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Kaliningrad beyond the headlines of the West

What I like about Kaliningrad

Updated 18 April 2022 | First published: 2 March 2021 ~ Kaliningrad beyond the headlines of the West

[INTRO} I wrote this piece over a year ago, at a time when western media had nothing better to do than push a hysteria-fomenting narrative about the coronavirus pandemic; now, apparently, it has nothing better to do than to push a hysteria-fomenting narrative about the situation in Ukraine. Bearing this in mind, I dutifully revisited my post to see if anything had changed regarding my opinion of life in Russia and to what extent if any western media had succeeded in convincing me that I would be happier in the UK than if I remained a sanctioned Englishman living in Kaliningrad. I am pleased, but not surprised, to say that other than one or two grammatical improvements, there was nothing to revise! Here’s that post again …

We left the UK for Kaliningrad in winter 2018, but things were far from settled. Over the next twelve months I would have to return to the UK three or four times to renew my visa and to obtain official documents and then return again to pay an extortionate sum of money for a notarised apostille, a little rosette-looking thing verified by a notary that once clipped to the official documents could be used to complete my Leave to Remain in Russia. It was expensive; it was a rigmarole; but obtaining Leave to Remain meant that opening visas would be a thing of the past.

The last time that I was in the UK was December 2019. I returned to Kaliningrad just in time for the New Year celebrations and a month or so afterwards was granted Leave to Remain. We had intended to return to the UK in April for a month, as we had some business to attend to, but before we could do that coronavirus came along and the rest, as they say, is history.

In a previous article I revealed the circumstances which persuaded us to leave the UK and move to Kaliningrad. Now, with December 2019 to the present date being the longest uninterrupted period that I have been in Kaliningrad, it would seem appropriate that I pause to reflect on what it is about Kaliningrad that drew me to it and continues to endear and fascinate.

Our friend, the late Victor Ryabinin, used to refer to Kaliningrad and its surrounding territory as ‘this special place’, and I am with him on that. Whether it is because I see Kaliningrad through his eyes and feel it through his heart, I cannot rightly say. Certainly, his outlook and philosophy on life influenced me and my intuition bears his signature, but I rather imagine that he perceived in me from the earliest time of our friendship something of a kindred spirit, someone who shared his sensibility for the fascination of this ‘special place’.

Nevertheless, my feelings for Kaliningrad are in no way blinkered by a Romanticist streak, which, yes, I do have. If Victor could describe himself as a cheerful pessimist, then I have no qualms in describing myself as a pragmatic Romanticist. But I am no more or less a stranger to Kaliningrad’s flaws and imperfections than I am to my own.

When we arrived in Kaliningrad on a very cold day in winter 2018 to make arrangements for moving here, we were thrown in at the deep end. Early in the morning, still tired from our flight the night before, we had official business that would not wait, which meant trekking off to one of the city’s less salubrious districts. We had given ourselves sufficient time, allowances having been made for the usual protracted queuing, but on reaching our destination discovered that the office we were bound for was working to a different timetable than the one advertised, and consequently we had a two-hour wait before we would be seen! Asking some kind people if they would reserve our place in the queue, we ventured out to a small eatery, a cubicle on the side of the road, for a coffee and a bite to eat. I wrote in my diary:

“Outside, we were confronted yet again by downtown Kaliningrad at its ‘finest’: those ubiquitous concrete tower blocks, stained, crumbling and patched; pavements cracked, ruptured and sunken; kerbstones akimbo; grass verges churned by the wheels of numerous vehicles so that they resembled farmyard gateways; small soviet-era fences rusting and broken; and roads so full of potholes that I began to wonder if it was 1945 again and looked anxiously above me to check for the presence of Lancasters.

When I returned to Kaliningrad from England in December 2019, I wrote:
“I am not sure whether I love Kaliningrad in spite of its imperfections or because of them”.

Kaliningrad beyond the headlines of the West

They say that it is people that make places what they are, and it is a difficult-to-disprove logic. In the UK, for example, left-leaning commentators, liberal media editors, state-blamers and apologists are continually referring to ‘disadvantaged’ people from ‘deprived areas’, whereas in my experience it is people who deprive areas not areas that deprive people and the only disadvantage is yours, if you should wander into these areas by mistake.

Case in point: Back in the 1990s I had a female acquaintance who lived in a notorious concrete citadel in south London’s Peckham; her reputation I was assured of, but when I visited her one late afternoon in autumn, my knowledge of the Badlands where she lived was incipiently less important to me than my amorous intent. Ahh, the follies of youth!

When it came time to leave, I was ready to phone for a taxi. It was then that she informed me that after dark taxis refused to enter the estate, in fact the entire area! I suggested hailing a black cab in the street and was told that black cabs were as “rare ‘round here as rocking horse s!*t!”.

There was nothing for it: I would have to walk. I cannot say that I was unduly perturbed by this prospect. I was young, well relatively young, and these were the days of my London-wide pub crawls, which would take me to every corner of London no matter which corner it was.

On this particular evening, I had not walked far before I espied my first pub. I was still some distance from it, and though the light from the one or two working streetlamps was dim, the building was easily distinguished as the front was bathed in a low, lurid glow.

