2018 Mar 31 - Russia + Brexit
It's Easter weekend so maybe you're watching this before heading out to a church service or in many cases, the pub. Just be sure to look out for Russian spies because if you see someone lying in the street in the gutter outside Wetherspoons then it could be that it's in fact a former Russian businessman or outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin. I'm sure that nerve gas is a good excuse if you return home and you're met with questions about why it took 6 hours to go to the shops and why you're now stumbling around like Shane McGowan attempting to play hopscotch. I digress.
Anyway, the past week saw Russia and the West expelling each other's diplomats: 150 or so, from each side. There was even a mildly amusing incident when New Zealand promised to send all the spies and diplomats back to Moscow but there weren't any in the country at the time. It's a small place mind and more of a red wine drinking sort of a place at that. As for Mr Skripal, he remains in a critical but stable condition, his daughter Yulia's condition is said to be improving and Theresa May is probably concerned that someone, in this case a doctor, is using the term "stable" to refer to something other than Brexit for once.
This week marked the 1-year countdown to Brexit. Mrs May did a small tour around the UK, making generic speeches and invoking all the sparkle and excitement of a car going in for its annual service. If you were watching the news and accidentally reset your TV and had to sit through 5 minutes of it retuning all the channel listings, you didn't really miss a lot. Certainly you wouldn't have missed much about Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party's ongoing anti-semitism row, it's not as if the BBC or the like would want to run too many stories about their Messiah in the week leading up to Easter.
Finally, talking about not reporting the news one of the things that the press seem to me missing out in the Skripal case is the link between Sergei the man who was poisoned and Christopher Steele - the former British spy who compiled the dossier alleging that Trump colluded with Russia. Something to go look up now if you've got a spare half hour to waste on youtube and have some tinfoil to hand with which to construct a hat for yourself.
Anyway, the past week saw Russia and the West expelling each other's diplomats: 150 or so, from each side. There was even a mildly amusing incident when New Zealand promised to send all the spies and diplomats back to Moscow but there weren't any in the country at the time. It's a small place mind and more of a red wine drinking sort of a place at that. As for Mr Skripal, he remains in a critical but stable condition, his daughter Yulia's condition is said to be improving and Theresa May is probably concerned that someone, in this case a doctor, is using the term "stable" to refer to something other than Brexit for once.
This week marked the 1-year countdown to Brexit. Mrs May did a small tour around the UK, making generic speeches and invoking all the sparkle and excitement of a car going in for its annual service. If you were watching the news and accidentally reset your TV and had to sit through 5 minutes of it retuning all the channel listings, you didn't really miss a lot. Certainly you wouldn't have missed much about Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party's ongoing anti-semitism row, it's not as if the BBC or the like would want to run too many stories about their Messiah in the week leading up to Easter.
Finally, talking about not reporting the news one of the things that the press seem to me missing out in the Skripal case is the link between Sergei the man who was poisoned and Christopher Steele - the former British spy who compiled the dossier alleging that Trump colluded with Russia. Something to go look up now if you've got a spare half hour to waste on youtube and have some tinfoil to hand with which to construct a hat for yourself.
It's Easter weekend so maybe you're watching this before heading out to a church service or in many cases, the pub. Just be sure to look out for Russian spies because if you see someone lying in the street in the gutter outside Wetherspoons then it could be that it's in fact a former Russian businessman or outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin. I'm sure that nerve gas is a good excuse if you return home and you're met with questions about why it took 6 hours to go to the shops and why you're now st ......