Cloudy, dank and cold in Yorkshire – though nowhere near as bleak as the weather in Ukraine.
We took a walk up the back lane to the village of Lowthorpe. The clouds were low but there was no rain. We disturbed a kestrel on the telegraph line, fed the horses grass and breathed the air.
Back home I’ve been reading some Jasper Fforde and listening to Leonard Cohen telling us about the future – it’s murder. Mind you, that record was recorded a while ago. That future is now the present. It is murder.
Meanwhile, out in Coronaland, our unfunny clown is defending his own corruption. It’s more of the usual. He says things but doesn’t do things. We are clamping down hard on Russian oligarchs – except we aren’t. Johnson conveniently forgets to name most of them. He also gives them a month or two to extract their wealth!! That’s Tories cracking down hard. They don’t want to upset their Russian donors, do they? They have put half of them in the House of Lords!!
The Tories and Trump are knee-deep in corrupt Russian money. They have no morals.
It was heartening to see the UN resolution. It demonstrated quite clearly that the whole world is against him. Even China abstained. Apart from the two evil invaders (Russia and Belarus), it was only three other countries that backed the invasion – and they were three equally nasty belligerent dictatorships – Syria, Eritrea and North Korea. Syria probably had to. Without Russia Bashir would have been kicked out. North Korea has ambitions to be one of the nastiest on the planet and Eritrea probably is the nastiest with it’s great love of war and cruelty. Putin is in good company!!
So where does this war end? Russia has clearly demonstrated its ineptitude. Regardless of anything, it shows itself incapable of organising the logistics to wage a war. Soldiers surrendering, heavy casualties, malfunctioning equipment, poor morale, poor leadership. Now it is turning into an absolute monster, reducing cities to rubble and killing citizens. I hope that it is taken to court for war crimes and made to pay for the reconstruction of the country!!
If only the UN had more power to intervene and enforce.
From one monster to another!!
Then there is Trump – found to have broken Federal laws.
Perhaps, at last, they’ve got enough to lock him up!!!
There are a lot of things Johnson and Trump have in common – systematic lying, law-breaking, arrogance, incompetence and privilege. A heady mix. They both feel entitled to do as they like, ignore the laws and indulge themselves in sex, wine and rich living. It’s their right!!
So, yesterday, in the forgotten pandemic with invisible scientists, no leadership and no reliable statistics, there was supposedly an 11% rise in infections. The stats I found said that there were 45,036 and 75 deaths. Not that it matters anymore. The Big Dog Turd is being saved and red meat is being flung to the public. The propaganda machine is in full swing!!
We are at war!! What does it matter if our leader is a lying clown, an inept law-breaking corrupt self-serving conman? We are at war. We can’t possibly replace him!!
You can almost hear the greedy, selfish idiot laughing his head off. Once again he is getting away with murder!! Did he ring up Putin and organise it? Had he rung up Cressida Dick? He’s more slippery than a turd in a bucket of jelly.
Stay safe!! You’re on your own. The pandemic is an illusion!!
Opher – And to cap off another day in La La Toryland U.K, the highly incompetent, twice-sacked ex-Education Minister, Gavin Williamson, gets a Knighthood! Just how low is the bar set in the U.K to receive awards? Whether a dead cat to distract from Babushka Boris’s dirty money t-roubles, or his pathetic delays in sanctioning those funding Putin whose wealth is held in the U.K, there is simply no justification for this award, other than to suggest it is recognition for Williamson’s loyalty to the clown P.M. Certainly, there are nurses, doctors, teachers, shelf-stackers far better deserving of merit than he, but as an ex-whip, I imagine Williamson knows where ALL the clown’s skeletons are buried! Either that, or the clown is setting the precedent even lower to enable his own Knighthood. However, it could also be argued that by debasing these ridiculous, arcane, anachronisms by awarding muppets widely considered inept simply erodes public trust in the honours system itself, and by extension erodes opinion of those the state has deemed worthy of recognition.
Now the bar has been set so low, I suspect Matt Hancock will be knighted next month, and Raab and Patel in June. Go Global Britain!
DN
And Patel will be put in charge of the BBC propaganda network!!
Ye gods! Can you imagine: she’d turn the BBC into a U.K version of Fox News!
DN
I think that would be the idea!
News just in… following repeated shelling, a fire burns at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant in south-east Ukraine. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, tweeted the following: ‘Russian army is firing from all sides upon Zaporizhzhia NPP, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. Fire has already broke out. If it blows up, it will be 10 times larger than Chornobyl! Russians must IMMEDIATELY cease the fire, allow firefighters, establish a security zone!’
There is no indication of the size or location of the fire relative to the reactor, nor any reporting of the severity of damage to the complex.
To put Kuleba’s words into some sort of perspective: the reach and extent of radioactive fallout from Chernobyl was about 150,000 square kilometres, areas in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine are contaminated and these stretch northward of the plant site (north of Kyiv) as far as 500 kilometres. An area spanning 30 kilometres around the plant is considered the “exclusion zone” and is essentially uninhabited. Chernobyl is already in Russian control.
The consequences of such an explosion at Zaporizhzhia NPP don’t bear thinking about, but if the NPP was deliberately targeted, the threat of nuclear terrorism has escalated…perhaps as punishment for sanctions on Putin’s friends, and financial restrictions on Russian money worldwide?
If nuclear threat escalates – if there is an explosion – at some point the Western powers may have no other choice but to engage in war with Russia. Of the NATO countries, only the U.K, France, and the U.S have nuclear weapons. The U.K is therefore one possible target in a nuclear conflict. Scary days ahead.
Maybe it’s time to get started on that four-minute warning novel you were going to write? I’ve already got the kettle on, just in case.
DN
Are they completely mad??
Probably far madder than the U.K deputy P.M, Raab, trying to convince the nation (and the world) that the U.K are at the vanguard of imposing sanctions on Russian Oligarchs.
Raab must know the electorate don’t believe a word he says. The world knows the extent of U.K Tory politics involvement with filthy Russian money. They know why the Tories are failing to apply sanctions.
Today I actually agree with Starmer’s call to remove Ben Elliot, the Tory Party Fundraiser and Co Chair. I think he should be sanctioned, as should the U.K Tory Party, Dirty Russian money also needs to be removed from the City of London.
DN
Yet 34% of the electorate still think they are the party to run this country!!
Where do they get their polling figures from!
DN
The one I look at is a poll of polls. Different groups sample different people.
https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/
Who knows how accurate these polls are??