I am a journalist, writer and broadcaster ... lately I've been concentrating on music, I spent many years as a music critic and a travel writer ... I gave up my last editorship a while ago and started concentrating on my blog. I was also asked to join AirTV International as a co host of a new show called Postcard ...
Pete Miller has written for The Society describing what it is like to fight for young people forced to face the world alone by Putin. Pete is church administrator and chairman of the council for Faith Community in Bratislava
Pete Miller
I am a Brit living in Slovakia married to a Slovak. We have two young Ukrainians staying with us.
They arrived two days ago after travelling for five days, 16 hours at the border.
The boy is 17 and his sister 20. they are from Sumy close to the Russian border.
When they were dropped off at our home I broke down, all they had were little rucksacks like the kids take to school with their books.
Parents and three brothers have stayed behind to fight – God bless them.
This is the reality of what is happening. We had to take them shopping yesterday morning and they are so grateful.
We, as a country, were not prepared to go in and fight, for reasons I understand, but at least we can show more love and humanity to our fellow man. These two youngsters want to go to the US. Problem is young man has only an ID card.
The US embassy told me they do not provide any humanitarian aid to citizens of Ukraine yet. They will probably join in late like they did with WW 1 and 11 and then claim all the credit. We have just taken another two 20 year old Ukrainian girls to other accommodation we have found.
They also need food and clothing.
It is still very cold here, especially at night. Our International Church here in Bratislava is doing all it can to help, our resources are finite, but fortunately we trust in a God with infinite resources.
UK seems to fear Russians will be coming if we pluck Putin’s victims from hell in Europe
Are us Brits really objecting to Ukrainian refugees heading for the UK as Vlad the Bad bombs their homes and murders their families?
It appears Boris thinks so!
Other countries in Europe are tidying up their racism, lifting barb-wire fences and plucking old folk, young mums and the plain frightened from the ditches, the pot-holed highways and the freezing forests of Central and Eastern Europe.
The European Union moved quickly to say that Ukrainian refugees would be welcome for three years.
In many respects, the Russian invasion of Ukraine represents a major turning point in European politics and racism. And this is patently true for the former Warsaw Pact states.
Poland has taken over 450,000 refugees although it is a much poorer country than the UK.
Even Moldova, one of the poorest countries in Europe, has taken in 79,000 people and actually offered them jobs.
But our big blond bombshell of a prime minister Boris is like somebody twitching the chintzy curtains of East Cheam.
He is trying to discern what his neighbours might think if a whole new raft of immigrants arrives over here ‘taking our jobs, steal our benefits, living it up in posh hotels, getting the NHS for free – and stealing our wives and girlfriends!’
Alright, Boris is saying the UK visa scheme will be broadened.
But is that really enough for a country that voted itself out the EU because we wanted to raise our borders and portcullises to stop our Johnnie Foreigner neighbours moving into our leafy lanes and our Brexit and Covid broken cities?
Home Secretary Priti Patel has said 100,000 Ukrainians will be able to seek refuge in the UK under a “humanitarian route”. She said Moscow extremists could take advantages of any opening of our wet and windy and sea-bashed borders.
Ms Patel did confirm that family members of British nationals would be allowed to come to the UK for up to a year providing they pass security checks,
But she later rejected calls to waive tough visa rules for security reasons because of fears that Moscow’s troops and extremists could try to come to the UK.
Surely, all the proof that both Patel and joker Johnson have got it wrong. The out-pouring of grief for the people of the Ukraine, the millions raised overnight to help out, the indignation of protesters on British streets, the lampoonery of Putin – a good old-fashioned British weapon – the fury and the fear.
This is the truth of the feelings of the people on the streets of Britain right now. We want to help these people Boris!
It has to be accepted that the vast majority of British people want controlled numbers of immigration.
But this doesn’t mean we are opposed to the victims of a madman’s war. Why is it then that it is our Government ministers who are saying no to taking in large numbers of people?
This is a real emergency and our British overlords need to scramble to save lives.
The Ukrainians who have lost anything are not fresh boat loads of young male adventurers from The East trying to beat our asylum system.
