I spy with my little eye something beginning with bull….
(or How interference can go badly wrong …)

Published: 23 July 2020

I was sitting here in Kaliningrad, Russia, trying to avoid all contact with UK news, enjoying an old episode of The Avengers. The episode I was watching was a very early one, from the days when Ian Hendry was the star and Patrick Macnee’s John Steed was still in his embryonic stage. As a piece of television history, it was interesting to revisit but paled into relative insignificance against the style, panache, flamboyance and fantasy for which the later series became to be known.

Just as I was getting wistful about the demise of the spy-fi genre and thinking what a nice change these 1960s’ British programmes make from the politically correct obsessed and historical revisionist dramas, now the staple trade of UK television, I flicked onto Google News and was enraptured to find that the UK media, presumably having run out of things to say about coronavirus, was currently regaling us with a story so Brian Clemens in nature that I could almost hear the click of his typewriter.

The online newspaper headline read: ‘Coronavirus: Russian spies target Covid-19 vaccine research’.

 My, what a cracker, I thought. With a bit more imagination this BBC article could be all bowler hats, furled umbrellas and impeccably mannered old-world spies, but coming from the BBC it couldn’t and, of course, it wasn’t.

It was one of those headlines, you know the sort, full of promise and expectation but no real substance to back it up. Within three short paragraphs of the article opening we were already out of John le Carré territory and sinking into the murkier world of innuendos, unfounded allegations, hearsay, rumour and speculation. Indeed, try as it might to steer us in one direction, and believe me it did try,  the plotline twisted and swerved so much that the ride could not have been more ropey had we been roaring along in John Steed’s Bentley on the edge of Tall Story Road struggling to contain ourselves after finding the brakes had been tampered with.

And then, just as I was about to make allowances, since before the days of the PC lovies the BBC produced some quite applaudable stuff, it all became so predictable, so pithy and prosaic. Prof somebody or other from a famous UK university (that sounds quite Avengerish, doesn’t it!) spoilt the plot completely with his announcement that we are all at it, which is to say hacking around on the internet. He suggested that the Chinese do it, the Americans do it and even we in glass-house Britain do it! And how outrageous is that!

This tawdry end to what started out to be a story more unbelievable than Piers Morgan ranting just because he gets paid for it, ended up like something from Get Smart! I switched off and read one of my old Noddy books, an unexpurgated, non-PC purged, pre-revisionist edition, published long before poor old Enid B was sent the same way as Enoch ~ there’s an awful lot of statues in England’s heritage wilderness.

I was just wondering if there would ever be a PC update on Noddy in which Enid Blyton’s policeman would have to deal with a BLM riot, when I spotted another article* on the spy-fi theme and init some very interesting reader responses.

Do not expect too much from the article itself. Reading has never been the same since liberals took spanking out of the The Beano, but the comments demonstrate a more incisive knowledge of what is going on than the media give Jo Public credit for. (I have quoted the following verbatim, with no editing on my part.)

From what I can glean about There were something like 300 social media bot accounts accused of being Russian intelligence. Those accounts posted both pro Brexit and anti Brexit material because they were commercial bots attempting to generate likes and retweets. It think the top one got something like 2,000 views and 100 likes! compare that to the government spending tax payer money to send leaflets through every door urging people to vote remain and a whole host of foreign politicians being lined up, including Obama, telling us we should remain or else and the 24/7 project fear anti Brexit stories in media including the BBC along with celebs and lovies rolled out across the airwaves telling us how racist it was to want self determination and not be ruled by a bunch if foreign plutocrats and technocrats who issue diktats upon us. I mean the President of our closest ally was flown into Britain to threaten us but that isn’t foreign interference, nope but some random Twitter bot with 50 views won Brexit and definitely is LOL (Dan Brown)

They do say that bad things come in threes, so I am sitting here wondering what the final tale in the meddling trilogy will be as we romp our way through the current instalment of spiffing yarns about Russian interference. But do not get too excited. If the second episode is anything to go by, the third will be a repeat.

Stop me if you have heard this one before, but Was there Russian meddling in the Brexit referendum? (Today’s headline (22 July 2020) from The Guardian.) Here is your second episode, following swiftly on the heels of the spy-fi adventure about Covid-19. But stay tuned, as meddling and interference stories are like muggers in London’s Brixton: they often travel in 3s or more!

The simple answer for the rehash is that in the matter of timing it ties in nicely with the Covid story, and as Brexit is imminent liberals still insist that someone, somewhere, has got to take the wrap.  

I suspect that the difficulty liberals have in accepting their defeat lies in its broader and more damning ramifications, that Brexit represents a firm, unequivocal and absolute rejection of their ideological agenda. But surely, even the most in-denial liberals have had time to adjust to the truth, as unpalatable for them as it is, that in the matter of Brexit they were fairly and squarely trounced. A democratic vote was taken, and they were simply, but honestly, outvoted. Leave won the day.

I have it on good authority, but from a source I cannot reveal, that John Steed, John Drake, Napoleon Solo and Maxwell Smart are unanimous in their view that foreign influences, like Chaos and Thrush, are less than ‘highly likely’ (thank you Theresa May (her only contribution)) to have been involved and that a more plausible place to lay the blame would be at the door of the UK’s homegrown enemy The Ministry of Unwanted and Unasked for Societal Change.  But the real coup for the victorious leave camp, came, ironically, from an own-goal scored by remain’s partisan media.

Remain media influenced Brexit

The media’s attempt to thwart the democratic process before during and after the Brexit referendum pushed too far, grew self-hysterical and ended up as overkill, exposing itself in the process. Legacy Britons, who from the left’s perspective were looking comfortably soporific after year upon year of PC bullying, suddenly woke up, and in so doing found that they were a lot further down Sheeple Road than they could ever imagine. They were ready at last to listen to the warning voice of our ancestors: this is not the Yellow Brick Road, this is the road to a very dark place where you just don’t want to go. At last it had become clear that the slippery slope just had to be stopped because if not, the next stop was the Twilight Zone.

Now, there was a good programme, a very good programme. Do you remember that episode about cloak and daggers, espionage, clandestine goings on, spies in trilbies and raincoats, and in the end it was all just smoke and mirrors? Therein lies the answer. Think of the UK as a backyard full ~ too full ~ of things, nasty, uncomfortable things and every which way you turn all is going terribly wrong. If this was your neoliberal legacy wouldn’t you want to divert attention away from inside the yard, to conjure up fictions, extraneous threats, to point the finger elsewhere?

Reversing up a little, in John Steed’s Bentley preferably, I return to The Guardian headline, which I purposefully truncated. You see, the headline actually reads ‘Was there Russian meddling in the Brexit referendum? The Tories just didn’t care ‘ (my underlining).

This article, together with similar fare from the liberal press, is about trying to get a derailed Labour Party back on track. The question of meddling is less important than Tories not caring ~ so vote for Labour (as there is no one else). You get the picture. Yet another case of move along please, there is nothing here to see.

Of the many episodes of The Avengers that I deem classic and which once watched is never forgotten is ‘The Hour that Never Was’. You will not get the same entertainment value from the political pages of the UK media as you will from watching The Avengers, but one thing you can be sure of finding is a lot of ‘never was’. It should, of course, ‘never have been’ but unfortunately ‘it is’.

✔What Really Matters

Reference

*https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/coronavirus/outrageous-that-russia-trying-to-steal-or-sabotage-vaccine-research-raab/ar-BB16Vgu9?ocid=spartan-dhp-feeds {link no longer active 12/02/2022]

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