As I drew closer, I discovered to my surprise that someone had propped a large mattress on the side of the pub wall and had set light to it. It must have been very damp, the proverbial piss-stained mattress I suppose, because the conflagration was limited to a slow, puthering, smoulder.

Being the Good Samaritan that I am, I popped my head around the pub door and called to the chap behind the bar, “Hey, did you know that there is a burning mattress strapped to the side of your pub?” I need not have felt so daft for saying this, as, barely looking up from his newspaper, the barman grunted in reply, “It’s not unusual around here, mate.”

I had not walked far from The Burning Mattress pub before I found another: The Demolition Inn. All of the windows on the pavement side were smashed, and one pathetic light shone miserably through the broken glass in what otherwise would be a superb and original 1920s’ doorway. I couldn’t just walk past!

The place was empty and quiet, but it had not always been. Evidence had it that not too long ago it had been extremely lively. In one corner there was a pile of broken furniture and that which was still standing had bandaged legs and strung-up backs. The mirror behind the bar was bust, western-film style, and all of the more expensive bottles, the shorts, had been removed from the shelves and the optics, presumably for their own safety.

I never did ask what had happened. It just did not seem the polite thing to do. I just ordered a pint from the man behind the bar, who had a lovely shining black eye and his arm in the nicest of slings, and spent the next thirty minutes on my own in this disadvantaged pub, philosophically ruminating on the nasty way in which bricks and mortar and the wider urban environment deprived people to such an extent that there was nothing they could do but set light to piss-stained mattresses, smash up backstreet pubs, terrify London cabbies and (a popular sport in London’s predominantly ethnic areas) mug the hapless white man.

So, what can we conclude from this? Most large towns and cities have rundown areas, but the difference between the rundown areas in Kaliningrad and those that we know and avoid in London and other UK cities ~ the ‘deprived areas’, as they are called ~ is that you are less likely to be deprived of your possessions, your faculties even your life, whilst walking through the Kaliningrad equivalents of the UK’s infamous sink estates. Although, to be precise, such equivalents do not exist.

Thus, without sounding too fanciful, let us agree that it is people ~ the way they act, talk, behave, dress and generally conduct themselves in public ~ that makes a place what it is. An observation that applies to anywhere ~ be it a 1920s’ terraced street, a 1970s’ concrete estate, a pedestrianised city centre, anywhere ~ from region to region, country to country.

I am not about to make any silly sweeping statements about what Russian people are really like. I could not accomplish this with any degree of validity if someone was to ask me to ‘sum up’ British people (not the least because true British are lumped together with people from foreign lands, who in appearance and behaviour are anything but British, and yet have a stamp in their passport that contradicts good sense) simply because every individual is different no matter where he or she hails from. What I can say hand on heart is that in the 22 years that I have been coming to Kaliningrad, I have had the good fortune to meet, and in some instances become friends with, people of the highest calibre in this small corner of Russia.

It is true that in June 2019 we lost Victor Ryabinin, which was and still is an inconsolable loss, and tragedy would overtake us again in November 2020, when our friend and Victor’s protégé, Stas Konovalov, who helped us through the emotional period of Victor’s death and with whom we shared so many good times, died also. For the second time in less than two years, irreplaceable people had been taken from us. We continue to miss them both.

As it had been for Stas and Victor, history plays an important part in my relationship with Kaliningrad. There is, of course, my own personal history of Kaliningrad, an interaction that stretches back over two decades, and then the energy of the greater past that flows from antiquity into the present. In Kaliningrad, and its region, the past and present parallel each other. There are times and places where the past seems so close that you feel all you need to do is reach out, pull back the curtain and take its hand in yours.

“There is something magnetic in this city; it pulled some of the world’s most significant people into it as it has pulled me. I cannot explain this magic, but I know that this is my city.”
Victor Ryabinin

For some, this confluence of the past has more disturbing connotations. My wife’s mother, who is attuned to the ‘otherness’ of our existence, complains that although she likes Kaliningrad, there is something inescapably ‘heavy’ about it, defined by her as emanating from its dark Teutonic and German past. And I am inclined to agree with her. But I do not share her more gloomy interpretation of the dark side or its negative affect. For me, the cloud has a silver lining: it is profundity and, at its core, cultural sensitivity, interlaced with creative energy. Indeed, creativity and creative people thrived and flourished in Königsberg and that legacy, I am pleased to say, lives on to this day.

Victor Ryabinin painting of Königsberg — **Königsberg ~ the retrospective world of artist Victor Ryabinin**

Whilst the bricks and mortar of Königsberg’s ruins ~ the haunting landscape in which Victor Ryabinin spent his susceptible childhood ~ may have largely been replaced, the spirit of the old city and the spirits of all those who passed through it, whether peacefully or violently during times of war, are ever present. And I earnestly believe that the energy of our two departed friends, Victor and Stas, walk among the living here as countless others do who were brought to this place by fate.

Königsberg in ruins — **Königsberg after allied bombing ~ the childhood landscape of Victor Ryabinin**

Modern Kaliningrad beyond the headlines of the West — **Kaliningrad 2019**

Victor wrote that “there is something magnetic in this city; it pulled some of the world’s most significant people into it as it has pulled me. I cannot explain this magic, but I know that this is my city.”