Us Brits know the difference Boris – and this war is taking place less than 2000 miles from our proud island.
Our politicians should stand up and cry: “Ukrainian refugees welcome here.”
That’s the way we should be presenting ourselves to the world.
Leigh doesn’t want to be stuck in the middle with anybody – particularly Daniel O’Donnell!
I once wrote a headline for a leading daily newspaper saying Daniel O’Donnell is so middle-of-the-road he should be run over…
And after all these decades I’m still waiting in the layby, engine purring like a cat!
To my mind Daniel is the doyen of the anodyne and of the pointless … songs with titles like Make Me a Channel of Your Peace, Blackboard of My Heart, Medals For Mothers and Danny Boy speak volumes.
My problem is that I’ve never understood why so many people like him want to be stuck in the middle, doing fair-to-middling on a mid income (unlike Daniel) driving a mid-range eco car with a mid-line engine, living in a mid-terrace in Middleton Scriven in the Midlands (unlike Daniel).
Maybe the family is in the middle of a divorce (unlike Daniel, although…). And dad’s mid income is being split down the middle by child support agency middle management.
It might even end up in a mid-life crisis. After all he was a middle child, from Middlehampton…
Stuck in the middle with you eh..?
Me? I was brought up in the middle you see – right in the middle of the mental conflict between working class in the 1960s and middle-class pretentions that stay at your psyche’s heart until that wooden box folds you up six feet underground.
Yep, in the 60s we lived in a tiny detached on neat tidy avenue full of replicant houses and replicant people in their cardigans and Hush Puppies.
It was very nice, apparently.
It was this way of life that made me ask many decades ago, what is the value of becoming middle-class?
On the surface, of course, it is far safer than being on the edge … being far out.
Or just being lost.
But I have never understood how people can expect to stand out in a crowd if, like chilly penguins, they are desperately trying to fight their way back into the middle of everything. And nothing.
The middle-classes, to me, are the cogs in the machine, the oil in the engine of society, the propaganda poster boys and girls … those who drive electric Renault Fluences, go for two weeks in the Costa-Not-Very-Mucha with their two-and-a-half kiddly-winks and the bubbly pink missus spilling out of her Marks and Sparks ‘big pants’ bikini for the middle-aged!
I say we should all get out of the middle, drift too far from shore, balance on the edge … and go over the top!
Here Moston writer Dorrie Bridge goes back to the 30s when the middle ground was the way ahead even though it might grind you into dust…
Hightown or Lowtown? Dorrie tells of days when Middletown was the place to be…
I reach back to a period that not many people will remember. The 1930s.
Innocent little anecdote.
My dad came from a place called Hightown in the Cheetham area of Manchester. He was one of six brothers and a sister, brought up in a two-up-two down.
Good, loving family with a father who kept the wolf from the door. Dad left school at fourteen and went into a factory.
He married my mother and they moved into another two up two down in Moston, another working class area a few miles away. I was born in that house.
Mum had worked in the mill, ‘dancing The Charleston’ as she tended the huge looms. She was educated to the age of sixteen because her mother, who couldn’t read or write (‘her parents didn’t have the penny charged to send her to school’) decided to work cleaning in the mill to let her daughter get The School Certificate.
My intelligent, feisty grandma then went to the office in the mill and told them she wanted her daughter to work in the office, not on the factory floor.
The men unanimously said that as they were all men in the office it wouldn’t be ‘proper’ for a girl the work with them. So while she worked in the mill my mum took out a part-time insurance book with The Royal London.
When Gordon met her and they were courting he decided to get one of these ‘books’. He built it up and by the time he sadly died at just forty-six he was a branch manager (title, Superintendent) with The Royal London.
They decided that renting was a waste of money and bought a house – very few of the people in the l930s had moved out of working class rented property. I was brought up on one of the new posh estates.
As I grew up I looked at the neighbours I knew so well and realized that each of them was from a working class background, railway man, bricklayer, shop assistant, tram driver, and so on.
They were all working class but had Aspired, as had my brilliant, illiterate grandma when she kept her daughter in school.
