say the wrong thing, you get canceled, lose your job, hell, they may even take your children away from you. That is how insane this is becoming.’

Well, I don’t know about that, but certainly, Big Tech seems to have made one of the biggest blunders of their electronic existence:

‘We will not be SILENCED!’ Trump tweets from official @POTUS account after ban, posts scrubbed within minutes

“We will not be SILENCED! Twitter is not about FREE SPEECH. They are all about promoting a Radical Left platform where some of the most vicious people in the world are allowed to speak freely.” {quote taken from article cited above in which it is attributed to Donald Trump}.

I have the distinct feeling that Trump is not the sort of person to be bullied or censored into submission, and neither are his 75 million US voters. The trouble with ‘push is ‘shove’.

Trump is not for giving in or backing down — *(Image credit: http://clipart-library.com)*

Within this nightmare world of a panic-stricken globalist movement that will stop at nothing to preserve its disintegrating one-world government dream, it is, I admit, most tempting to imagine coronavirus, as imperfect as it is, as an ill-conceived or ad hoc smokescreen, barely functioning for the insidious purpose for which it was invented and inevitably doomed to failure, but nevertheless, for the moment, a powerful force for division, diversion and control, a force that offers a shortcut to the social instability that diversity was meant to procure but which, in spite of the efforts of NGOs and craven complicit governments, has been too long in the making to retain its viability.

The part played by Big Tech in this Orwellian scenario reveals itself in those blocks you get on Facebook when you try to post anything on coronavirus that does not conform to the official narrative and where you are peremptorily redirected to a page that purports to contain the truth. A very fine thing indeed, except that it is their truth ~ or so many of us suspect.

The internet, however, is an unwieldly beast, as its frightened proprietors are beginning to discover, and no matter how these contemporary Citizen Kanes ~ the Mr Zuckerbergs, Sundar Pichais and Jack Dorseys of this world~ attempt to rein it in, it will eventually break away from them, as it is doing now. Truth will always out in the end and when it does comes casualties …

Is Big Tech censorship a coronavirus clue?

Is this a fragment of that truth or not? I found this article which exists in the asteroid belt on the other side of the mainstream media suspicious enough in content for it to raise an eyebrow. It is published in The Daily Expose, a media outlet I must confess with which I am not acquainted, but am somewhat relieved to discover that in spite of its provocative name the temptation has been resisted to choose as its logo a man in a mac.

England – Does official NHS data support the Government’s Dictatorship?

In this video (quick, before they ban it!!), its protagonist, Dr Shiva, who describes himself as a ‘scientist, engineer and educator’ and is summarily dismissed by the mainstream media as ‘a conspiracy theorist’ (he and the other 75% of the West’s population who have been railroaded into this concentrated camp and where the figure is growing exponentially) looks at the bigger picture: the ‘where we are now and what is to be done if we still want to be a free people’.

Suck it and see: Dr.SHIVA LIVE: What Happened In the Past 4 Years. What Is To Be Done, NOW.

The political classes, mainstream media, Big Tech, big business corporations, the mega-rich and, alas, a gaggle of untalented and overpaid celebs who will jump on any bandwagon for a bit of free publicity, universally condemn these ideas as conspiracy theories, but the problem with all of these institutionalised factions is that they are wide on criticism and short on answers.

Take coronavirus, for example. Of all the respiratory diseases known to man (its & others etc) no one can deny that Covid-19 is one of the most, if not the most, eccentric and improbable of viruses. Not only is there no consensus about how and why it effects people differently but there also appears to be scant agreement about the measures required to contain and address it. Thus, until it is proven otherwise, you cannot blame a groundswell of people for believing that fraudulent viruses are as credible as fraudulent elections or even that the two go hand in glove.

In the last analysis, Big Tech and Big Media are owned by the sort of people who tell us what they want us to know and to believe what they want us to believe. Big media no longer reports the news, it creates it according to its own political, economic, ideological bias etc, leaving Big Tech to filter out all opposing variants and sell it on as gospel.

There is a lot of good, quality and more reliable reporting out there in the non-mainstream media, and if you take a moment to look around you will be surprised what you will find. Of course, you may have to put up with being labelled a conspiracy theorist, a member of the Far Right, a Fascist by the likes of The Guardian, The [not so] Independent etc, and you can be sure that those liberal pseudo-moral high-grounders Twatter and Arsebook may block your comments and posts, they might even deplatform you, but if that does happen console yourself with the fact that not only must you be right today but on the right side of history forever. Moreover, such violations of freedom of speech and democracy grant you, the victim, lifetime membership to an exclusive but rapidly growing club that is destined to change the world we live in and change it for the better. So wear your deplatformed badge with courage and also wear it with pride!

