Архив метки: traditional family values

Spare Some Change Makes Beggars out of All of Us

Change, Spare Change, All Change, Why Change?

22 September 2024 ~ Spare Some Change Makes Beggars out of All of Us

Have you ever noticed that when you go away for a few weeks, on your return not everything has changed, but some things have and subtly. For example, after my recent sojourn in the UK, I returned to Kaliningrad to find that the vacuum cleaner appliances had strangely disappeared, that someone had half-inched the mat from my office/study/drinking den, that the water jug had vanished, that a small table was where it wasn’t, and that the cat’s bowls had turned from plastic to ceramic. On a not so subtle and more depressing note, I learnt that the neighbour’s cat ~ I used to call her ‘Big Eyes’ ~ had scaled her last plank backwards. She used this technique to descend from a flat roof on the second storey of her owner’s house after her owners cut down the birch tree along whose branches she used to scramble.

Unlike our stay-at-home Ginger, she was an out-and-about sort of cat, a brave and intrepid adventurer, who, alas, was to put too much faith in the mythical tale that cats have nine lives and met with the truth abruptly whilst she was crossing the road.

The old philosophical question is there life after death is problematic enough without appending to that question are cats accorded a similar privilege?

“Of course, cat heaven exists,” cat lovers cry indignantly, but does it follow from this assumption that parity heavens exist for pigs, cows, sheep, chickens and every other animal species that are brought into this world merely to be slaughtered for the tastebud pleasures of carnivores?

Abstractions of this nature, though they may well have once occurred to me in some distant, cynical, cerebral past, found no room in my consciousness on returning to Kaliningrad, for soon I would be fretting about an entirely different dilemma ~ is there life after YouTube?

In the short while I had been away not only had my rug gone west but also YouTube with it, or to be more precise, had thereto been confined. “That’s buggered it,” I thought ~ I am prone to moments of eloquence like this ~ for though I could not give a monkey’s for the loss of Western mainstream media, where would I go with YouTube gone for my daily fix of music, for documentaries of an historical nature and for classic pre-woke TV dramas like 1960s’ Dangerman, filmed in glorious black and white when the use of the term black and white was not endowed with racial undertones and even if it had been nobody British at that time would have given a monkey’s f.ck. Ah, Happy Days indeed!

Sixty minutes searching Google for credible alternatives to the sort of content with which I engage on YouTube was enough to reassure me that whilst life without YouTube was not as we know it ~ YouTube is but one place in the internet’s vast and expanding universe but in itself it seems infinite ~ life without it was not unsupportable.

I found a site I had used in the past which offered a reasonably good selection of archived TV dramas and classic black and white films, and I also upturned a second site which, although containing the sort of stuff I would not touch with a barge polack ~ modern, glossy, tacky and geared to a left-leaning audience ~ tendered the consolation of half a dozen history programmes of a fairly reputable nature.

I was conscious that I was doing something that the so-called entitled millennials are only just coming to terms with in these rapidly changing times: I was having to ‘make do’. The derivation actually precedes the generation to which I belong. It has its origins in wartime slogans, and was born out of the real necessity of making the best of a bad situation, using whatever scant resources were at hand. Making do in the age of misinformation/disinformation, the cast offs and the hand me downs of second- and third-best websites represent a collateral revision of the quid pro quo arrangement of if you show me yours, I’ll show you mine, rehashed by modern politics as so long as you let me show you mine then I’ll let you show me yours.

I sometimes wonder if any of our contemporary politicians have bothered to read Gulliver’s Travels, written and published by Jonathan Swift in 1726, and if the answer is yes, did they find it illuminating. I for one believe that Swift’s seminal work should be made mandatory reading for anyone who is contemplating taking up a career in politics.

Ping Pong You’re Not Wrong

Ping pong, aka table tennis, is a game like many other games, such as cricket, rugby, tennis and football, I can honestly say I have never much cared for. I don’t care much for the tit for tat and the way in which the ball, be it big or small, gets passed back and forth with monotonous regularity between two opposing but rules-based players or carefully hand-picked teams, with no apparent benefit to anyone else outside of the game, give or take a cheer or two, which quickly fade in euphoria’s twilight.

Above: Ping and Pong. It’s batty.

