Sunday, March 17, 2024

Mr Shapps; again! (the next Dr Who?)

 

The BBC reports today that the dear, exalted prick, (the Right Honourable Member) Grant Shapps, had to rearrange his trip to Ukraine on 6/7th March. He flew via his private jet G-ZABH,
(The one the RAF refer to as the "Royal Flight".) from Northolt to Poland
where he took a train to Kiev. The plan then was to, presumably, take another train from Kiev to Odessa
According to the BBC reports (and those from various newsprint wasters such as the Times), Shapp's plan was for a gallivant to Odessa.

And this is where the story starts to look a bit iffy.


He left UK for Poland on 6th March at 15:18 GMT (see below); from Northolt,  arriving in Poland approx 17:30 GMT.
Presumably, he would have been carrying Tesco bags, stuffed with your hard earned cash, for transfer to Zelensky's back pockets.
Well, things were not going well for Zelensky that day (6th March). He was in Odessa, meeting with the Greek Prime Minister.
According to Russian sources, Zelensky had been awarding members of the Ukraine Special Forces, in particular those who had had a hand in destroying the Russian ship in the Black Sea recently.
At 08:40 GMT, the Russians launched an Iskander missile at the base that Zelensky had been visiting. Basically, Zelensky had given the game away, alerting the Russians to where this base was located. Rumour has it that UK had officers there, controlling some of the UK weapons, planning etc. It would make sense for UK officers to be in the region; who else was Shapps going to use as props for his planned photo-op the following day? The same rumours claimed there was a lot of evacuation flights out of the area.


Let's have a bit of a time line here:
6 March, Ukrainian video on internet shows Zelensky's motorcade travelling through
Odessa to the awards ceremony.
6 March 08:40 GMT Russia launched an Iskander strike at Odessa, destroying the base.
Presumably, a loud bang had been noticed in Odessa when Shapps left Northolt 7 hours later?
Undeterred, our hero pressed on and took a train from Rzeszow air base to Kiev, arriving in Kiev the following day, 7th March.
The train service is currently slated to take 14 hours. If the train left Poland at 18:00 (his flight had arrived at 17:30) he could have arrived in Kiev at 06:00 (Polish border disputes notwithstanding).
Time for a wash and brush up, potty time etc and he decided to head home. The earliest he could have arrived at the Polish air base would have been 21:00. Hmmm. He was on a plane at Lublin in time for a  14:57 departure. How did he do that? Perhaps he had morfed into Dr Who.
If he had caught the dark o'clock connecting service from Kiev to Odessa, he would have arrived some 9 hours later. A slow but cheap service (£3-8)! But he didn't. According to the story, he decided to cancel Odessa and return whence he came. Oh dear! Another tiring 14 hour trip back to Poland, this time to Lublin. So, he set off for a visit to Odessa which was under Russian fire the previous day then waited until he had arrived in Kiev to decide it was dangerous. A jolly junket for the aviation mad Shapps.

RAF Falcon 900 G-ZABH flew to Rzeszow air base in Poland, departing Northolt 6th March 15:18 GMT, arriving in Poland approx 17:30 GMT.
Departed Poland approx 18:25 (less than 1 hour on ground), returned to Northolt, arriving approx 20:33.

The other Falcon of this pair, G-ZAHS, left Northolt 8th March at 11:40 GMT for Lublin, Poland.
Arrived Lublin at 13:59 GMT and departed for Northolt at 14:57 GMT, arriving back there at 17:10 GMT.

Friday, March 15, 2024

 Quis Est Mentiri (Who is lying)?

Well, someone is. Today's liars daily (aka The Daily Mail) is carrying a "story", quoted on the BBC web page, about how those sneaky Russians blanked GPS signals and satellite comms to/from the aircraft carrying his Great Most Exalted and Infallible Excellency Grant Shapps to and from Poland. (I see it has now spread to some real newspapers such as the Guardian, Independent etc. oh, and old Aunty BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68569676). According to the rag known as the Mail, the aircraft suffered a 30 minute black out "as it was flying over the Baltic Sea". Did it now? Furthermore, they claim "the sustained high-tech assault on the plane's hardware is believed to have been run from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad." Sounds serious; GPS "knocked out"? "Where are we Captain"? Buggered if I know, GPS is not talking to me. This needs a good dose of looking at.