Wherever they think they are taking us and wherever we want to go, It is going to be a bumpy ride, the road to the truth usually is, but hang on in there, fight back when you have to and continue to take the knocks. In the end it will all be worth it:

Right, as they say, always prevails.

Image attributions:

Feature image: (Photo credit: Author: CeeMon / pixabay.com; https://www.freeimg.net/photo/1874812/smokeandmirrors-magic-mirror-blackmirror)

Photograph attribution for Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi: [Unknown photographer – ÖNB, Bildarchiv Austria, Inventarnummer Pf 3944:B(2)(https://www.bildarchivaustria.at/Pages/ImageDetail.aspx?p_iBildID=20223510), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69147423]

Coronavirus Truth or Trickery Trick or Treat?

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

Published: 29 December 2020

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

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

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

Take my word for it: I don’t know.

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

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

Coronavirus Truth or Trickery Trick or Treat?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You pays your money and you takes your choice …

Coronavirus Truth or Trickery: a Message in a Bottle

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

Will Boris’ Bubble be Pricked this Christmas?

Bubbleheaded Christmas UK

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.

More Christmas Cheer

Important to Keep in Touch During Coronavirus Christmas

Important to Keep in Touch During Coronavirus Christmas ~ Cheer them up with a card and personal letter!

Published: 17 November 2020

So, what I have been doing for the past week? Did news that they had installed a Democrat in the White House appall me so much that I have not been able to focus and write? No, even stranger than that, I have been busy writing my Christmas cards ~ either a case of there’s forward planning for you, or its time he invested in a new calendar.

Nothing quite as spectacular. I have been writing cards to folks back home, to friends and family in the UK, and cognizant of the fact that the post from Kaliningrad to England is not exactly the 21^st centuries’ answer to a hypersonic version of Pony Express, I hope to have mailed them in good time.

Another reason for planning ahead is that every year I include a ‘brief’ note with my card. This has become as traditional as Christmas dinner, party hats, Christmas crackers and auntie Ivy turning Christmas day into a rugby scrum as she insists on clawing open everybody else’s presents.

Important to keep in touch during coronavirus Christmas

My Christmas letter has become such an important element of the annual Christmas ritual that its up there with seasonal sayings like ‘just what I always wanted’, when it is quite obvious that you didn’t (I mean, who in his right mind would wear a jumper like that, and when did your gran lust after a WWII German tin helmet (or even a WWII German in a tin helmet?)) ~ and ‘Oh, you shouldn’t have!”, when you obviously didn’t: that’s the aftershave you were given by someone last year and which you personally would not touch with a barge pole and neither would anyone else. Mind you it makes the perfect Christmas present for social distancing.

The thing about my Christmas letters is that although you have to state out loud at UK post offices these days what you have in your ‘packet’ ~ and my letters are known for being rather bulky, so they always ask ~ they always get through, even though sometimes I cannot resist answering, at first in a whisper, “It’s an inflatable doll,” and then, in response to the lady behind the counter urging me to ‘speak up’, to call out stridently, “It’s an inflatable doll,” so that everyone can hear (you should try this sometime, it really is fun!).

No stopping those Christmas letters

Yes, my letters always get through. Like Reader’s Digest junk mail, electricity and gas bills, even if the Post Office had been sold to China (what’s that, oh, it has been) and my letters rerouted via the M25, carried in the pocket of a young thief travelling on a skateboard during rush-hour, my letters always get through.

They zip past defiled statues, hoody-wearing muggers on handbag-stealing mopeds and bearded men burning poppies. They cruise through ganja-stenched knife-secreted carnivals, through nice areas deprived by people. As slippery as Hope not Hate, they riot their way down Looting Street, defying all manner of social distancing, lockdowns and Tiers for fears and, before you can say Hoorah for Brexit or Joe Biden is as honest as Clinton, they sail up your drive, through your letter box and plummet onto your doormat quicker than the stink from a suspect scientific claim.

They are so popular, my Yuletide missives, that family and friends leave home for them, and come back after Christmas ~ a long while after Christmas. Some people board up their letter boxes, others disguise them as something intimate in such a way that were you to insert a letter through them, you’d have the neighbours shout ‘pervert!’. Some teach their dogs to savage them, and others, those with ‘Beware of the Cat’ on their doors, train their feline friends to hide them under the Christmas tree ~ and scrape the soil back over.

One year my brother shoved his letter under the mistletoe, prompting his gay friend to say that he would rather kiss his own arse. He is a lonely guy, but no worries, he is double-jointed and quite the contortionist.

Selfish people, those who stockpiled toilet rolls when they heard the word pandemic, convert them into paper hats and hide the Christmas crackers for pulling on their own when they think no one is looking. Ahh, but someone is always looking, especially in these days of essential travel only. Do they really think that they can get away with it?

