It is the Lenten Season. I am oddly unrepentant - chocolates abound at my house but to my credit I am trying to say a daily Rosary and pray for all souls even the ones I personally find repugnant. Read on.

 

Every hour seems to bring another Russian made horror in the Ukraine. Every hour another piece of video makes the rounds biased towards one or the other side. No-one knows what is true about casualties on either side. Depending on who is reporting, the Russians are 'stalled' and 'losing' OR the Ukrainians are bombing and shooting their own people including innocent civilians queueing for bread or driving their young families out of the war er, conflict er, 'special de-nazification operation' zone (Russian Government has outlawed use of 'war' and 'conflict' to describe their brutally barbaric assault on a sovereign nation). 

 

Meanwhile here in the UK we are constantly being told we're racist for the outpouring of support for the fleeing Ukrainian women and children when we supposedly wouldn't do the same for Syrians (although we bloody well did!) and heap scorn on us for being angry the predominantly young fit male dinghy people still rocking up on our beaches or ringing 999 for an RNLI or Coastguard tow into Dover from the middle of the English Channel after ridding themselves of working dinghy motors and waiting long enough for the discarded documents to float sufficiently far enough away from the dinghy to prevent identification and subsequent deportation back to where ever the hell they strolled from. 

 

Sorry, but I insist on helping genuine refugees rather than dirtbag cowards in stolen dinghies happy to act as point men for full-scale invasion by people who hate us and want nothing more than to see our blood and dismembered bodies on the pavements. Readers may choose to see me as a cynic/hysteric/racist - but I lived through the last two years of the Guatemalan Civil War and I know PRECISELY what is about to happen right here in Britain thanks to Fifth Columnists and leftie-luvvie self-hating Brit Guardianistas if we don't wake up NOW and stop the madness. 

Oh dear. I started this post to update my readers on anything besides what is happening in the Ukraine and the British official (meaning Government) and unofficial (meaning the average Brit watching this insanity unfold over the news broadcasts). Instead I've gone on a bit of a rant. oops - But the threat of nuclear destruction (from the Madman of Moscow) is just that last straw pushing most of us right over the edge - I cannot wrap my head around the horror that bastard is unleashing but I also cannot wrap my head around FakeBook and Instacrap permitting posts actively calling for murder on Russia for what Putin and his Kremlinsky mates are doing.

Spring is beginning to be less a longed for turn and becoming more a reality - just in time as I've turned the heat down to 'feeble' (rather than 'comfortable but not excessive'). A real help now that loony masquerading as the Prime Minister's arrogant little 'wifie' has him ordering massive green 'net-zero' changes that are ratcheting up energy bills even before Putin went full-on insane and invaded a neighbouring sovereign country, the Chancellor (but is in truth the Sheriff of Nottingham reborn, grrrrrr) is taxing us to the breaking point. 

 

Adding to the 'joy' the rank poseur claiming to be the Health Secretary of State (no, not the caught-on-CCTV adulterer but the 'I am muslim but I don't practice it' one. Doesn't practice, yeah, sure) has announced a fourth jab of God-Knows-What oh I mean the 'Covid vaccine'. No word yet on it becoming another exercise in coercion but it wouldn't surprise me, I fully anticipate the return of scorn, derision, and ostracism leading finally lockdowns for any of us remaining un-jabbed.

 

Sturgeon the wannabe Empress of Scotland says we have to keep wearing face masks on public transport 'and other spaces' but travellers are free to arrive from overseas without having to test or prove vax-status, and we Scots no longer have to either for domestic travel although we still (d'uh) have to comply with international destination vaccination and testing requirements. 

Glasgow City Council has stupidly declared from June 2022 the entire city will be a low-emissions-zone where ALL cars-buses-taxis running petrol or diesel are outlawed. The council has graciously (grrrr) granted residents a one year grace period to be rid of their petrol and diesel vehicles and buy electric bicycles or cars. In effect pricing residents out of Glasgow. God only knows what this new LEZ is going to do to tourism and business if people can't get in and around town in anything but an electric taxi even if some poor cabbie can afford to buy AND run one - another little 'bonus' of the LEZ and electric motors 'deal' is if your shiny eye-wateringly expensive electric motor is on the charger when Government decides it needs an electricity boost, they can drain your battery to plump up theirs. 