I experienced a similar revelation on that cold, snow-bound night, back in the year 2000, when I was standing on the forecourt of Kaliningrad station . It was strong then and is strong now, and knowing it as I do, it no longer surprises me that I am living here today.

Kaliningrad beyond the headlines of the West ~ Kaliningrad station

I was told by someone, not by Victor himself, that Victor believed that no matter how we felt about the past, we have to live in the present. I never did get chance to ask him whether by that he meant that we had no choice but to live in the present or that we each had a moral imperative to do so, but whichever version you choose, I would qualify both by adding that to a certain extent we can pick and mix, take what we need from the past and present and leave the rest behind.

In my case, the past and present converge, and I am attracted to modern-day Kaliningrad as much as I am fascinated by its East Prussian, German and Soviet history.

When English people call me out, asking pointedly what it is I like about Kaliningrad. I reply, glibly: “What’s not to like?”

Of course, I start with the historical perspective ~ it would not be me if I didn’t ~ referring to the Teutonic Order, ancient Königsberg, Königsberg’s fate during the Second World War and its Soviet reincarnation. I emphasise what a fascinating destination it is for those who are interested in military history and woo antique and vintage dealers with seductive tales of dug-up relics, the incomparable fleamarket and colourful descriptions of alluring pieces hidden away in the city’s antique shops.

Kaliningrad flea market: Kaliningrad beyond the headlines of the West — **Relics of Königsberg & Soviet Kaliningrad’s past**

Then I go on to say that Kaliningrad is a vibrant and dynamic city, a city of contrasts, of surprises; I talk up its superb bars and restaurants, the variety and price of the beer, the museums and art galleries, the excellent public transport facilities, the attractive coastal resorts that are a mere forty minutes away and cost you two quid by train or a tenner by taxi, the UNESCO World Heritage Curonian Spit, the small historic villages, how friendly the natives are to visitors and, when the wife is not about, the presence of many beautiful women.

Above: Kaliningrad region’s main coastal resorts: Svetlogorsk & Zelenogradsk

*********Editorial note [18 April 2022]********
In the paragraphs to follow, I refer to the onerous restrictions which at the time of writing were impacting international travel in the name of coronavirus. Since then, you will have probably noticed that we have entered a new, dramatically more restricting chapter in the history of international travel, thanks to the West’s anti-Russian hysteria and its sanction-futile attempts to isolate the largest country on Earth. This ill-advised and not very well thought through economic warfare programme has added multiple layers of estranging complexity for global travellers everywhere, not just for potential visitors who want to leave the West to travel to Kaliningrad. From a purely selfish standpoint, these self-defeating impositions have merely made the ‘special place’ that Kaliningrad is to me that little bit more special, its taboo status, difficult-to-get-to location and mythicised risk to westerners making my ‘secret holiday destination’ even more enticing, albeit, ironically, somewhat less secret since in the latest round of Russophobia it has been singled out as a strategic military obstacle to the New World Order aspirations of neoliberal globalism.

You will also find in my later comments evidence supporting Russia’s assertion that the West’s attempts to stigmatise and degrade its international standing and denigrate its culture did not start with Ukraine. The events that we see unfolding today have been a long time in the making and by comparing my honest depiction of life in Kaliningrad with life as you know it in the UK, you should begin to understand why Russia’s traditional cultural ethos inflames the rancour of the West and why it fuels a burning desire in its governments to corrupt, transform and replace that culture with something sub-standard resembling their own. All I can say is Heaven forbid!
*********End of Editorial note [18 April 2022]********

Admittedly, as with everywhere else in the world, access to Kaliningrad and accessibility with regard to its facilities have suffered restrictions through the outbreak of coronavirus, but hopefully it will not be long before the borders are open again. Before coronavirus struck, I was looking forward to excursions into Poland and to Vilnius, Lithuania ~ one of my favourite cities ~ and I want to make that train trip across Russia to Siberia.

As I say, what’s not to like?

Kaliningrad beyond the headlines of the West

Kaliningrad region Kaliningrad beyond the headlines of the West

Above: Scenes from Kaliningrad and its Baltic Coast region

I realise, of course, that this is not what most English people expect or even want to hear. The UK media has done a good demolition job on Russia over the years, especially Kaliningrad. True, each year that goes by, as things improve here and grow inversely worse in the West, the UK media is finding it increasingly difficult to slag Kaliningrad off. Who can forget its failed propaganda coup in 2018, when it pulled every trick in the book in an attempt to terrify British fans from travelling to Russia for the World Cup?! The plan backfired spectacularly, since the fans that trusted in their own intuition and came to Kaliningrad in spite of media hype were later to report how immensely they enjoyed themselves. What an ‘own goal’ for the West and an embarrassing one at that!

Nevertheless, UK and American liberals continue to bang their conspiratorial heads against the door of this nation state, taking solace in the belief that should they ever run out of tall and sensational stories, there’s always Kaliningrad’s ‘military threat’, to latch onto. Simultaneously, they promise to bestow on Mother Russia ~ as if she is an ‘it’ or an ‘other’ (now, isn’t that just typical!) ~ the rights equivalent of the Emperor’s New Clothes, and all for the knock-down bargain price of Russia becoming a vassal state of the New World Liberal Disorder.