At least in the UK when the sad illusion Democracy has been stripped down naked like the tired old whore she is, which many, out of trained submission or a sense of misplaced respect, shy away from doing, the rules of the game, whose they are and who it is that benefits from them are as transparent as a Nylon negligee (What happened to that in my absence?). Thanks to long experience of the electoral system’s hocus pocus, the who will it be first past the post, we know that whether we make our mark or not, we are guaranteed for the next five years to be saddled with one or the other bunch of ineffectual dunderheads and that, give or take a nuance or two, whichever party claims Number 10 as its prize will be singing, rather badly as usual, from the communal globalist hymn sheet: Money, Money, Money. Please to sing along now. You are all familiar with the refrain.

During my last assignment in the UK, I was treated to the spectacle of this perfectly meaningless political role play, the changing of the old guard ~ ping pong, ping pong … pong, pong, pong. Out with the old and in with the old: the Tories on their way out, Labour on their way in, but significantly rather more out than in and with many of them clearly quite out of it. Bring on the men in white coats. (Sorry I did not mention women; I’m taking a course in misogyny.)

This rotational, completely predictable, seesaw-moment momentum has less to do with change than it does with continuity, as most of the Tories’ acclaimed centre right are so way left of centre that they ought to be in the Labour Party, as many of them effectively are, whilst the Labour party itself knows no longer what it is, what it wants to be and least of all where it is going. Shame it is taking the nation with it. Half of Labour is hard left, half of it is half hearted and the other half is clearly insane (and clearly possess a triple ‘A’ in Maths). Neither Labour or the Cons ever recovered from Tony Blair. Both exhibit incurable symptoms, and the plague they exhale collusively is addling minds and destroying the country.

Nowhere is this emergency better illustrated than when the media cries exultantly that one or other of the old two parties has ‘won it by a landslide’.

The only landslide the public sense is that things are slipping away from them, that things are going from bad to worse. And yet as catastrophic as British life now is, many in the UK are yet to grasp the intelligence that by hook or by crook the old two parties need to be put out to grass. Change is as good as a rest, as they say, and a rest from them is badly needed and, more to the point, excessively overdue.

The Labour and Conservative parties: two old horses out to grass

Above: I think it’s self-explanatory …

To be fair, if that is the same as being honest, Liebour did in its accession usher in some changes, albeit typically hurriedly, typically without much thought and typically in the process breaking most if not at all of its pre-election promises. But as the changes so far instituted are typically Labour in character, they have in the absolute sense changed very little at all. For example, if a Labour government did not raise taxes what a momentous change that would be. But then if Labour did not raise taxes would anybody know they were there?

Whoever it was who thought to dub Labour the party of taxation was a percipient man indeed, so much more than just perspicacious that the chances of him being a woman are nil (Excuse me for being sexist, you see I’m taking this course in misogyny.). But don’t you dare complain, not about being a man when you would rather you were a woman (it’s something you cannot change) and don’t complain about Labour’s tax hikes. You were warned that Liebour would tax you, and tax you into the ground, so why did you vote them in!

It is a fact of life that some things change and some things plainly don’t (Come on now transvestites, don’t get those knickers into a twist!); some things change a lot and others don’t change that much; some things get done for a change, and just for a change some things don’t; and there’s not a lot of change to be had out of six quid for a pint. But there are some things that will never change, though given time they probably will, but by the time they do will it be too late? Let’s talk immigration. Somebody ought to, has to, as it should be abundantly clear by now that that somebody is not Starmer.

Immigration is possibly the one issue that leading up to the General Election the Liebour party did not lie about; perhaps they simply forgot. Those of us who did not vote Labour were right, not far-right mind you, but right that we did not do so, if only for this reason, since with depressing predictability Labour has not done, and has no intention of ever doing, as much as diddly squit to resolve the immigration crisis, a dastardly weaponisation programme which represents the one real threat to the stability of the British nation and the safety of its indigenous people.

Spare Some Change for immigration: the elephant in the political room

Where Labour has excelled itself is channelling more resources into the conflict in Ukraine at a time when we need to squander it least on globalist-led agendas. Do you ever ask yourself what it is that they do with your money which they take in the name of ‘council tax’? Could it be used to foot the bill for conflicts in which we have no legitimate role, even if we started them, and for paving the way for dinghy migrants to live it up in luxury?

