Russia Invades Ukraine: Putin Squares Up

 

I hoped against hope, but I erred on the side of optimism when it came to Russian intentions towards Ukraine. I tried not to be naive, but I guess I was, and was shocked at the news this morning. I have always regarded Putin as a "chancer", but thought of him as a realist. After all, war will bring no benefit to Russia. Twenty million Russians died in WW2, and many more will die during this invasion - along with many Ukrainians. So what's changed?

Well, if my assessment of Putin's personality now, and in previous posts, is correct, he operates like the leader of a street gang, though, of course, with more intelligence and better advisers. He has always seemed to me, based on his expressions, statements and actions to be the development of the surly kid who came from a tough background and fought his way to the top in the USSR. Except he didn't get to the top - he was a KGB operative and rose to the rank of colonel. My guess is that he felt himself deserving of better than that, and the same feeling of resentment that had driven him to be a KGB colonel, drove him on to be what he is: the new Russian czar. However, this would not have satisfied Putin; like the ex-street yobbo that he is, he directed his resentment outwards, towards what he regarded as Russia's enemies. And he's not hesitated to act on that - he has sent troops into Chechnya, Georgia and the Crimea. He has intervened militarily in Syria and menaced Ukraine for years. Many people have compared him to Hitler.

But he is not another Hitler. He is not an ideologue or a fanatic. I think he operates like the street gang member he was. As Wordsworth said: "The child is father of the man", and Putin will only act according to the instincts he developed on the streets as a kid. If he thought he could get away with crime, he did crime; if he thinks he can get away with aggression, he will do aggression. He is still a chancer - but a chancer with nuclear weapons. A chancer will nearly always back down when faced with determined opposition - provided he doesn't lose face. If NATO stands up to Putin, he must be offered a way out. Nuclear war would not matter to Putin, compared to an affront to his vanity. However, if he is not confronted effectively, he will continue to push his luck, and Eastern Europe would be definitely be at risk (and anyone else Putin took a dislike to).

Now, of course, Putin has more resources at his disposal than the leader of a teenage gang on a St Petersburg housing estate. The news today is humming with "news" of Russian money and its harmful influence on British politics, especially in the Conservative Party. It is no news to me, or many others. London has been a hub for laundering dirty Russian money for years. Putin sees the EU as a threat, and successfully supported the Brexit campaign. Russian friends of Putin have cosied up to politicians both here and in the USA. Nigel Farage is on record as saying to Alistair Campbell in the Guardian:

"Asked which current world leader he most admired, Farage replied: "As an operator... I would say Putin...The way he played the whole Syria thing. Brilliant."

Donald Trump has praised Putin only recently. The Times says:

"The former president told the conservative Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show: “I said, this is genius: Putin declares a big portion . . . of Ukraine as independent. How smart is that? And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s [the] strongest peace force.”

Farage has reacted angrily in the past to reminders of his praise for Putin. He told Andrew Marr that it was a "boring question". So far, Mr Farage has been very quiet about today's invasion. As for Trump, I wonder how President Biden will react now. Imagine how President Roosevelt would have reacted, had the previous president (Hoover) spoken out in praise of Hitler in WW2.

For Ukraine, dark days lie ahead. As for us in the UK and the rest of Europe, we can recall the words of Sir Edward Grey on the outbreak of WW1 : 

"The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time".

Well, I don't think the lights are going out, but the cost of powering them will increase. We might not react militarily to Putin's aggression now, but we will have to sooner or later, if he continues like he is doing at the moment. The only real hope we have for a peaceful rapprochement is a new regime in Moscow, but that's unlikely - ask the present Russian opposition.

"You wanna be in my gang?".

Words Have Consequences: Boris and the Bishop

 

In case you don't know, the clergyman in the photograph is the Reverend Paul Bayes, the retiring Bishop of Liverpool. I am not familiar with the bishop's career, but an interview he recently gave to The Guardian shows him to be an enlightened and perceptive commentator on current affairs. In his interview, besides making a swingeing attack upon Boris Johnson's Jimmy Savile smear upon Sir Keir Starmer, he spoke about an issue that has plagued the Church of England for years: LGBTQ rights, especially in relation to marriage. His view is worth quoting at length:

“I want to see a church where, if a congregation and its ministers want to bless and marry same-sex people or trans people, then they should be free to do so without stigma. And those who don’t want to do so should be given freedom of conscience not to do so. I want to see gender-neutral marriage canons, that simply say marriage is between two people.”