When I am asked about Kaliningrad, I respond to the critics by saying that I can only tell it how I find it, from my point of view, and that the Kaliningrad that I know is not the one readily fictionalised by UK mainstream media. They listen, but I suspect that Brits being Brits they routinely dismiss me as a latter-day Lord Haw Haw, even though the only hawing I do is when reflecting on their entrenched dogmas I allow myself a good chuckle.

However, there is one thing about Kaliningrad that has changed decisively for me: When I first came here, I was a tourist. I came for the good times; I had a good time; and then I went home until the next good time. I was a tourist.

In those days Kaliningrad was my ‘secret destination’. No one I knew in the West had ever heard of it, and that’s just the way I liked it!

Holiday venues are like that, they exist in the distance of your life, somewhere on the periphery. It’s a bit like having a mistress, or so they tell me: you can call round when it pleases you, take your pleasure, vow one day that you will move in together and then return to your life and forget it, until that is of course holiday time comes round again.

The risk is, however, that by returning time and time again ~ to places not mistresses (although …) ~ you develop friendships, and before you know it you have become a part of their life and they a part of yours. Your lives become enmeshed. You learn about each other’s hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, dreams and aspirations. You gain an informed insight into each other’s past and the course your lives have taken, and whilst you are living in each other’s lives fate, which is working behind the scenes, is quietly writing you into its narrative

The point at which you find yourself no longer living on the outside but looking in is indistinct, but it occurs somewhere at that imperceptible juncture where you are not only sharing the ‘ups’ of people’s lives but also the ‘downs’.

This is particularly true when you fall into the raw, barely consolable emotion, grief, in which fused as one by pain and despair, you eventually emerge on the other side less intact than you were but brothers in arms and sorrow. Such experiences are not peculiar to me or to Kaliningrad, or for that matter to any one time and place; they are timeless, universal. But it is these experiences that will ultimately determine which are the stations on your way and which your final destination.

And do you know what is most awesome? It is that you never know where it will be until after you arrive there.

Mick Hart & Olga Hart in Svetlogorsk — **Zelenogradsk in the sun … It’s not always cold in Russia!!**

Harry & Meghan the sad case of déjà vu

How to make history repeat itself to your advantage …

Published: 16 March 2021 ~ Harry & Meghan the sad case of déjà vu

Have you ever experienced déjà vu ~ you know, when you instinctively feel that you have lived through something before; that you are experiencing something that you have already experienced?

When the news first broke that Prince Harry was to marry Meghan Markle I, like so many other people, thought oh dear, it can only end in tears. Doubtlessly, the UK media and presumably others were of a different opinion, that it could only end in adverse publicity for the Royals, some extra pocket money and lotsa dough for the media.

From the media’s viewpoint not only would the inevitable break with the Royal Family make good copy, but it would also enable them ~ at least the dominant liberal faction of the press ~ to indulge themselves in their favourite preoccupation, which, when they are not sniping at Russia, is Royal Family bashing.

Back in the days of Tony Blair, days which most old socialists can barely bring themselves to talk about ~ you don’t broadcast it when you’ve been had, do you? ~ their more limp-wristed colleagues in the liberal camp longed for the end of the monarchy, envisaging instead a new Federal era with Tony Blair as president. Ironically, most of those who had this nickel-plated dream are tarnished by the memory, which is why so many liberals hate our Tony’s guts.

Harry & Meghan the sad case of déjà vu

I got into conversation about my déjà vu feeling with my old drinking partner Reggie Vallance from Shadwell in east London, known to his friends as ‘Call Me Cynical’, who has an opinion about everything.

The conversation began with my remark about déjà vu in the context of the no-longer Royals, Harry and Meghan.

“Well,” says Call Me Cynical, “it stands to reason dunnit. Think Princess Di and old Ken Doddy…”

“Er, no,” I interrupted, “You’re confusing Dodi Fayed with Ken Dodd the English comedian.”

“Strewth, you’re right,” said Call Me Cynical, “One had way too much hair and teeth and was British and the other had way too much money, a good suntan and there weren’t nothin’ English about him at all. OK, I stand corrected. Now, where was I? Right, think of his nationality, think of his colour, think of the alleged reaction of the Royal Family, think of how this ‘acquaintance’” ~ he said this last word slowly and with a certain emphasis ~ “compromised the Royals and then think of the reaction of the press? Got it? Well, there you are my son: no wonder when you think ‘arry and Mugup …”

“Meghan,” I corrected him.

“Who” he floundered, “Meghan mugged Harry?”

We seemed to have jumped a little here and were swinging about aimlessly.

“Listen Tarzan,” I retorted, Cynical was a large lad, “what’s this got to do with …”

“Turn those bloody drums off! Sorry,” Cynical resumed, “I shouldn’t have bought my boy those, the neighbours are terrified! Do you read Shakeshaft?”

It took me a moment. “You mean Shakespeare?”

“Stop throwing that thing about! Sorry,” Cynical apologised again, “I brought the lad a spear for Christmas, and he will keep chuckin’ it abart. I told him, it’s a wall-angar!”

I wondered if his ‘lad’ understood him.

“The reason that I asked whether you read Shakespier is that if you do you would get to understand why you are suffering from a bout of the déjà vus.”

