Saturday 17 March 2018

Gas - buy now while stocks last


Brexit has been replaced by another divisive issue here right now - the question of whether or not Putin was aware of the Salisbury poisoning, or if it is just a case of the Russian Mafia getting hold of military-grade nerve agent to bump-off adversaries.

The latter theory has been dismissed as virtually impossible by some, on the grounds that the Russians could never be so lax as to be unaware of stuff disappearing from their stocks, but I well remember what happened immediately after the collapse of the USSR, when you could actually buy tanks and missiles on the black market which had somehow been smuggled out of military compounds to make a few quid for private individuals. I bought a sub-mariner's watch.

Then again, Putin has murdered many adversaries in other countries by using bizarre and complex poisons which have the all the hall-marks of state-sponsorship. You would think that ordinary hit-men would use tried and tested methods to kill people which do not involve serious logistical and safety problems in handling, as they did by strangling the Russian anti-Putin oligarch the other day, making a half-hearted attempt for it to look like suicide. In any event, the Russian Mafia and Putin are inextricably entangled.

As Boris Johnson pointed out last night, Russian State media is proudly gloating over how anyone who behaves treacherously will be dealt with, no matter how far away from their mother country, at the same time as the Kremlin denies all knowledge. He actually used the phrase 'having their cake and eating it'. It must have been nice to use the insult that Europe has been directing towards him every day for a year.

The British media have been keen to stress that this particular nerve-agent was 'developed' in Russia, not 'manufactured'. Some people are saying that - unlike the radio-active stuff - the nerve agent could be made in someone's kitchen using fairly easy-to-obtain ingredients, but are wisely not publishing the recipe. Anyway, I would not want that stuff in my kitchen. It was bad enough cleaning-up after my Crystal-Meth cookery lessons last year.

The beans in the above photo were from a site called, '8 poisonous foods which we eat every day'. They are what Ricin is made from. They are the beans from a Castor Oil plant. You may have one in your garden.

The reason why they kill people using such exotic methods is pretty obvious. They want to send a message. Like the Canadian Mounties, they always get their man.. and his daughter... and any innocent bystanders.

Given the amount of CCTV cameras we have in this country, I am surprised that we have not seen any images of the murderer or murderers between the pub, restaurant and street in Salisbury. Having said that, I know that the police in Bath often ask to view the security camera footage of shops close to the scenes of crimes, because the quality of the Council camera footage is usually too poor to get a conviction in most cases.

Someone came up with a good quote yesterday: If you allow ruthless and nasty foreign criminals to take over your city for the sake of their money, you must expect this sort of thing'.

I had better buy some more gas before the tap is turned off in Russia.

28 comments:

  1. We have CCTV cameras all over the place but, when there are important cases, especially where mafia is involved, the cameras either were out of order or were swietched off!
    Greetings Maria x

    Speaking of cameras, I saw a hawk yesterday, probably testing the nest, on Bath's peregrine webcam.

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    1. Swietched off = switched off

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    2. Oh, they've switched the camera back on for the Peregrines? Here we go again - watching in anxiety as the chicks jump...

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    3. Saw the hawk at Norwich not Bath.
      x

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    4. Ah. They leave the camera on all year there.

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  2. I remember when Georgi Markov got knocked off with the umbrella point we were all told to boil red kidney beans vigorously for at least 10 minutes because the Ricin came from them. That was exciting, the umbrella tip and all that. Much more than Salisbury. Markov was of course Bulgarian dissident not Russian and life continued as normal in London at the time except for the kidney beans.

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    1. I knew vegetarians who ate raw kidney beans. One massaged her boyfriend's boil until he got blood poisoning. That umbrella was proper James Bond. Salisbury was as crude as you get. Spies are crap these days.

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  3. Salisbury is a favourite lunch stop when we go for a coastal trip. I have eaten in that restaurant before. I am strangely put off now. A picnic in the car from now on.

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    1. They are beginning to think the nerve agent was placed in his car...

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  4. The normally very snooty Christies auction house has spent the last 10 years selling hundreds of truly horrible Russian modern paintings because they had to. They are bad soft porn and inexplicably expensive. Money.

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  5. You could always follow the example of Cro’s neighbours and bury an old container in the garden. Stock pile your gas there, but whatever you do don’t go near puffing that wacky peace pipe of yours, otherwise you will be overtaking that nice Mr. Stephen Hawkin on his final journey through space.

    LX

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    1. There are no naked flames with my wacky peace pipe. Maybe I will make a holiday home with the container.

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  6. After reading the above all I can say is that perhaps I should stop eating all together - at least I would lose the weight I have been trying to lose for years.

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    1. Eating plutonium seems to help with weight loss!

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  7. Shall I be grateful I live in a quiet backwater of an enormous country?

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    1. For the time being, maybe. Your grand daughters may not feel the same way.

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  8. Apparently MPs are tweeting that Porton Down cannot identify the nerve gas as Russian.

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    1. They are desperately working on it. Suppositions are not much use no matter how sound.

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  9. Poisoning is an awfully dramatic way to assassinate people. It's sounds like the plot of a cheap spy novel. We live in interesting times.

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    1. Much cheaper than Ian Fleming.

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    2. Poisoning was always said to be the favourite choice of women. Cherchez la femme maybe.

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    3. Historically that is incorrect.

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  10. Ken Dodd goes up to the Kremlin front door and knocks. When it is opened, he asks, "Is Len in?"

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  11. Ricinus communis, nasty plant, looks good in a border though, as most parks departments show in their summer displays. As for a killing method, I always wonder why they don't just shoot the person using a silencer, as it would prove just as public a death.

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    1. The culprits wouldn't be so easy to identify. Russia seems to want to be held responsible without definitive proof.

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