“Where are you going in that Support Bubble Car?”

“I am a victim of self-isolation and social distancing, officer. I am shunning all that I have ever known and all those that know me, even those who have tried to lose me, give me away or pretend that I don’t exist, such as my mother. I am going somewhere where they can’t track and trace me, and there, in the privacy of somebody else’s Tier 1 home, I will hide from the world and pull my Christmas cracker.”

“Very well,” says the Social Distancing Marshall, “but no laughing at the joke inside the cracker, mind. This is no time to be enjoying life, and don’t forget to wear your mask.”

Sorry, that was uncalled for.

“Hello, I think I may have coronavirus. I have been trying to telephone the hospital for the past three hours and nobody has answered.”

“Sorry, the hospital is as full as boatload of migrants from France. Wait a moment. Oh, it is a boat load of migrants from France. Please hang yourself. I mean hang up and try the Samarlians.”

The Samarlians ~ a not-for-profit organization that will talk you out of the ‘easy way out’:

Answer machine: “Hello, you have reached the end of your tether. I am sorry, due to a high volume of excuses about coronavirus we are unable to take your call at the moment, please leave your name and telephone number and you will never hear from us again. You might like to waste what remains of your life by visiting our website, goingaroundincircles.con, where you can often never find what it is you want to know using our FAQ Offs ~ Frequently Asked Questions Offline ~ alternatively, you will find the end of the line at your nearest Midland Mainline Station.”

Once, all you had to do was press Button A to be connected and Button B to get your money back. Now ‘you have the following options’, more numbers than the National Lottery and about the same chance of winning.

What my coronavirus Christmas letters mean to the recipients

Rumour has it that carol singers have written songs based on the contents of my Christmas letters and sold the rights to Leonard Cohen.

Christmas vicars have read them out in their sermons and have been summarily excommunicated.

Edgar Allan Poe, who essentially travelled by TARDIS, was inspired to write The Masque of the Red Death having read my treatise ‘Lockdown ~ the most effective life saver since leaches’.

Important to Keep in Touch During Coronavirus Christmas
{See end of article for image credit*}

My letters have tweaked the ears of statesmen, tickled the underbelly of boat-owning philanthropists and have sunk a thousand ships, or would have if I had my way ~ where is my letter to Sir Francis Drake?

Napoleon stuck his arm up his vest after reading one of my letters, and what would Lord Nelson have asked Hardy to do for him had he read my letter before someone shot him first?

Thank heavens Adolf burnt his letter!

As for ordinary mortals, some wrap their present to auntie Joan in them and still others wrap them around uncle Martin’s chestnuts, who would otherwise lose them on Christmas morn as he struggles to adjust his mighty pendulums attached to his very large grandfather’s clock (thank the Lord for Spell Check!).

Looking forward to my letters

People look forward to my letters so much that they ‘wish it could be Christmas every day”. One day they will write a song about it and play it every year with depressing regularity.

This year they are all busy singing to, ‘So this is Christmas and what have you done. Sat in self-isolation it isn’t much fun.” I know, let’s open one of Mick’s Christmas letters and cheer ourselves up (gunshot off stage).

My letters have a sentimental and emotional appeal. They are up there, tugging at the heart strings like that old romantic Christmas Carol, who your mother caught your father with (also Christmas Connie, Christmas Christine and Christmas Cordelia, well, Christmas comes but once a year).

Ahh, the old ones are the best (Connie was 73).

Lovely old Christmas carols

What memories these well-known carols:

“Drug King Wenceslas looked out from his boat to Dover

When the snow is not found out we’ll roll the UK over

Brightly shone the hotel sign, the waiting bus was free

It was worth the trip through several countries and across the sea, He! He!”

And do you remember this one:

“Away in a 4-star I don’t pay for my bed, the tax-payer in England pays for it instead …”

And how could you possibly forget:

“Twinkle, Twinkle celeb star who the F..K do you think you are?

Pontificating up on high?

Spreading all those EU lies.

Twinkle, Twinkle talentless star paid too much, too much by far”

Dear old Christmas Carol, one of Charles Dickens’ favourites. This will be the one year that Ebenezer Scrooge will be looking forward to a visit from the ghosts of Christmas Past, anything has to be better than Father Boris’s Christmas Present.

Important to Keep in Touch During Coronavirus Christmas

Although it is very important to keep in touch during a coronavirus Christmas, I don’t as a rule send the prime minister a Christmas letter, besides he will be far too busy this year reading and listening to fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm. Chris Witty and Sir Patrick Vallance, sorry I don’t know them ~ and neither do you, but there is a sort of chemistry there. It reminds me of that Chad Valley Junior Scientists set I was given at Christmas a long while ago. As I recall, it was a very disappointing present, all smoke and mirrors, bits missing, as incomplete as a Liberal manifesto and it had a very funny smell about it, something slightly fishy.