Immigration has changed and also it has not. It has not changed in that we still have it, has not changed in that we don’t want it, but has changed inasmuch that want it or want it not, there is a lot more of it than there used to be. Central to this change is that the major EU powers no longer deem it necessary to conceal their complicit role in organising and facilitating the migrant invasion of Britain.

The infectiousness of this invasion is far more virulent and far more lethal than any contrived plandemic could be. Perhaps we should call on dear old Bill. Come on Bill, old boy, whip us up a jab or six to provide the British people with the immunity they so desperately need to protect themselves from Coronomigrant. Violent crime is rampant, acts of terrorism sweep the nation, the police are no longer a force but a branch of the social services and the government is so dismally limp it is crying out for a shot of moral Viagra.

White fight not far right

One thing that was markedly different during recent months in England, which was not necessarily good but understandably necessary as an alternative stay of civil war, was that when the riots came, as come they did and come they will, it was the whiteys on the war path. Now that did make a change!!!

It was no change at Notting Hill Carnival. Yet again it proved to be London’s annual ethnic stab fest. Any other event with a history resembling the mind of an on-the-rampage serial killer would have been banned years ago, as would the Notting Hill Carnival if it was anything other than black. It is patently inconceivable that a white British festival with a similar record of bloodlust would be allowed to continue year on year. Murder or no murder, it would have been denounced from the outset as unfit for ethnic consumption and that without equivocation would have rapidly been the end of that. This year’s Boot Hill incident cost two more people their lives, adding to the festival’s ever increasing death toll. Meanwhile, the Labour government is contemplating doubling down on the British tradition of fox hunting. It seems that rural blood sports must be banned whilst urban ones are tolerated, encouraged one might say. Brrr! it felt as if something just walked over the United Kingdom’s grave. Could that something be two-tier policing?

Over to our new prime minister. He may resemble a disciplinarian, a 1950s’ schoolmaster parachuted strategically in from a time when Britain was really Britain, but as far as ethnics are concerned looks can be deceiving. Did he give the carnival organisers the six of the best he gave the white rioters? Did he give them lines to write, “Thou shalt not stab at the Notting Hill Carnival”? Did he heck as like. He caned himself instead, by forgetting the lines of condemnation the public were waiting to hear from him, either that or the savage events and the fear of being called racist deprived him of his left-wing backbone and left him morally speechless. He eventually did cough something up, but before you could say one rule for them and a different rule for us, and before some impudent scallywag could raise the uncomfortable spectre of policing on a two-tier level, he was banging the same old distraction drum about the number one priority being the need to protect society from the heinous actions of right-wing thugs. As for random knife attacks by men whose names we can’t pronounce and acts of organised terrorism by medieval hostiles (I’ve just had a call from my stockbroker ~ invest in inflatable dinghies), the message from Britain’s political elite is as masters of the hen house they have every right to fill it with as many foreign foxes as the ECHR permits, so just sit back and enjoy your fate.

Immigration: the Fox in the UK hen house

I began this post from the perspective of change and seem to have moved mesmerically into the realm where déjà vu governs the laws of momentum, and yet not everything in the world is as predictable as we would like to think. Those who live in a certain street in Kaliningrad thought they would never see the day when they would get themselves a brand-new pavement, but that day eventually dawned, despite one woman tutting, “It’s taken thirty years!” and now that vital change for which we had all been waiting seems as though it was always thus, that the pavement has always been there.

The same could be said of a certain sub-post office in a certain UK shire town. The post office seems to have been there for as long as memory itself, and mine is quite a long one, but it’s ‘all change’ when you scratch the surface. I am sure that this has got nothing to do with the fact it is run by Asians ~ which British post office isn’t! ~ but everything to do with the erratic hours it keeps. It is the first post office I have ever encountered that opens when it likes, making it an excellent venue whenever you catch it right, because since nobody trusts its opening hours very few people use it, hence the absence of queues. Not having to stand in line makes such a welcome change from a trip to your average post office, where you need to go armed with a sleeping bag and enough provisions to last you a fortnight, and yet it is such an odd phenomenon that it has you asking the question, could this peculiar post office that is more often shut than not, in fact be a front for something else? Like all these foreign food stores that pop up overnight and the multitude of barber’s shops purporting to be Turkish when the owners and all who work in them look and talk Albanian. Perhaps the owners of these businesses are engaged in some other activity, such as laundering, for example. There’s no hard left sign visible outside the coven of Hope Not Hate, but just because you cannot see the twin tubs does not mean that they are not there and the country is not being rinsed.