The bishop admits that this will not happen overnight, but he hopes to see it come about in his lifetime. I do not want to take sides in what is, after all, an internal debate in the C of E, but what the bishop finds an ideal state of affairs will continue to be resisted by many in the church, especially the evangelical wing. For evangelicals of all denominations, the Bible is the Word of God and is the ultimate authority in this, and other, moral issues:

 "God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error". Romans, 1: 26, 27.

It looks as if the C of E has got much discussion ahead of it on this issue, and is a matter for them. Nevertheless, the text above, taken from the New Testament, is absolute condemnation of homosexuality for evangelicals, and brings me to the main part of this post, which is to discuss the recent attack on Sir Keir Starmer outside the House of Commons. The two issues are linked by the words of  House of Commons Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, who said of the attack:

"Words have consequences".

Indeed they do, for politicians, as well as evangelical Christians.

The attack , which happened on Monday, 7th February, was widely reported in the media. It is one of a number of attacks upon our elected representatives that have happened in recent years, and, to me at least, seem to be part of a world wide assault upon democracy. If that sounds sensationalist, remember the invasion of the US Capitol building and the deaths of Jo Cox and Sir David Amess, two British MPs murdered by fanatics of two different anti-democratic ideologies. It is a tribute to the skill of the six uniformed police on duty that Starmer, and his Shadow Secretary of State, David Lammy, M.P.  were not beaten up - or worse. 

The words of consequence here, of course, were made by the Prime Minister in a Commons debate. He said that Starmer  "spent most of his time [as DPP] prosecuting journalists and failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile". Now, Boris has partially retracted his words, saying on February 3:

"I'm not talking about the leader of the opposition's personal record when he was DPP. I was making a point about his responsibility for the organisation as a whole."

This half-hearted attempt to weasel out of responsibility for providing ammunition for extremists has not prevented some of his top aides from resigning and has brought condemnation from a number of MPs, including many Conservatives. However, Boris has his loyalists, who have made the remarkable claim that the demonstrators who attacked Starmer had attacked other MPs. Not the fault of dear old Boris, then.

Anyone who entertains this idea is sadly deluded. Starmer's assailants were quite clear in their chants and abuse that they were echoing the PM's unfounded claims. There was the Jimmy Savile slur:

"At one point in the footage, a member of the group surrounding Sir Keir, was overheard making a baseless claim, by shouting: "Why did you let Jimmy Savile off?" - Sky News.

And then, there was the issue of prosecuting journalists:

“Why did you go after Julian Assange? Why did you target a journalist?”

Most media attention has been upon the anger directed towards Boris. This is understandable, but scrutiny of the perpetrators - the "demonstrators" - has been limited to very few media outlets. Inews, to its credit, is one such. One man named is one William Coleshill, an ex-councillor from Bush Hill Park in Enfield, North London. Inews says:

"In 2018, Coleshill was suspended from the Conservative Party for allegedly making racist remarks, but sat as an independent councillor until last year."

This gives an insight into this man's present political views. He is co-editor-in-chief for anti-lockdown YouTube channel Resistance GB.

William Coleshill is on the left. "A man is known by the company he keeps".
Another of these charming people is  Fiona Hine, who filmed herself shouting “f*****g c***s” and “arsehole” as police tried to keep the mob away from Sir Keir. She is seen below with a police escort.

Social media powers these people, whether they be fascists, anti-vaxxers, Qanon fanatics or plain old conspiracy nuts. Most press organs did not publicise the fact that the PM's words were widely circulated online on extremist websites. How Boris can claim that his words did not lead to the attack on Sir Keith is beyond the bounds of credibility - even if a dwindling number of people still believe him. But there was another influencer of note who should be mentioned here.