Now, Cynical was beginning to sound like my doctor.

“There’s a lot of Machiavellian stuff in Shakespier …” he continued.

At least he had got the Machiavellian right.

“… and there’s a lot of Machiavellian stuff goin’ down ‘ere with ‘arrold and Megoff. Call me cynical, but Harry ain’t your proper Royal, is he? I mean look at him. His old mum, gord bless her, she weren’t no proper Royal either. Neither of them could hack it! High society, the rigours of Royal life ~ you know what I mean, opening garden fetes in Surrey and what ‘ave yu; ‘arry just weren’t cut out for it. He’s more yu stay at home with his PlayStation type. I imagine that the nearest he got to being Royal was wearing a pair of monogrammed jim jams. Did I say that right?”

“Monogrammed?”

“No, jim jams ~ you wally! And did you ever take a good look at ‘arry’s shoulder.”

“Not really, I …”

“Well had yu dun, you would ‘ave seen a chip the size of Harrod’s! The question is was ‘arry waiting, brooding, biding ‘is time ~ waiting for the moment when he could get the Royal Family’s leg up, as payback for the shabby way he believed his mother had been treated and was Meghim that moment?

“I mean, if anyone knows ‘arry’s weaknesses it stands to reason it would be ‘er, and she would also know that once she’d got him by the …”

“Niagaras,” I proffered, politely.

“Yeh, that’s them. They would be in and out …”

“Steady!”

“ … in and out of the Royal Family faster than you can shout ‘yo-yo’. Now, it don’t take a university degree in common sense …”

“Good,” I thought.

“… to skip onto the next hopscotch square, if your British, and the next small boat in France if you’re not, to work out the rest of the plot. Harry meets Meghan, is seduced by her sparkles, next thing you know it’s the old horse and carriage, feet under Windsor Castle’s dining table, up comes the winging and next they are doin’ a bunk. Give it a month or two and then comes a touch of the Kinks …”

“Sorry, you’ve lost me,” I interjected.

“… you know, the Kink’s ~ the lyrics, ‘tellin’ tales of drunkenness and cruelty’, moaning on about the Royal Family, tellin’ tales out of school, making themselves out to be victims … victims with a capital ‘P’.

“Don’t you mean ‘V’?”

“No, I mean victims with a capital ‘P’ for Publicity.

“Call me Cynical, but the liberal-lefty press loves this sort of thing, because once the race card has been played, they can follow suite, stirrin’ up more division with loadsa articles and programmes on the telly about discrimination and all the usual old guff that most of the UK population don’t listen to anymore.”

“So, where will it all end?”

“It won’t end ‘appilly for ‘arry, and that is a fact! The public might be thick, or they might be overly sensitive, but the media will, and are, finding it difficult to pull the same scam twice. Oh, the liberal-lefty media will make much out of it, they always do, and they will use words like ‘Outrage’ in their headlines and exaggerate the number of Brits that see the world as they tar it, but they’ve got off to a bad start anyway. Ninety percent of comments at the end of online articles and from Arsebook users show that ‘arry and his paramount haven’t got half as much of the sympathy vote as Di got, and most people are glad to see the back of them.”

“And you?”

“Well, I don’t much mind seeing the front of Sparkle, but call me cynical, what goes around comes around. In my mind, the discriminated duo is pullin’ a fast one and like any drag-racing fan will tell you, once the flames and thunder have died away all that is left is the skidmarks!”

“Last word?”

“Underpants! Tell ‘arry to buy some soon. He’s goin’ to need them on this roller coaster ride”

Call Me Cynical pauses.

“At least they won’t be on the tax-payers money!”

Edifying links:
Coronavirus Truth or Trickery, Trick or Treat
Talking Wollocks!
Tracking World Vaccination with the Prickometer
So Frightened of Priti Patel

How Russophobia makes the West look Silly

It goes from bad to worse …

Published: 5 February 2021 ~ How Russophobia makes the West look Silly

Have you noticed how anti-Russian hysteria whipped up by the UK media comes in waves? It is rather like a bad case of diarrhoea, very often brought on by something uncomfortable happening on the home front which swiftly requires some form of diversion.

Why is the West so Silly?

A couple of years ago, the UK media’s Russophobia ramp-up preoccupied itself with the terrors that Brits would face if they travelled to Russia for the World Cup, Dr Salisbury and the Mysterious Case of the Skripals, watch out there are hackers about, and the omnipotent cyber power that Russia is said to possess which enables it to steal into one’s sub-conscious and influence the way one votes, from Brexit or not-to-Brexit to presidential elections. Incidentally, how does this work? Here I am committed to vote Remain in the Brexit referendum. I read something on social media, purported to have been written by someone from a foreign power, telling me to vote the opposite way. Bingo, I’ll vote to Leave!! I mean, would you? Do you? Does it …? Or, in the United States: I am going to vote for the Democrats. I always vote for them. I don’t know why, perhaps it’s because my mum does. She’s very PC and cannot have enough ‘isms’ in her life. But wait a moment, I have just read something that has told me to vote for Trump! Right, Trump it is.

I’ve just had a word with our cat, Ginger, about this, and all he can say is ‘give me some grub or let me scratch and bite you’. And then he rolled over and purred.