Our middle-class, from lower middle-class to upper, were not to be sniffed at or patronized, they were, and are to be applauded. Read all the tomes and come at the definition from many angles, be it education, money, or any other circumstance – read them all, but middle class (with a few unfortunate exceptions) are borne of the backbone of our country, the working-class.
#moston #manchester #middleclass
MEERSPLATS! Orlov and Sergei are kicked in the ads by Putin’s mad war
The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia was led by the Soviet Union.
On the night of 20–21 August 1968, under a waning Moon, Poland, Bulgaria and Hungry followed the snarling Great Red Bear in to Czechoslovakia.
The Soviet circus of sour and blood had begun.
The intention was to stop Alexander Dubceck’s dream of Socialism with a Human Face … he wanted to permanently remove state control of the economy. And he also wanted to allow free speech in the Press.
The pact’s invasion cost at least 17 civilians lives and 500 were wounded. The occupation had come out of the darkness and for lifetimes left veils of history, despair, fear and fury across these beleaguered lands.
The occupation was of course tribal – poor countries devouring poor countries, the madness of the power-hungry crashing steel wheels and metal bombs through the lives and souls of folk who knew nothing …
These folk simply battened down the thatches and barns, fled to the mountains or dug holes in the ground to disappear down.
Others though remained to fight in the streets and squares and back alleys of their home towns.
I lived and worked for many years in a small Slovak city under the shark’s teeth of the High Tatras mountains. It is close to the Polish border and Hungary is a short drive away. Bulgaria is close too, as far as the golden eagle flies.
The city where I am still resident – Poprad in the Spis region – is a place with an eye firmly fixed on the future’s horizon. It is becoming chic – cafe society, tourism, nature and business. Its people are sophisticated and go-ahead.
But today towns and cities like Poprad, dotted across Central and Eastern Europe, are visited by the spectres from the dark side of their memories.
The grizzliness of the Great Red Bear is back in their lives, The Bear is eating off the heads of innocents a few hundred miles down the road.
Worryingly, most people in this part of Europe remember how quickly the bear can turn, how quickly a madman can change his unfettered mind and how quickly the future can become the new Dark Age.
Here we retell the story of Joseph Bonk, a man who learned to repair washing machines as part of his living. He was innocent and walked into the Soviet death machine on the streets of Poprad.
Joseph was holed by a burning-hot spinning shell. He died alone in the cellar of a small hospital in Spiska Sabota up the winding hill from Poprad.
Tragically similar stories to Joseph’s are happening right now on the white-hot streets of Kyiv in the Ukraine.
People are dying, families are crying…
Joseph Bonk in 1968 became the pointless – and for many hours – the abandoned victim of a war that for centuries has, in one way or the other, raised its ugly head across these beautiful parts of Europe.
But today many see Joseph Bonk as a major symbol in the battle for freedom and the right to speak your mind out.
Let us support his memory and in doing so support the Ukraine in its days of horror.
One dark day in 1968 Jozef Bonk stepped off a train in Poprad ready to make a surprise visit to his family.
Instead his liver was splattered by a bullet.
Jozef was a student at the Apprenticeship School in Veľká, Slovakia when Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia.
He had been repairing machinery somewhere near Kosice and had decided to come home early.
But he got caught up in a crowd of protesters in Dukla Heroes Square. He was ten minutes from his home.
Jozef was 19 and the invasion of the small down-trodden city of Poprad was a shock.
But it beat looking down at your boots to avoid the eyes of the secret police and the tenement snitches. 3000 people in the square at that moment had a sense of pride for the first time in their lives.
Jozef too was proud. But he was far from being a revolutionary, an anarchist.
And he was certainly no freedom fighter.
Like so many back then, he didn’t really understand the politics behind the fact that troops from five socialist countries had invaded Czechoslovakia because they feared the likes of Alexander Dubček, a major reformist.
Now the invaders were all over his community.
But Jozef was just drawn by the monstrousness of the invading armies and their war machines.
***
It was noon when he arrived at the square.