Well, the aircraft, a Dassault Falcon based at RAF Northolt and forming half of the so-called Royal Flight, reg  G-ZAHS, took his Highness, Shapps to an air base in Poland, Olsztyn. It landed there at 10:53 GMT. Having completed his photo ops, it departed this airbase at 16:23 GMT, declaring it was off to Oslo. Except it wasn't going anywhere near Oslo. Flying out of the Polish air base in a north westerly direction, it climbed to 16,000ft and declared it was diverting to Northolt. Gerraway! It should be noted that Kaliningrad is due north of the Polish air base, some 50 miles or so distant. The plane flew across Poland, crossing the German border south of Stettin, skirting Berlin and landing at Northolt at 18:25.

At no time did this aircraft go anywhere near Kaliningrad, neither did it venture over the Baltic Sea. Ever! 

It may be worth mentioning here that, at the time this was "occurring" (or not), airliners from Air India, Finnair, Ryanair and Aeroflot all managed to navigate safely through the area without all bumping and banging into each other.

So, someone is telling fibs. The question is Who? Well, on the one hand we have the MoD. Well known for hiding the facts etc, justifiably in some cases. They are also currently engaged in banging the "government's" drum, coming up with all manner of fairy tales to suit the government's agenda, particularly where Russia and Israel are concerned.

And, in the other corner,  we have dodgy Grant. It would be convenient here to refer you to the Wikipedia page on Shapps. Or, look up the story on how he sold suckers a book which promised to help you make $20,000 in 20 days. The e-book cost $497 and advised the suckers to come up with some crap idea and sell it to other suckers. He was also, at one time, the chairman of an organisation named BBYO. This is a youth group which promotes Zionism. So, I suppose we can look forward to the RAF delivering much needed "aid" to Israel soon!

What more can I say? Oh! I bet you didn't know this; the airaft involved and its sister G-ZABH, may be flying for the RAF Royal Flight but the RAF don't own them though. The owners are Centreline Air Charter Ltd. So, rather than purchase 2 aircraft, they thought it would better to rent them from others. Nothing new there though. When the RAF needed air tankers that could also be used as cattle trucks, shuffling troops around, they contracted AirTanker to provide the aircraft and, approximately every 6 months they would be re-painted and fly holiday makers around for Thomas Cook or Condor. Here's one; G-VYGK except when flying for the RAF it became ZZ340: https://kelvindavies.co.uk/kelvin/details.php?image_id=35643 This one is currently flying troops from Brize Norton to Rzeszow in Poland, just 91 miles from Lvov!

Thursday, October 12, 2023

Israel

First, let's get one thing out of the way: I make a clear distinction between Israel And the Jewish religion. So you can stick your "anti-semite" responses up your arse. I don't care if a person is Jewish, Christian, Muslim or Mounted Bombay Methodist. Everything and everyone should be treated on their merits, good or bad.

Now, let's move on to the right wing saddo who posts on You Tube under the name "Ex British Army Paz49". Today, he is posting some anti BBC tripe on the topic of why the BBC refuses to call Hamas "terrorists". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHvWNr9-StY&ab_channel=ExBritishArmyPaz49

Personally, I gave up watching BBC news programmes some time ago because of obvious bias in their reporting in Ukraine and John Simpson was never one of my favourite reporters. This Paz49  is obviously one of the people posting on You Tube clearly taking the side of the Netanyahu government and attacking Hamas. That's OK; freedom of speech and all that. (Make the most of it while you still can). I suspect this bloke is an awful lot younger than me, so I feel it right that I should try to educate him. I don't know for sure but I suspect my time in the British Army had finished before he was born.

First, let's examine past events regarding the State of Israel and its foundation. A long time ago, even before my time, Jews around the world had been crying for a state of their own. A state based solely on your religion? Whatever, their wish was granted and the Soviet Union came to their aid, creating the Jewish Autonomous Oblast via a decree in 1928. That still exists to this day as an autonomous oblast (the only one) and is still effectively a federal component of modern Russia. It is located on the border between Russia and China in the Russian far east. Regardless of the geography, it is still an autonomous state.

