I'm avoiding the TV news. The BBC 6 o'clock news and the ITV and STV news at 10 are full of lies and half-truths. C4 news is usually okay but this week they've gone all hysterical over Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. So tonight I was reduced to watching Sky News Review as it happened. A lot of the 10.30 programme was about Putin, Russia and events at Salisbury.
Yasmin Alibhai Brown was on with someone called Brendan O'Neill (?) from Spiked (an online newspaper of the far right sort) but in all honesty neither got to say much because the presenter was in there from the start of the programme. I've googled her and she's called Anna Botting. And she was there to give the Sky view of events. Ms Botting conflated quite a few stories: the Skripals, the poisoning of Alekzander Litvinyenko, the invasion of Crimea, the shooting down of a passenger plane, bombing in Syria, interference in elections all over the world.
Now I have to say Valodya, as his mammy probably called him, is not my cup of tea. But the accusations Ms Botting made against him - apart from the invasion of Crimea - should all be bracketed by the word 'alleged.' There's no evidence Sky can produce to prove he was behind any of the other events.
Ms Alibhai Brown gave a good account of herself, although she had both Ms Botting and Mr O'Neill to contend with. When the talk turned to Boris Johnson's insensitive comments about similarities between the World Cup in Russia and the 1936 Olympics, I was so pleased to hear Ms Alibhai Brown holding her own with Ms Botting. It went something like this:
- Alibhai Brown: Boris Johnson must know that 20 million Russians died in the Second World War-
- Botting: 25 million.
- Alibhai Brown: No. 20 million - I know my history.
By the way, the USSR boycotted the 1936 Olympics, while the UK team went and gave Nazi salutes on the field of play.
What Yasmin Alibhai Brown was getting at was this - if she'd been allowed to finish a sentence: the Soviet Union entered World War 2 as an act of self-defence. The Nazis regarded the Slavs as Untermenschen - sub humans - and planned to invade the USSR and wipe out or enslave the population. The Russians don't even call the events of 1940-45 by the name we use. They call it the Great Patriotic War. They defended their country street by street, village by village. This had happened to them before and they knew how to handle it. Try reading Antony Beevor's Stalingrad if you want to see how bad things were. If you live in a country that hasn't been invaded since 1066, the sacrifices Russian people made may be hard to take in.
For Boris Johnson to use Russia and the Nazis in the same sentence was bound to be offensive to the Russians. I'm quite sure civil servants in the Foreign Office pointed out to him the need to avoid inflaming the situation. But Boris is to diplomacy what Theresa May is to negotiating.
Meanwhile, we're being told the UK government know the Russians are responsible for the attack in Salisbury. They have evidence - they just can't share it with us. Aye, right. And Sky - and no doubt other right-wing media - go on stirring up hatred that will surely lead to a second Cold War.
Welcome to the UK, 2018-style. Led by Tories who haven't a clue what they're doing or what's happening and are reduced to begging for help from the EU - which they want to leave.
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