Inews again is alone in pointing out that:
"Footage posted on social media also showed anti-vaccine activist Piers Corbyn addressing protesters who had targeted Sir Keir."

I can't say that I'm surprised at this. I think it underlines the truth of the statement by the senior Tory, Tobias Ellwood, that we are seeing "a drift towards a Trumpian style of politics". 

I would qualify that by saying that, so far, the lunatic fringe in Britain don't have a leader of the Donald Trump stature - but it might be possible in the future. I conclude with the words of Bishop Paul Bayes:

“You see clear illiberalism in eastern Europe, you see the rise of the extreme right in France, and you see what you see in the United States … Basic decencies have been lost.”

If ever words deserved to have consequences, those words need to be heeded.

A Southport Tragedy With Three Victims

 

I don't often look at the "100 Families" website, but for some reason, I did today. The first item that I looked at shocked me for several reasons: yet another murder by a mental health patient back in 2016, the suicide of the victim's sister shortly afterwards and the death in 2020 of their mother, Maureen Lound, seen above. This tragic trio were all fellow-natives of my home town, Southport. In the past, when I have written about this subject, I have written about just one victim; this case has three. 

The first victim, seen above, was William, the son of Maureen Lound. A 30-year old student at Salford University, William was a gay man who, unfortunately for himself, attracted the homophobic attentions of a paranoid schizophrenic: Lee Arnold. In the university halls of residence, Arnold strangled William and stabbed him six times. According to the BBC report: 

"The 30-year-old had asked Arnold: "Why are you doing this? Why me?". Arnold wrote on his (William's) bedroom wall after the killing: "I always win."

Next day, Arnold went into a police station and handed himself in, saying that he was frightened he would murder someone else. Predictably, when he appeared in court, he pleaded that his schizophrenia had driven him to kill. Judge John Potter rejected this, describing the attack as a "transphobic and homophobic murder". Arnold was sentenced to 23 years and four months.

Arnold's profile is similar to that of so many of the other perpetrators who have featured on this blog over the years. 37 years of age, he was, as noted above, a paranoid schizophrenic. "100 Families", in their obituary for Maureen, note that Arnold had a long history of drug addiction, mental health problems and violence.

" Although he had told mental health professionals he was hearing voices telling him to kill people, he was released by a mental health tribunal back into the community when he killed Will. It was a completely avoidable death."

Quite so, and there have been so many others. Subsequent inquiries castigated the mental health authorities, but this was small comfort to Maureen, who lost her son in February, and then her 28-year old daughter Virginia, in June of the same year.

Virginia, aka "Gini", was a university graduate who had worked as a lecturer in Southport College before starting her own corner shop business in 2015, becoming known to local children as "the sweety lady". Unable to bear the loss of her brother, she committed suicide in her shop and was found dead on June 19, 2016. Her mother, Maureen, said:

 “Last Christmas I had two wonderful children who I loved very dearly and was very proud of. This Christmas I will be alone".

It is testament to Maureen's courage that she soldiered on with her life, despite having to cope with what can only be described as immeasurable grief. When her son's killer was sentenced, she bravely stated:

"I am glad that Lee Arnold pleaded guilty to the murder of my son and will now get the psychiatric treatment he needs. However, nothing will take away from the fact I have lost my kind-hearted, wonderful son...I do not blame Lee Arnold for what he did, I blame the system which allowed it to happen."

Judge Potter said on the day of passing sentence:

"It takes a remarkable and especially courageous person who says that she bears no malice to the person who killed her son."

Indeed she was, but she also passed a judgment that I, and so many others, can heartily endorse:

"How many other Lee Arnolds are loose on the streets of our towns and cities, with the potential to kill or injure innocent people?
Perhaps it is time our government woke up to the fact that investment in mental health services is totally inadequate".

I, along with many others, have been saying the same thing for a number of years.

To conclude, I would like to say that I hope Mo and her children rest in peace. I shall eschew the temptation to say that they are now all together again. I'd rather say that all three should still be here, and if Lee Arnold had been retained by the mental health system in 2015 or earlier, this triple tragedy could have been prevented.