Whilst every street in every town and every city in England have fallen forfeit to immigration (you may have heard the phrase ‘Our cities have changed beyond recognition’), the streets of Russian Kaliningrad have decidedly changed for the better, that is to say materially and, with the restitution of law and order and regaining of self-respect, which had been partly laid to waste as a repercussion of perestroika, in matters of social decorum.

Whenever I walk the perimeters of Königsberg’s ancient ponds, this variance in urban life does not leap up and out at me like something dark on a no-go street in Peckham but is inviting enough to assail my senses with what we have lost in Britain. The contrast in the cultural climates is visible, audible, palpable, and it starts with the way in which people dress.

From New York to the South Pole, almost everybody these days is hardwired to dressing casual. I suspect that I am one of the few remaining sartorial standard bearers who espouses cravat, frock coat and top hat ~ not forgetting silver-topped cane ~ rather than wear a pair of trainers.

Above: “I don’t as a rule wear any, but I always make sure not to go out with, or in, a strong wind”

Kaliningradians and Kaliningrad visitors from other parts of Russia tend to follow a smart-casual trend. Whereas, as in every other sphere of cultural life, dress code in the UK has taken a turn for the worse and worst, going from ultra-smart to smart-casual, to trendy casual, to half casual, to dumb-down casual to bags of shit.

Who is not acquainted with that funny old Asian man? Let me point him out to you: that’s him there, there, there, over there and over here … See how he wears all sorts of oddments, everything thrown together: the workshop apron, pantaloon trousers, corny ill-fitting jacket bought from yonder charity shop and, of course, a pair of iridescent trainers ~ what lovely colour combinations, orange, yellow and purple. And he is indisputably the best dressed man in Bedford.

Now turn around and cast your gaze on those beautiful English ladies amorphously squashed in over-tight leggings, all bums and large tums, with cattle rings through their noses, shrapnel embedded in brows and lips and covered in head to foot with tats. Isn’t their language colourful: f*ck, f*ck, f*ck. And what is that pervasive smell, no not that smell, this smell! Pooh! It is the town centre gently marinating in the stench of stale and smoking Ganja. Look up, it’s a live one, and he’s heading in our direction! Time to take evasive action! Cross to the opposite side of the street and quick!

UK's city centres are filling up with Zombies

The fundamental difference between Britain’s streets and the streets of Kaliningrad is not confined to sartorial consciousness: manners maketh man (they seem not to maketh UK women). Public behaviour on Kaliningrad’s streets, give or take the inevitable exception, is generally better than it is England. And, with the Russian accent on family values, traditional family groups of traditional Russian heritage freely and with confidence enjoy the streets of their city. Contrast homely scenes like this with the kind of groups you can expect to find, and more’s the pity do, hanging around in England’s cities and degrading its small-town centres.

Lefties would have us believe that the gangs of blacks and Asians, and the johnny-come-lately tribes flooding in on the promise tide of benefits, rights and endless freebies from far-flung parts of the world’s subcontinent are an enriching sight for monocultural eyes. But such postulations are unconvincing even through their glasses. Excelling the attitude and behavioural problems evinced by their white ne’er-do-well counterparts, a pervasive air of ‘up to no good’ hangs above the Ganja cloud and fills the vacuum on Britain’s streets left by the absence of coppers with an ‘at any moment it could all kick off’ incertitude. Menace and apprehension rule. Britain’s streets are not just uncouth, they are gravely infected with passive aggression.

Yes, things have certainly changed from the Britain I once knew and loved. I wonder what the Victorians and Edwardians would make of it. I wonder what those who fought for their country and died in two world wars would make of it. What would Sir Winston Churchill say? We know what Enoch Powell would say, since he said it back in the 1960s. Lord, if only someone had listened to him!

Spare some change, please!

I read somewhere (please tell me that this is not true) that housebreakers in the UK do not qualify for prison sentences until they have been convicted of 26 successive accounts of burglary. It is an indisputable fact that you have got more chance of winning the lottery or stopping the boats at Dover than getting arrested for shoplifting. It’s take your pick skanky ladies and nothing resembling gentlemen, you’ve really nothing to lose. In the unlikely event you get caught in the act, just give the merchandise back and have it away from the shop next door. Nice one, mate: Ha! Ha! Ha! Easy-touch-Britain, innit!