Nevertheless, such was the panic engendered by this media-created long arm of the Russian state, even longer than the famous long arm of the British law, that my mother was convinced that when she woke up one morning and found that the wheelie bin had gone that it must be the Russians who’d dun it!

Sputnik V romps home

I can see that you are not comfortable with the diarrohea metaphor, so let’s try another. How about a militaristic one, in which there are major battles and random cases of sniping?

For example, when the Russian vaccine Sputnik V was announced last year as the world’s first coronavirus vaccine, it sparked nothing short of a full-scale war in the West’s mainstream and science journal media.

Examples of Headline News in the West

Experts Raise Alarm As Putin Says Russia Has Approved World’s First Covid-19 Vaccine

Russia approves Sputnik V Covid vaccine despite testing safety concerns

We have no idea if the Russian Covid vaccine is safe or effective

Russia’s Fast-Track Coronavirus Vaccine Draws Outrage over Safety

Russia is spreading lies about Covid vaccines, says UK military chief

UK ‘95% sure’ Russian hackers tried to steal coronavirus vaccine research (Who wrote this one? Was it ‘Highly Likely’ Theresa May?)

It began politely enough, with the odd shot or two fired at the vaccine’s validity based on scientific testing protocols, but soon escalated into the bellicose language that we have come to expect in the Coronavirus & Cyber Cold War era, with accusations of disinformation, misinformation, no information and, yep you’ve got it, hacking.

As the first salvos gradually diminished, the sniping continued sporadically until, on 2 February 2021, The Lancet, an esteemed British medical journal, published the results from a phase 3 trial of the Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine in an article headlined ‘Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine candidate appears safe and effective’. On the same day, the BBC ran this article, ‘Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine has 92% efficacy in trial’, in which, in recognition of the unjust way in which Russia had been treated, it was quoted that “we should be more careful about being overly critical about other countries’ vaccine designs.”

A muted apology but an apology all the same.

It was quite obvious, and therefore understandable, that with western mainstream media using the phrase ‘vaccine race’ freely from the outset to dramatise research efforts to develop a Covid vaccine, that considerable pique would follow when on entering the race, which was pretty much a closed affair, Russia left its western ‘competitors’ standing, pipping them at the post before they had time to pip.

Of course, the US and Brit government will never forgive Russia for coming first in their race, apart from the loss of prestige there is all that globalist vaccine money to think of, but they are doing their utmost to detract from it by focusing instead on selectively publishing photographs taken of street protests recently staged in Russian cities.

I asked my dear and well-informed friend, Lord Wollocks, what he thought about this:

“Deflection technique. A bit embarrassing for the West of late. Lots of civil disorder. Last thing that they want [in the UK or the States] are their people looking in the direction of the former USSR and saying, ‘my word but things look a lot more civilised over there’, especially if they make the not-so quantum leap from a land blighted by coronavirus mishandling and BLM riots to one which holds unswayable store on conservative norms and family values.”

And off went Wollocks, to make a cup of tea.

No one, not even Lord Wollocks, made any connection between the good visual copy of street protests elsewhere coinciding with Biden coming to power, but that was possibly because if all else fails there is always this little bit of land, Kaliningrad and its region, at which to level one’s sites.

A rather Silly case of Russophobia

Western media has a never abating obsession for what it calls the strategic military importance of Russia’s westernmost outpost. In the past 10 years it has been in and out of the press more times than something attending a gender reassignment surgery which cannot quite make up its mind. On one hand, Kaliningrad has a ‘taste for western Europe’, on the other, it has a lot of clout for resisting western Europe, but should there be nothing more to snipe at Kaliningrad makes a convenient target.

The latest storm in a teacup, but a Pythonesque brew notwithstanding, was this report aired recently through RT: ‘Western WWIII game plan revealed? Analysts say Poland could win Russia-NATO war by invading Kaliningrad & securing Moscow’s nukes’.

Wait a mo! If I was going to nip into someone else’s backyard and switch off the dog so that my mates could rush in behind me and claim squatters’ rights, why would I want to tell the owners of the yard what I was going to do? Whatever happened to secrets? More to the point, what do spies and military generals put on their CVs when they are seeking alternative employment?

I mentioned this news report to a Russian friend of mine as we were standing in the supermarket trying to decide which brand of vodka to buy. I said, “Analysts say Poland could win Russia-NATO war by invading Kaliningrad and securing Moscow’s nukes.” “Really,” he said, raising an eyebrow. He thought for a moment, scratched his head and then asked, solemnly, “So, which vodka is it to be?”

😉BLM riots vs Capitol media reporting
😉Backing Biden will not bring it back
😉Katie Hopkins Life After Twitter

Covid 19 Vaccine Race

The Grand International Covid-19 & Culture-Threat Vaccine Race Not Quite Live from Gaydock Park

Published: 5 August 2020

Hello and welcome to the first Grand International Covid-19 & Culture-Threat Vaccine Race not quite live from Gaydock Park.

Held in somewhere that used to resemble the UK, this is the first equestrian race of its type where most spectators are watching in self-isolation from the comparative bailiff safety of their coronavirus mortgage-reliefed homes. The only people who will get an actual glimpse of the race live are boatloads of migrants, who will have a clear view on their approach to Dover. That’s them cheering in the background, ‘give us a free house in Surrey’, and there’s a man on the cliffside watching through his binoculars who has given us a tip for the 1960s’ Race at Haydock, which is odds-on favourite, They Should Have Listened to Enoch.