The square in Poprad
Minutes later Soviet shots rang out, boomed across the roof tops and echoed round the High Tatras.
Fifteen people were injured.
But Jozef was the one who died.
And nobody bothered to tell his family he had been shot.
“He was on a week-long furlough repairing machines, we didn’t know he was home,” his sister Anna Malá Krajňák said.
It was only when a porter at Spišská Sobota hospital found his ID card in his blood-stained jacket that somebody ran to tell them.
Jozef’s body was lying in the basement of the hospital. His liver had been ruptured.
He was quickly buried in the family home-town of Hôrka less than 10km, away.
Anna Mala said: “A lot of people came to the funeral, but it was terrible because a helicopter was flying over us. The whole thing went very quickly, because everyone was afraid.”
Anna Malá eulogised her brother as a passionate football player who lived with his parents and was helping his brother build a new home.
But after his death Jozef became, in the eyes of the authorities, became something he simply wasn’t … he was officially condemned as a dissident and a counter-revolutionary.
The authorities had blamed him for his own death and his family were ordered not to talk about him or tell how he died.
For decades Anna Malá tried to put flowers on his grave but State Security stopped her.
She was even threatened with prison.
***
Now the square where he died is named after St Egidius and there is a small memorial and plaque to Josef Bonk and others on a shelf in a wall. There are plastic religious figures and a few cheap candle lights. Sometimes there is a picture of Jozef. Sometimes there isn’t.
But every year now people gather to remember him.
František Bednár from the World Association of former Czechoslovak political prisoners, who curates the small commemoration says: “It is sad that this is the only monument in Slovakia with the names of the victims of the crimes of the time.
We also regret that August 21 is not even a memorial day in Slovakia.” .
The monument has also become a tribute to journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiance Martina Kušnírová. They were shot dead in 2018 at their home in Veľká Mača in the Galanta district.
So, after 50 years Josef has actually become the thing he never was in his life … a figurehead against corruption, suppression and dishonesty.
For there is no such thing as political murder or collateral loss, there is only murder.
Jozef Bonk was the victim of murder just as Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová were.
Each of them are heroes because they were painted as villains by those who held power.
Hacktivists are getting involved in the war between Ukraine and Russia.
Members of Anonymous took to twitter to say they are launching attacks against Putin’s regime. They have already hit local government websites and took down the website of Russian news outlet RT.
Anonymous says it may also leak login credentials for the Russian Ministry of Defence website.
And Yegor Aushev, co-founder of a Kyiv-based cybersecurity company, said he was asked by a senior Ukrainian Defense Ministry official to make a call for help from hackers.
However, things became a bit mired by ransomware groups Conti and CoomingProject publishing messages saying they supported the Russian government …
Although later they softened their cyber-conscience message by saying: “We do not ally with any government and we condemn the ongoing war. However, since the West is known to wage its wars primarily by targeting civilians, we will use our resources in order to strike back if the well being and safety of peaceful citizens will be at stake due to American cyber aggression.”
Reports had indicated Joe ‘Bumble’ Biden has already been investigating options for cyberattacks on Russian infrastructure. The White House denied it.
Earlier this year, Aubrey Cottle was revealed as the internet ‘prankster’ who years ago started Anonymous, a collective of hackers waging cyberwar against institutions like the Church of Scientology, the Westboro Baptist Church and the police department.
“Anonymous has all walks of life,” Cottle has written. “The most infamous is, obviously, the hacker type, but just as important are the ones that mobilize online and spread awareness, do research, and collaborate in that manner. If you have a voice, you can help Anonymous.”
But are he and his mates really the ones we want to go to war on a billionaire, bodice-ripping, nipple-flashing shaven-headed despot with a brain that not even a cyber spider could find its way around?
Hackers are proud that they know how most cyber security systems operate. Usually, they seek small to medium-sized companies … but now they have gone for the Big One.
A potential World War.
Cybersecurity firm Sophos said the declarations from Conti and Anonymous “increase the risk for everyone, whether involved in this conflict or not.”
“Vigilante attacks in either direction increase the fog of war and generate confusion and uncertainty for everyone.”