Post WW2, Zionists determined that Palestine would do nicely for their new homeland, thank you very much and began infiltrating into the British Mandate of Palestine. The British government didn't really want Palestine but it was mandated to them by the League of Nations and the British set about running it as per their mandate. The Zionist terrorist organisations, Haganah and Irgun didn't like this and set about organising terrorist operations within Palestine. They were labelled quite widely as "Terrorists" even by that great beacon of democracy (not!) Winston Churchill and Albert Einstein. They didn't seem to have any one side in the affairs of Palestine in their sights and set about killing and maiming Arab and British people alike. Eventually, in 1948, they bombed the King David hotel in Jerusalem, killing more than 90, including British, Palestinains and Jews alike. To cap this off, they organised the killing of 107 Arabs, including women and children in the village of Deir Yassin. If you are going to kill unarmed women and children, don't be susprised if you are labelled "Terrorist"! The list of Irgun outrages is so long, it even warrants its own section in Wikipedia, 3 whole pages of them! Also, following the end of WW2, a lot of British servicemen had been released from the armed forces and those of the Jewish faith went to Palestine and were involved in attacking and killing their erstwhile mates; fellow British servicemen, along with any Arab who didn't have a gun! So, there's a nice introduction to the beginnings of the Israeli state.

And then, there is the question of dispossessing Palestinian Arabs of their homes and land. Sadly, this has gone on from the earliest days of Israel up until this day. Unless you have been there and witnessed the unimagable suffering this has caused and continues to cause, it is probably best if you hold your peace and say nothing until you have educated your self. Can you imagine a British population being invaded by others who take away your homes and land and then just sitting there quietly, uttering a lot of "tut" and doing nothing about it? No, I can't either. We would be up in arms and doing our best to remove the usurpers. Wasn't a great deal made during WW2 about the training of not only the Home Guard but the "stay behind Squads"? These people were expected to go to ground wherever possible, in order to attack German invaders, yet they were never called "Terrorists". They would be labelled "Freedom Fighters" (quite rightly too).

So, we come to today, 2023, when, after 80 years of brutal, sub-human treatment by the Israeli government, the Palestinians have said "Enough!"and decided it was time to dish out some of the treatment they are regularly subjected to, if only to say "Now will you pay attention to us?" Isn't it odd that we here in the UK have listened for years to various governments condemning the likes of Al Quaeda, Islamic Front and their ilk for being driven by a religious ideology, yet, when it goes on daily in Israel we don't condemn the religious drivers here. I have no time for any of those organisations. Anybody who uses religion as an excuse to inflict pain and misery on others belongs to the era of the Spanish Inquisition and deserves to be consigned to the dustbin of history as was the Inquisition. During my time in Aden (1966/67) we had to put up with a lot of crap including attacks with hand grenades, shootings, mortars etc. yet I hold no malice toward the evil bastards behind it all as they were at least "fighting" for a political purpose, not just mindless terror in the name of religion.

By the way, Mr Paz49, during my time, it was my pleasure to serve with a bunch of your comrades, "B" Company, South Wales Borderers. I had 5 months with these boys in 1967 in Botswana and what a great bunch they were, except for the occasional "11 VCs before breakfast" chants if they wanted to wind us non-SWB up (refers to the battle of Rorke's Drift when they were the 24th Regiment of Foot). We put up with that and even joined in with them but I don't remember a single one of them ever spouting the kind of tripe you produce.

Wednesday, February 01, 2023

 Stupidity at its finest

A quick glance at the front page of the Daily Mail this morning (courtesy of the BBC) shows the banner headline from Sarah Vine: "Does anyone give a fig about all of us hard-working taxpayers whose lives are being wrecked by strikes?"
 
Has the woman not got the brains to figure it out? Is she really trying to tell us that nurses are neither hard-working nor are paying taxes?
How about teachers, ambulance crews, postmen and all the others who have found it necessary to resort to strikes to try to maintain a decent standard of living? They all work hard and they all are liable to pay taxes. Unlike people named Mrs. Sunak or Zahawi. These are people who seem to feel that paying tax is only for the "little people", the great unwashed hordes.
Does the privileged Ms Vine not understand that these workers are sacrificing wages while they are on strike? And when they are not on strike, they are paying their fair share of taxes?
Why is it that this so-called government can claim not to have the funds to pay these strikers a decent living wage, yet are able to dish out billions of pounds, no questions asked, to the most corrupt government in Europe? I wouldn't be surprised to learn one day that these hand outs are going to Kiev in the form of grubby £50 notes via the diplomatic bag.
 