Described by some as the first nationalist race symbolising the inevitable, irredeemable, inexorable demise of globalism, and by Others as being sexist, what we do know is that it is the first race ever in which the horses will be wearing face masks, even if nobody else is.

For those of you who have just joined us, from anywhere and everywhere, the police are providing a free taxi service to a hotel of your choice, for the rest of you who understand English, and there aren’t many, but never mind we’ll provide an interpreter, it’s only money, this is a high-stakes race, the first one past the Vaccine Finishing Post not only out-prestiging everyone else in the civilised world, as well as those in Scotland, but also monopolising the coronavirus vaccine for his country and ensuring that their pharmaceutical sponsor makes mega-bucks whilst holding the world to ransom.

Ahh, and now we see the horses approaching the starting gate. In a few moments, a billionaire philanthropist will fire the starting gun and the first Grand International Covid-19 & Culture-Threat Vaccine Race will be underway.

There goes the gun (blast, he missed himself!) and they’re off! (I wondered where my wife was?) and the horses are off too.

And up front, but not so up front as we’d like, it’s China’s Unnamed Unknown Vaccine, followed by Discredited HOO, odds-on favourite Oxford Fix close behind with Gay Parade too close behind for comfort as Labour Party falls back, but not far enough for some. And China’s Unnamed Unknown Vaccine going like a bat out of hell, neck and neck with Conspiracy Theory as they approach Bills Gate. And in the black & red face mask and German tin helmet its BioTank putting pressure on Rest of the World with Open Borders, Big Mistake and Murkal’s Refugees crowding in the middle and everywhere else, whilst US Operation Warp Speed fails to trump False Liberal Media. Into the first hurdle and down goes Lockdown, Conservative Party unseating its rider, Nobody Cares and Who Gives A Toss on either side of LGBT, Tony Blair a casualty But He Doesn’t Seem to Know It, as She’s Got More Mouth Than a Cow’s Got C… ridden by the Dwarf from the North thunders into fourth place. False Liberal Media making difficult headway as they enter the Straight & Narrow, with Selfish Brits Crowding Brighton Beach and Social Distancing now one metre, could be two, behind Confused Government Policy. There goes Statistics and its China’s Unnamed Unknown Vaccine fighting it out with Poisoned Meat Market, Don’t Believe It and Whose Laboratory as Mrs May’s Highly Likely is overtaken by Truth, Porton Down and Unbelievable Story with outsider Russia’s Vaccine closing the distance on Collusion Complex and Clinton’s Hacking Jacket an also and almost ran. Ahead now and quite round the bend Entire Liberal Media, closely pursued by Populist Vote, which surges into first place as Farage’s Triumph sails merrily into the lead, threatening EU Dominance, pulling the plug on EU Court of Human Blights and Whose Democracy Is It? Common Sense is out of the race replaced by All Kinds of Liberal Agendas, Lost Heritage and Law & Order Matters, and its Muggers Alley, Hand-Over Your Cash, LoL and Innit, and Churchill’s Statue battling it out with Defund the Police as the race enters the final straight. Black Lives Matters, Reputation in Tatters and Obsequious Corporate Policy making the running, in the opposite direction, alongside Fickle Government Policy and Overpaid Untalented Celebs all surprised by BREXIT.

And its Bullshit, Bullshit and the Liberal Media, Bullshit, Russophobia, Bullshit and BBC Licence Fee hard pushed to pass They Won’t Pay It with Historical Drama Revisionism tangling with Gender-Bending Dr Who and Sink Estate in a TARDIS as they round Diverse Psychosis Corner. And its Bullshit in the lead, Ballshit out in front, Ballshit trampling Anti-Vaxxer, Trump with Second Wind as he trounces Second Wave and yes, its … Wait one moment. News just in! Apparently, we’ve just entered the third wave. Traditionally, it takes 10 to 15 years to develop a vaccine, so the finishing line has been moved to 2035 ~ stay tuned, stay in, stay safe and whatever you do don’t back Nightmares.

😉(Featured image Photo credit: https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/pictures/10000/velka/1-1239868251vifh.jpg)

Remain Media Influenced Brexit

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’.

Remain Media Influenced Brexit — Londongrad, Londistan or BLM (Black London Matters) ~ whatever it was it isn’t.

✔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]

The Value of Traditional Values

1 July 2020

Published: 1 July 2020

The last couple of days have been extremely important ones here in Russia, as the citizens of the largest country in the world head off to the polling booths to vote ‘yay’ or ‘nay’ for the new constitutional reforms. My wife was among them. I cannot reveal which she way she voted, but you who know her can probably guess.

The Value of Traditional Values

The latest BBC article (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53255964) as at 20.27pm Kaliningrad time, obviously alludes to the effect that a ‘yes’ vote for the reforms will have on President Putin’s terms of office and “Other conservative reforms include a ban on same-sex marriage and reference to Russia’s ancestral ‘faith in God’.”