I have no idea if shoplifting is as prevalent in Kaliningrad as it is in every British town and city. I somehow feel it is not. But I do know, as I have witnessed it personally, that Kaliningrad has a boy-racer problem and that those that race are not all boys. Thankfully, however, one of the more applaudable changes has been the city-wide installation of efficacious pedestrian crossings. Gone are the days when we used to huddle in groups of five or more on the opposite sides of the four-lane roads and then, on the count of 10, make a nervous dash for it. Oh, how the drama of youth gives way to prudence in later life!

If someone was to ask me, and I don’t suppose they will, what is the one thing you would like to see changed in Kaliningrad, the answer without a second thought would be the introduction of a law to stamp out dugs that bark incessantly or, better still, to penalise their owners. These must-be mutton-jeff mut-lovers can never have heard of noise pollution, possibly because like the rest of us, they can hear precious little above the row that their barking dugs are making. It’s a dugs life, as someone said, someone who couldn’t spell dogs correctly.

Since the subject of this post is change, I expect that you expect that at some point in the narrative, at this point, for example, the temptation to make some corny remark about change in relation to underpants would finally prove too much for me, but I hate to disappoint you that I am about to disappoint you, because someone might pull them up on me, I mean pull me up on it, and I do not intend to stoop so low, so let’s instead be briefs.

Ringing the changes is happening in a negative way on the Polish border. Always slow and unhelpful, the Polish border authorities are excelling their own track record for putting obstacles in one’s way where none should be encountered, thus holding up one’s journey as though suspending it in empty space by a very strong pair of invisible braces (we’re suspiciously close to pants again!). The object of the exercise appears to be none other than to subject the weary traveller to the torment of terminal boredom or failing in that ambition to simply delay one long enough to make one miss one’s flight. If you have been an unhappy recipient of this apparent change in policy and believe you are being short-changed by conditions of an adverse nature at the Russian-Polish border, here is where you can lodge your complaint:

Against the intolerable conditions on the Russian-Polish border (Kaliningrad)!

I was going to finish this post on change by saying something profound, like ‘things change and that’s a fact, and very often not for the better’. And then it suddenly occurred to me that women in leopard print tights rarely change their spots. So, then I revised my ending to read, ‘if it don’t change it will stay the same’, but whilst I know it will not change anything, I went and changed my mind.

Something for the weekend, sir?

UK Anti-immigration Riots Herald New Dystopian Era
Lies & Democracy are they now the same thing?
Don’t Kill Cash
Britain a Nice Place to Live on the Telly

Image attributions

Beggar: <a href="/ru/”https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/homeless-man-sitting-ground-flat-vector-illustration-desperate-hungry-poor-male-person-sitting-street-near-trash-bin-asking-help-getting-into-financial-trouble-poverty-concept_24644540.htm/#query=street beggar&position=0&from_view=keyword&track=ais_hybrid&uuid=af6b8f40-80ae-4929-ae9a-94b805e40e71″">Image by pch.vector</a> on Freepik

Suit: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Wedding-suit-on-a-stand-vector-clip-art/20642.html

Outline map UK: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/UK-silhouette/55420.html

Playing table tennis: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Kids-play-table-tennis/87262.html

Scotsman: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Orator-in-black-and-white/77202.html

Two horses grazing: https://garystockbridge617.getarchive.net/media/two-horses-grazing-3dbc66?action=download&size=1024 [Arthur B. Davies (American, Utica, New York 1862–1928 Florence)]

Elephant: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Elephant-contour-vector-clip-art/7929.html

Empty room: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Empty-room/70655.html

Fox in the hen house: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Fox-in-hen-house/81729.html

Zombie silhouette: <a href="/ru/”https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/zombie-silhouettes_805714.htm/#fromView=keyword&page=1&position=8&uuid=31cda339-13bb-4ae8-b7a7-d96bb5b9b834″">Image by freepik</a>

Family, Love and Loyalty in Russia

Russia’s Day of Family, Love and Loyalty

Updated: 8 July 2022 ~ First published: 8 July 2020 ~ Family, Love and Loyalty in Russia

On 28 June 2022, it was reported that President Vladimir Putin signed a decree officially establishing 8 July as the Day of Family, Love and Fidelity. The day is devoted to the preservation of traditional family values and encompasses the spiritual and moral education of Russia’s children and teenagers.