I shall not be reading the article penned by Ms Vine. The odious headline has ensured that!

Monday, November 28, 2022

Hypocrisy

 

 


Hypocrisy:  The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess; falseness.

Hypocrisy seems to be gaining ground these days, with examples springing up all around. It is something I don't like but when practiced by those pretending to be better and cleverer than us mere mortals, it really aggravates me. So I thought I would mention a few examples:

Beginning with one that came to my attention today. On November 25th, the US regulator for telecomms, the FCC, announced a ban on deployment in the US of telecomms equipment made by, among others, Huawei. That is a ban effective 25th November 2022. The same gang (US government) had carried out a round of brow beating of European nations in 2019, basically forcing European nations to take out and replace their Huawei 5G equipment. The UK Security/Intelligence services had previously done an examination of Huwaei equipment going into UK telecomms systems and given it a clean bill of health. The Yanks shouted at Boris who responded with an "Oo Err Mrs" moment, followed by an edict that all Huawei kit would have to be removed. So, for almost 3 years, it was deemed necessary to eradicate Huawei from Europe on the grounds it was a security risk, while continuing to happily install and commission it in the USA. That's hypocrisy!

How about the UK's lunatic fringe, particularly "Just Stop Oil"? During their recent anti-social behaviour, sitting down in busy roads etc, causing massive disruption to many, and personal distress to others, I couldn't help noticing a couple of points: First, where and when these people found themselves in court for breaching injunctions etc, it became obvious that these people, in the main, came from a certain class; the comfortably off, presumably well educated class and second noticeable feature was their dress. Look for them on the internet and there are hundreds of images, showing them wearing rugged boots with rubber or rubber substitute soles, high-vis gilets, nylon or polyester garments etc. While telling us we must "Just Stop Using Oil" in our daily lives, they seem quite comfortable in wearing clothing that relies for its production on oil! Even if the boots were of natural rubber, have you seen how many tons of diesel fuel is used in the ships carrying the rubber to these shores?

A bit more hypocrisy, featuring once again the world leading exponents of the art, the USA. Currently, they are telling us how the Russian attacks on Ukraine's power infrastructure constitutes a "war crime". Does it now? If true (I don't think it is), was it not a war crime when the US announced in the 1990s how it was going to attack Iraq, beginning with bombing the Iraqi electricity system with carbon fibre filaments, designed specifically to (a) disable the grid and (b) to make it more difficult to restore electricity supplies. Or, what about bombing the crap out of the Yugoslav electricity system because the Yanks wanted to assist Kosovo in their independence grab?

And speaking of independence grabs, how about Ukraine? The regions of Donetsk and Lugansk sought and were granted autonomy within Ukraine in 2014/2015. Note: they were not seeking independence. They chose that route only after 8 years of Ukraine shelling and bombing of civilians and total disregard for the Minsk Accords? Such a flagrant desire to look after themselves (How dare they!) was greeted with contempt and a US led movement to refuse to recognise their self-determination.

Sunday, November 27, 2022

BBC; Take note

 

What is this woman doing? Well, she was, at the time the photo was taken, doing 2 things: 1) Politely asking the journalist taking the photo if she could use his phone and (2) Dying.
She had been working in the civil administration building in Lugansk on 2nd June 2014.
Moments earlier the Ukraine Air Force had flown an Su-25 ground attack plane over the street outside the civil administration building and strafed the area with what seems to have been 30mm rounds.
Of course, the Kiev government denied it was anything to do with them. The OCSE reported the following day "In Luhansk the situation remained volatile. On 2 June, shortly after 15:00 hrs, rockets hit the occupied regional administration building. Based on the SMM’s limited observation these strikes were the result of non-guided rockets shot from an aircraft. The number of casualties is unknown". https://www.osce.org/ukraine-smm/119479
Regardless of who did what, the poor lady in the photograph died of her wounds a short time later.
CNN published this report, clearly discrediting the Ukraine government's denials: 
https://www.osce.org/ukraine-smm/119479
On the same day, the BBC published this weasel-worded nonsense: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-27661848. No doubt, the BBC would consider it churlish of me to suggest that the "reporter" contributing this item was sat in the Dog & Duck in Piccadilly, getting his feed via a Ukraine "source". Churlish or not, I'll take that risk and say just that!
Yet, here we are, over 8 years since this incident and the pompous bastards at the BBC maintain that this struggle/war/conflict (delete that which doesn't suit you) began 8 months ago. No stupid! It began over 8.5 years ago. Try and be a little more honest with your audience. Or try and get another job!