 

Er, don't need to drive anywhere in a hurry (you know, like A&E when a loved one needs to go to Casualty with a life-threatening injury or illness but the ambulance service advises a ten-20 hour wait and yep, it's happening all the time now, people really have died waiting for an ambulance right here in Scotland. And England, Wales, and probably Northern Ireland but news from there is thin on the ground since the Protocol has caused so much trouble). 

Right, I give up, I'll just post this. It is Lent - and I am unrepentant about being very angry about my so-called 'Golden Years' being so tarnished by a rotter like Putin and closer-to-home kill-joys like that focking Carrie Symonds-Johnson! To be clear, my anger is contained. Restrained to kicking a tree stump and no more. 

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

 

 

 

 

I've held off posting anything in hope Putin would back off and bring his troops back to Moscow. A vain hope, clearly. We are in the opening days of an exceptionally ruthless war being waged by Russia on the Ukraine and sensible people understand the plan Putin is following includes moving on Poland and other former USSR states to force them back into the 'arms of Mother Russia'.

Back in 2001 a Russian friend of mine told me 'Putin means to bring back USSR'. I believed him then and now more than then. 

We in the West bear some responsibility for what is happening if only for the 'pooh-poohing' against any wiser head warning Putin was going to do any of what he's doing now. I learned a long time ago to smile and nod and keep my opinion to myself - no-one wanted to hear it but they did quite enjoy ridiculing me as a 'conspiracy theorist modern day Cassandra' (you know, that Greek lass who turned out to be, well, spot-on with her warnings of impending doom). 

 

But it was more than mere scoffing, it was a genuine and frankly quietly arrogant disbelief that Putin would ever be so mad as to actually invade Ukraine. But he has, he has now, and thanks to decades of dialling down troop strength here in the UK, we cannot even defend ourselves from stealthy 'dinghy people' much less Putin's ravening hordes.

 

(GRRRRRRRR on those illegals swanning across the Channel in flimsy inflatables knowing our Government will take them in, give them pizza and the key-card to a 5* en-suite hotel room).  

Forgive the profanity but we bloody sleep-walked into WWIII.

For the first time in 77 year, European civilians are taking shelter from bombing attacks. Credible rumours are circulating Putin has used 'the father of all bombs' (thermobaric or 'vacuum' bombs that suck the oxygen from the bombed area and cause instant vaporisation or the horror of crushed lungs, a truly agonising way to die according to medics).

 

Children with cancers are huddled in hospital basements hoping for evacuation that quite likely may not come. 

 

Husbands are putting loved ones (wives, children, elderly parents) on trains and buses to the nearest NATO member state border and then taking up arms to defend Ukraine from Putin.

 

Russian conscripts are texting and emailing 'back home' to say they had no idea they were being sent to Ukraine to kill, that they are in the middle of a real war and they anticipate dying any moment. 

 

Meanwhile here in Britain, compassion and common sense war with one another - 'We want to give sanctuary to genuine refugees but we have credible intel Russian assassins are impersonating real refugees to gain access to the the UK and EU, so we have to proceed carefully to ensure only genuine refugees arrive to British shores' - and being a compassionate but pragmatic person myself, I not only understand but agree the lot must be very carefully vetted before flinging open the gates to Britain. 

 

So far we're seeing skyrocketing fuel prices at the filling stations, truly shocking rises in natural gas and electricity costs to householders, and steadily rising food costs. No shortages to speak of yet but that will come if this war goes on. 

 

Paul and I are quietly tucked up hoping the worst will not come, that a miracle will happen and Putin's threats to nuke the West will never be carried through. 

 

We pray for peace, we pray for the people in the war zone.

 

Tonight at midnight the clock and calendar tick over into Lent. We pray for the world.