Each year, on 8 July, Russia celebrates family, love and loyalty. The celebration coincides with an ancient Orthodox holiday dating back almost 800 years, which is devoted to the saints Pyotr and Fevronia, who became symbols of devotion and family harmony.

Various events are held throughout Russia to mark the occasion. Cultural institutions, such as museums and libraries, run special programmes, which include lectures and thematic exhibitions. Interactive activities range from learning how to paint souvenirs to participating in yoga classes and, in the larger cities, concerts and firework displays are held. Medals for love and loyalty are awarded to those families whose marriages exemplify love, strength, devotion and family unity. Whatever the character or the scale of the event each embodies the same belief, which is that individual and societal stability, their moral and spiritual foundation, are inextricably linked to the conservation and promotion of traditional family values.

Family, Love and Loyalty in Russia

As a token of today’s emphasis on family, love and harmony, our neighbours left us a gift on the window sill this morning: chamomile flowers, which, according to the ancient tradition, represent innocence and fidelity, along with other garden produce of a more physically sustaining nature ~ which I was pleased to have with my dinner!

Whilst I can safely say that in the UK traditional family values share something in common with the Invisible Man (sorry, person), take heart! ~ in the UK we do celebrate International Women’s Day (from a purely feminist angle, mind), are tickled pink during Gay Pride Month and, oops, how could I possibly forget, Black Lives Matter. Time do you think, for a rethink?

Reference
Putin signed a decree establishing the Day of Family, Love and Fidelity on July 8 Russian news EN (lenta-ru.translate.goog)

How to deal with a vaccinated liberal family member at Christmas

They forgot to leave a forwarding address …

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

Preamble

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

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

How to deal with a vaccinated liberal family member at Christmas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dealing with a vaccinated liberal family member at Christmas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Try to limit the number of households

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

If possible, host events outside

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

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

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

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

It Always Snows in Russia!

… and sometimes it doesn’t

Published: 22 January 2021 ~ It always snows in Russia

Before moving here, whenever I mentioned to a fellow Brit that I was visiting Kaliningrad, I would be asked, “Where’s that?” As soon as I had educated them geographically, among the predictable responses based on prejudice and cliché, an old stalwart was, “Russa! Brrr, it’s cold out there …”

Try as I might to explain to them that since Kaliningrad was the westernmost point of Russia the climate was not that much different to the UK’s, the stock images of frozen rivers, ushanka hats, voluminous fur coats and, of course, snow ~ lots and lots of snow ~ proved impossible to shovel away.

It always snows in Russia!

When I first came to Kaliningrad in winter 2000, there was snow, and lots of it (see Kaliningrad First Impression), and I do recall seeing a tower-mounted digital thermometer somewhere in the city giving a temperature reading of minus 27 degrees. Harbouring the same stereotypical notions of Russia’s salient attributes, this first encounter pleased me no end, providing me with photographic evidence to confirm what Brits had always known, that Russia was cold and that it snowed a lot.

There was more snow to Russify my experience when I travelled to Kaliningrad in 2002. We entered the exclave via Lithuania, where it was also snowing heavily, and the journey by train across the snow-bound wastelands was all that the heart could desire.

This stereotype was to melt away, however, in the winter of 2004. This was the year that a new-found friend of ours looking for adventure and a woman, decided to accompany us on our Christmas trip to Kaliningrad. He knew that it was cold (it’s cold out there in Russia), and his knowledge had been bolstered by the tales that I had told and the photographs that I had shown him. He was excited, and set about preparing himself for Siberia, buying up large stocks of woolies, U.S. military surplus coats and the all-important long johns. His suitcases were fat and heavy.

Who said that it always snows in Russia?

Not disappointed, in the first three days of our arriving in Kaliningrad, the temperature had dropped well below those in the England we had left and, more importantly, there was snow, lots of swirling snow. And then, quiet suddenly, the mercury shot up the thermometer tube, the snow melted, the rain came, and it stayed that way for a month. As I believe I have said before, there is a world of difference between Kaliningrad in the winter rain and Kaliningrad in the snow. Those who live here will know what I mean.

Last year, winter 2019-2020, was like everything else that year, miserable. It was, literally, wishy washy: a winter of muck and puddles.