 

Wednesday, November 16, 2022

Wanna Buy Some Grain?

Recently, following the Ukraine/UK attack on the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sebastapol, there was a brief hiatus in the tripartite deal between Ukraine, Russia and Turkey  that allowed the shipment of grain from Ukrainian ports. The shipments continued after Russia said words to the effect of "OK Ukraine. You have had your warning, don't pull a stunt like that again". The day shipments resumed, I chose 9 bulk carriers departing Ukraine and heading South in the Black Sea.

Given the constant bleating from Ukraine and the UN about how the blockade of Ukraine ports was depriving starving third world nations of much needed grain. A need made more urgent by climate changes around the world resulting in crop failures, droughts etc. If renewed grain  shipments were to bring some desperately needed relief to those countries, it could only be a good thing. However, being a bit of a cynic, I thought I would track these 9 ships "just to see". (I had followed a couple of the very first shipments in July this year and they had not ended up where they said they were going).

Under the deal, shipments go via Turkey for checks to ensure the ships are indeed carrying grain exclusively and nothing untoward. So, it was no surprise to note that of the 9 vessels selected for following, all 9 declared Istanbul to be their destination, once they were underway. Eventually ships modified their declared destinations, usually upon leaving the Bosporus Anchorage after a couple of days at anchor. On 4th November, the following ships signalled modified destinations as follows:

St Sofia            Dest            Cartagena                    Caravos Harmony     Dest        Port Said

Nikolaos  A      Dest            Liverpool                      Despina V                Dest        Rotterdam

Notice how many ports in starving 3rd world nations there? At a quick count, I would say Nil. Zero, blank, bugger all, nought. Well, fair enough. That is only 4 of the 9, meaning 5 others had not decided or declared their destinations. So, Amyntor signalled Istanbul Anchorage as destination on 5th November. And no change for the remainder. Subsequently, Eco Destiny decided on 12th November it was bound for Tripoli and is now in Misrata (Libya). St Sofia has berthed in Cartagena, Caravos Harmony on 8th November decided it was not stopping in Port Said but would transit Suez, heading for Singapore and was last seen in the Gulf of Aden, apparently heading that way. Nikolaos A has berthed in Liverpool, Mount Baker is still bimbling around Maramara Sea, still determined to go to Istanbul. Ikairia Angel, on 11th November, turned around and set off for Djibouti and today it is in the Gulf of Suez. After a few days lurking around Istanbul, African Robin decided on 10th November to go to Almeria and was last seen somewhere between Sicily and Tunis allegedly "Out of Range" of suitable AIS receivers. (Other ships in the same area are NOT Out of Range though, so...hmmm). Following a couple of excursions around the Marmara Sea and the Aegean Sea, Amyntor came back to Turkey and is berthed in Iskanderun

As a table, they all look like this:

St Sofia                 Dest            Cartagena                    Caravos Harmony    Dest       Singapore

Nikolaos   A          Dest            Liverpool                     Despina V                Dest        Rotterdam

Amyntor                Dest            Iskanderun                   Eco Destiny             Dest       Misrata

Mount Baker         Dest            Istanbul                        Ikairia Angel            Dest        Djibouti

African Robin        Dest            Algiers

So there we have it. Of 9 ships carrying "desperately needed" grain supplies to the starving millions, I can see only 1 that would qualify, Ikairia Angel. Having said that, the destination declared by the ship may be Djibouti but it is still in the Gulf of Suez. I would suggest I wait and see!