Whilst all this has been going on, I had lost touch with ‘home’ news, so I undertook a quick scan to see what has been happening in the UK over the last few days. I deliberately avoided any and all references to coronavirus, as I have a good friend in Leicester and did not want to think about it. These were the headlines:

22 June 2020

Reading stabbing attack suspect Khairi Saadallah

[Comment: The one thing about the Old Normal that the New Normal cannot change]

26 June 2020

Three Londoners stabbed in Bournemouth beach brawl hours after ‘major incident’ declared

[Comment: Safer to be self-isolating]

Notting Hill: Police officers attacked at illegal street party

[Comment: Could it be the price of appeasement, ie softly, softly approach’ to statue-wrecking riots?]

Hero policeman David Whyte, 42, fights for his life after trying to tackle knifeman asylum seeker who stabbed six at Glasgow hotel

[Comment: Do I need to?]

27 June 2020

Bottles thrown at police as another London street party turns ugly

[Comment: As I said in my previous article ~ never give in to the demands …]

So there you have it. I could have read more, but that’s enough for one day.

Seventy-five years of progressive liberal values, and here we are …

UK Coronavirus Confusion Strategy

At least we can all die laughing

Published: 11 May 2020

The media may be slating Boris Johnson this morning over his obscurantist speech the day before, but I for one found it intensely amusing. I haven’t laughed so much in years. If I’d have been wearing false teeth at the time, I would most likely still be looking for them.

I am not altogether sure what is most amusing, Boris attempting to provide us with a catch-all solution when there is not one, or Joe (and Joanna) Public betting everything on an answer tailor-made for them and then being disappointed when they did not get it. Perhaps Boris should have filmed his address to the nation with Sooty’s magic wand in his hand, and then we would all feel better.

UK Coronavirus Confusion Strategy

Who was it who sang “Do you know where you’re going to, do you like the things that life is showing you?”

Is it the media, not our politicians, that have led us up the garden path and into the maze into which we now find ourselves? Consider the following headlines and out-takes from online news reports over the last two months:

Derbyshire Police force was heavily criticised for using a drone to “shame” people walking with members of their household in the Peak District. (27 March 2020)
[What a terrible thing for the police to do. But aren’t they supposed to be enforcing the isolating rules?]

Coronavirus lockdown likened to ‘police state’ by former Supreme Court judge (30 March 2020)
[So, does that mean that lockdown is unnecessary, bad, to be avoided? Was the Supreme Court established by Tony Blair?]

UK police warned against ‘overreach’ in use of virus lockdown powers (30 March 2020)
[Police should enforce lockdown rules, but they haven’t got the power to do so?]

Keir Starmer calls for ministers to set out plans to end lockdown (15 April 2020)
[Lockdown should end]

Coronavirus: Labour calls for lockdown exit strategy this week (15 April 2020)
[Labour wants an ‘exit strategy’]

‘Blair and Brown never missed Cobra meetings (19 April 2020)
[And? ~ Ahh, so perhaps it’s a positive thing that Boris has missed some of them?]

Coronavirus: Which are you? Britons are reacting to lockdown in one of three ways (27 April 2020)
[Hoorah! It’s just a game]

Fearful Britons oppose lifting lockdown (2 May 2020)
[But many people are opposed to lockdown, aren’t they?]

Coronavirus: UK to bring in two-week quarantine for air passengers (9 May 2020)
[Why are people still flying into the UK? Why wasn’t this done earlier? Why are we in lockdown when people are still flooding in from other countries?]

I’m losing my teenage years (9 May 2020)
[And?]

‘Recipe for chaos’: union leaders sound warning over return to work (10 May)
[But I thought lockdown was tantamount to a police state and should it not be ended? And hasn’t the Labour party called for an end to it?]

Doctors and police warn of new coronavirus wave as UK lockdown weakens (10 May)
[But I thought people wanted out of lockdown, as does the Labour party?]

Boris Johnson suggests coronavirus lockdown will be loosened on Monday (6 May)
[That should please Labour as they want an ‘exit strategy’ and want lockdown to end, don’t they?]

Boris Johnson’s lockdown release condemned as divisive, confusing and vague (10 May)
[It didn’t please Labour. If they have an exit strategy, perhaps they should tell Boris]

BBC’s Marr stuns Ashworth after blaming Labour for lockdown chaos ‘Take responsibility!’ (11 May 2020)
[Truth is stranger than fiction]

And this is without citing the plethora of news stories about strange new symptoms …

UK Coronavirus Confusion Strategy

So, here we are in the Coronavirus Maze and we just do not know how to get out of it.

Economists, scientists, healthcare professionals, business consortiums, psychiatrists, ‘experts’, MPs, all scampering this way and that looking for the exit and the strategy that goes with it. But the most confused, and we could argue the perpetrators of confusion, seem to lie with certain ladies and gentlemen of the press. Does the confusion lie in a desperate almost hysterical pursuit of political point-scoring: which way and how can Boris and Boris’s government be discredited and the current crisis used to pave the way for Labour’s resurgence?

An extremely cynical friend of mine, who has always voted Liberal Democrats, opined, “Perhaps it would be better if a Labour government was in power. We might be on the edge of the precipice waiting for the final push, but at least if we go over we would meet our end with Labour right behind us, after all they have been pushing that way for years.”