When nudging doesn’t work any longer …

 

Today is the vernal equinox, the astronomical start of Spring. Even though the sun may not be visible for all of us, the garden birds certainly ‘know’. Their wonderful dawn chorus is now hard at work. Make the most of it because on the coming Sunday the clocks go forward and the mornings will again be as dark as in winter. 

Speaking of winter: the good old Star is again stepping out of line. Their front page tells us that winter is going to make a comeback, with snow and icy temperatures. Well, this has never happened before, so it’s certainly newsworthy. The rest of the lot – check it out here – has the Rwanda scheme as their top news, followed by the erstwhile PM, BJ, allegedly having ‘a dossier’ rebutting the ‘Lockdown Partygate’ hearing. 

We are also told that the Swiss Bank UBS will buy up the crashed ‘Credit Suisse’ bank. Looking at all those print frontpages there’s one striking omission: there’s not one report about the Ukraine. That is surprising because, as far as I understand, yon war is still going on. We’ve also not heard anything from Mr Wallace about handing over more of our arms. What is going on?

Still, the DT editors needed to poke the bear just a little bit, reporting that Mr Putin visited ‘the scene of his crime’ on the weekend. This referred to his visit to Mariupol – this is, you understand, ‘occupied’ territory – and to the arrest warrant published by the International Criminal Court at the weekend. Of course, the DT only quotes Ukrainian PR statements:

“Ukraine likened Vladimir Putin to a murderer returning to the crime scene after he drove himself around Mariupol in a sign of defiance at his war crimes arrest warrant. It came as Britain pledged £395,000 to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to help convict the Russian leader. London will today host a meeting of ministers and prosecutors from 40 countries helping to bring Mr Putin to justice. […] Dominic Raab, the Deputy Prime Minister, will join justice ministers from around the world at Lancaster House for a war crimes meeting with Karim Khan KC, chief prosecutor of the ICC leading the Putin investigation.” (paywalled link)

Ohh – I feel a ‘Lancaster House declaration’ coming on …! I’ll refrain from pointing out that Mr Khan allegedly got his brother, a former Tory MP, out of jail where he lingered for alleged pedophile crimes. I’ll also not mention that suddenly Mr Raab is a nice person and not a terrible bully. After all, he’s helping to prosecute Mr Putin.

Naive as I am I wonder why the ICC represents “Teh World” when neither the USA nor Russia nor China have signed up for this ‘court’. I also wonder why evacuating children from war zones is now a ‘war crime’. And I really do wonder why yon ICC isn’t mentioning other ‘war crimes’ in their accusations. Wasn’t there something called ‘Bucha’ which had “Teh World”, or rather: the western MSM, in an uproar about a year ago?

Moreover, isn’t it interesting that this ‘arrest warrant’ was  published precisely at the time when Mr Xi, the leader of China, is coming to visit Moscow? Reading between the lines in the report by the DT – The Times hasn’t updated their online front page as of yet – it becomes obvious why this arrest warrant was presented to the public at the weekend, ‘just in time’ (my emphasis):

“While China has insisted it remains neutral over the war in Ukraine, Mr Xi and Mr Putin have met and spoken several times since the war began, continuing to hail their “no-limits” friendship. Mr Xi has also refrained from denouncing Russia for invading Ukraine. Experts say such close ties mean China has no credibility in playing a role in peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, despite Beijing repeatedly suggesting the idea.” (paywalled link)

The really close ally of Mr Z, the USA and their president, is of course totally neutral and would therefore have lots of ‘credibility’ in any ‘peace talks’ – peace talks which can obviously not involve the president of Russia because ‘he’s a criminal’. Equally obviously, NATO and the glorious EU have oodles of credibility because they’re ‘neutral’ and are not criminals at all. Isn’t life easy if one simply accepts our government propaganda!

I simply cannot resist leaving you with news about bikes. The Times dedicated a report on this issue, under the headline: “Bike sales fall to lowest level in 20 years – Pandemic boom has become bust despite millions spent on cycle lanes” (link, paywalled).

We’re presented with various reasons for this ‘bust’, from moans that there are still too many potholes to people have satiated their desire for bikes to kids having become lazy. They just don’t wanna bike no more. And wouldn’t you know it – right at the end of this report we read:

“The Bicycle Association is calling on the government to commit to multi-year funding for Active Travel England, the agency that promoted walking and cycling.” (link, paywalled).

Yes: hand over more of our tax money to ‘nudge’ us into proper Net Zero behaviour! Let the plebs pay for their own re-education! I suggest people don’t buy bikes any longer because they’ve learned that they get stolen immediately, with no police action. Why throw good money after bad during inflation?

That’s all I have for today. I wonder if the ICC will next issue an arrest warrant for Mr Xi, because: covid lab leak! Ah well – let’s instead enjoy the first day of spring …