Send them a Christmas letter? I would not give them the steam off my turkey. What I do like to do, however, is spice up my Christmas offerings with the odd anecdote from Christmases past.

“Please, pretty please do tell us one.”

Well, all right, if you beg nicely.

Once upon a time, long ago, when England was really England, I worked part time as a waiter. I was young once, and in those days I was a teenager. These were the bad old days, before teenagers became entitled and were able to live at home with mum until their 45^th birthday (you can ~ could? ~ always take a loan).

Teenagers in those days were not deprived as they are today. They were lucky, in that they did not have the internet from which to plagiarise articles to pass their exams with and, without keyboards and computers, they had the fun of writing all of their essays out by hand, correcting them by hand and then rewriting them by hand for presentation. This meant that they had less time for anything else, which was good, because there were no smartphones in those days and nothing to twiddle on, no Twatter, Arsebook, Snapcrap and the like. Instead, after school teenagers went out and worked.

I worked at the Talbot Hotel in Oundleshire, a very prestigious establishment, with a long history dating back to Elizabethan times and with a staircase that was said to have come from Fotheringay Castle where Mary Queen of Scots lost her head and on which staircase I almost lost my job for telling two old ladies that Mary was always looking for it in the rooms that they had paid for.

It was a posh place, the Talbot of Oundle, and still is. Standards were high. We had to wear black trousers, white shirt, cummerbund, little white pointed tail jackets and a black dicky bow. We looked like clockwork penguins. We were always well turned out, apart from one person whose flies were never done up, as if, we suspected, by no fault of accident.

It was three days before Christmas, us well turned out and him with his flies undone, that we were called to wait upon a very important table, several tables in fact containing the governors and alumni from Oundle’s prestigious public schools.

I had two salvers: one with Christmas seasoning and the other containing peas on my arm.

Several of we waiters moved along in single file serving our guests of honour. And then it came to her.

She was gorgeous, stunning, wearing a low-cut dress. She had the most diaphanous orbs you could ever imagine ~ yes, her eyes were beautiful. Mesmerised by love, or something that starts with ‘L’ and has the same number of letters, I leant over her and with the seasoning in my hand, asked:

“Would you like stuffing madam?”

The timing could not have been more perfect. Hardly had I realised that I should have used the word ‘seasoning’ than my waiter friend at the side of me, my pal, my very good pal, gave a purposeful nudge to my elbow and off went a spoonful of peas straight down the lady’s cleavage.

Talk about Captain Kirk’s ‘Space, the final frontier’!

And really, what did it sound like: “Madam, can I help you?” As she is reaching down inside, red faced and all a fluster, for those penetrative peas.

Sounds like something out of a Carry On film? How about Carry on Down the Cleavage? Rather that than Carry on Down the Pandemic.

Important to Keep in Touch During Coronavirus Christmas

But what has this got to do with it being very important to keep in touch during coronavirus Christmas? I confess, I have digressed, when my real intention for writing this piece was to say how nice, affectionate and charming Russian Christmas cards are. Different again to the crass and vulgar things that they churn out in the UK.

Every year in the UK, Christmas cards get bigger, which is a problem for my family and friends, for it means that instead of a ‘short’ letter I can really go to town and insert a tome like War & Peace. But British Christmas cards do not just get bigger they become more vulgar each year. In keeping with declining moral standards, smutty innuendo ~which is as traditional as laxatives on Boxing Day ~ has given way to images of a semi-pornographic nature and to captions laced with obscenity. It is enough to make you lie and say that Rubber Band has comedic talent!

How much nicer these traditional Russian cards are. They remind me of the sentimental cards that were produced in wartime England ~ soft, delicate, romantic and affectionate

Of course, they are not really Christmas cards as such, as this is an Orthodox Christian country, and Christmas is celebrated on 7^th January. No, these are, for the sake of accuracy, Happy New Year cards ~Snovam Gordams.

Snovam Gordam (Happy New Year!) I shouted that last year on the stroke of midnight. You did too? Really?

Hmmm, we’d better shout twice as loud this year, as I don’t think He was listening.

By the way, sorry if you did not receive my Christmas card and letter.

No, I shouldn’t think you are!

Leonard Cohen: Waiting for the Miracle ~ A song for 2021

Illustration for Edgar Allan Poe’s Masque of the Red Death
(Image credit: Harry Clarke – Printed in Edgar Allan Poe'sTales of Mystery and Imagination, 1919., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2348546)