So, how refreshing this winter to see some snow. It has not been that heavy, but it has been persistent and cold enough for successive falls to settle and to transform the city and regional landscape into a childhood memory of how winters used to be.

Oh, but it’s alright for me, or so my critics tell me. I don’t have to go anywhere. I don’t have to scrape the ice and snow off the car in the morning and then brave the roads on my way to work. On the contrary, I can sit at home, look out of the window and admire the Christmas-card view. And they are right. But I am unrepentant and remain that way. There have to be some advantages in getting starry, and this is one of the few.

Come rain, snow, hail or shine my wife goes out whatever, and this is as it should be. Someone has to do the shopping. And she also has to obtain those much-needed photos for Arsebook, which I can then requisition and use here for my blog.

Russia! It always snow there!

To bring things up to date, for the past several days or more it has been snowing lightly, and today, at the time of writing, it was at it again. Temperatures are low enough to ensure that what comes down stays put; just enough for picturesque, but not enough for concern.

This morning, the scene at the back of the house through the patio door was wonderful. It had snowed quite a lot during the night and the rooftops of the old German houses all had snow on them, some in total, some in places, and the fruit trees had become crystalline, petrified, the smaller branches and twigs very nearly pure white and the trunks and boughs though not completely covered with snow were artistically contrasted by what had collected upon them.

Our pear tree was the most wonderous thing. One side of the trunk was peppered with a white drift of snow and the rest, the smaller branches and twigs, coated into nobly clumps, so that taken as a whole it resembled a giant cauliflower. The rest of the garden had all but disappeared, replaced by a smooth white plateau, except for the Buddha, and he was wearing a snow-white hat in the unmistakeable shape of a British policeman’s helmet. Wherever did he get it from?

Kaliningrad Buddha wearing a snow hat. It always snows in Russia! — No he is not a silly Buddha!

Later, as I was stood in the kitchen making a cup of tea, my eyes caught movement and lots of it through the gap between two houses, which for most of the year is obscured by leaves and foliage. All I could see was different coloured objects darting hither and thither, and then it dawned on me that without the obstructing verdure the small park across the road was visible and what I was witnessing was the congregation of numerous families, mothers with their children, and that the different coloured objects, some zipping across the plateau and others sailing down the banks from every conceivable angle, were children on their sledges.

Children sledging. It always snows in Russia! — **Children on sledges, Kaliningrad, Russia, January 2021**

Olga, who walked through the city centre yesterday, said how delightful it was to see children with their parents playing snowballs and whooshing about on sledges. It was a good old-fashioned traditional family sight, and it reminded her of her youth. It reminded me of mine as well. Whenever there was snow, which became less and less frequent in England as the years rolled by, we children would hammer each other with snowballs. We also had a sledge, a one-of-its-kind made from the light alloy parts of a scrapped Flying Fortress, a B17 bomber, salvaged from Polebrook’s United States’ wartime aerodrome. What happened to this culturally interesting and nowadays valuable item? One of my brothers, with considerably less acumen than myself for the singularity of historical artefacts, deciding that he would clean out one of the family barns after a forty-year hiatus, skipped the sledge and kept the junk. Oh, don’t worry, we take every opportunity to remind him of his folly, in no uncertain terms.

From the kitchen to the living room, looking out of the window at the Konigsberg house opposite that has never had anything done to it at least since perestroika, I noted that the two toilets lying in the back garden ~ where else? ~ had become snow toilets, a rare sight indeed, but not as exclusive or controversial as the giant phallus, complete with two enormous snowballs, that some imaginative and enterprising young men would erect a day or two later somewhere in Kaliningrad.

This made the news, and, of course, Facebook. Personally, we had a bit of fun with this, by which I mean we conducted an experiment. Olga posted the media story to Facebook, and then we sat back ready to compare the different reactions from Russian commentators and those in Britland. As we anticipated, the Russian response was one of condemnation and disgust, whilst the Brits reacted in a flamboyant spirit that ranged from artistic criticism to unbridled glee.

Me? I just felt sorry for the virtue of virgin snow, but I consoled myself with the thought that outside of our circle something like this would never be condoned in the UK for fear that it would offend the delicate sensibilities of feminists, race-grievance wardens and the entire woke community: a giant phallus made of snow! Sexist! Racist!

Snowballs!