The world seemed shocked and horrified at Putin’s incendiary and murderous attack on the Ukraine. Yet NATO and the US have repeatedly warned – and been warned – that Russia would attack.
Now, as the tin-pot guardian’s of the Western World’s security put on their tin hats and wave bombs around like plastic swords, they bleat from the battlements that Putin will have to pay a high price for invading.
The question therefore has to be, why didn’t NATO and the US do anything about what was looming in the dark valleys and mountains of Europe for so many years?
Today the world is shocked and frightened as Vlad the Inhaler tries to suck his empire of snow, oil and gas back together.
So, it is back to bar-room bravado and ridicule … from Kyiv to Kentish town, Poprad to Preston, Washington to Wallasey the knives of the tongue are flashing … Putin is mad, he is the new Hitler, Vlad impaled the world on his cock-iness, arrogance and money. And then there is his desire to ride triumphantly across the land that is his beating heart, bare-chested, thin lipped and as bald as Bruce Willis.
So, is Vlad mad? Or just doing his job?
He has been demanding a guarantee from Nato that the Ukraine and former Soviet countries will not be allowed to join.
Vladimir Putin also wants the alliance to halt weapon deployment and move back its forces from Eastern Europe. Nato has rejected these demands.
Ukraine has said that it wants to become a Nato member. Joining would up Ukraine’s defensive strength as, under Article 5, an attack against one ally is an attack against all allies. This binds the member states to protect each other.
Mr Putin is vehemently against Ukraine joining Nato and views the alliance’s expansion as a threat to Russia. He claims that Moscow’s military movements are a response to Ukraine’s growing ties to the alliance.
Putin says that Moscow has been betrayed by the West as they broke commitments made at the end of the Cold War that Nato would not move eastward.
Nato denies any assurances were made.
Ex-Soviet states Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland joined in 1999, then Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia and Slovenia joined in 2004.
Moscow demands assurances that Ukraine will never become a member of Nato and that the West’s expansion eastward is curbed.
Do you know as the alliance’s chief Jens Stoltenberg says: “Despite our repeated warnings and tireless efforts to engage in diplomacy, Russia has chosen the path of aggression against a sovereign and independent country.”
So, again, is Vlad mad? Or has NATO failed in its duty to sort things out before people lost their lives under a hard rain of falling bombs?
#putin #ukraine #natio #kyiv
Horror as wheelchair-bound Olive actress screams for help in blaze
On the Buses actress Anna Karen has died in a house fire possibly started by a cigarette after she fell asleep, neighbours say.
The 85-year-old actress who played Olive in the 70s comedy, was heard screaming ‘help me, help me’ as the blaze spread across her terraced home in Ilford.
Fire chiefs are investigating, though it is not thought to be suspicious.
Anna’s agent Shane Collins said ‘We don’t know if it was an electrical fault or whether it was because she was smoking.’
Tributes have since flooded in for the star – who was lifelong friends with Barbara Windsor – this afternoon, including from Bucks Fizz singer Cheryl Baker, who described her as ‘an absolute treasure, both on and off the screen’.
She had a CV of acting credits, including appearances in the Carry On films and a string of pantomimes – but she will be remembered for her role as Olive in 70s comedy On The Buses.
#olive #onbuses #blaxe #horror
We need blood, cries Ukraine chief as Putin rides in on rockets and shells
Hours into the devastating Putin invasion of the Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky told the world ‘we need help’ and ‘we need blood’.
President Zelensky had already said he would give guns to every Ukrainian who wants them to help fight back against the Russian attack. He begged every fit military-aged man to join the defence of their country.
But after Putin’s forces invade with rocket attacks and shelling his cry for help went out.
Terrified Ukrainians had been woken by shell attacks as fierce fighting began.
elensky has also told people to spread accurate information about the crisis.
His words came as a Western intelligence official warned the conflict could spread further into Europe.
The official, who asked not to be named, said: “Let’s not be blind. If Russia initiates a scenario of any kind it will also initiate action against Nato members.
“To think war could be contained to one nation would be foolish.”
On Tuesday, the Chief of the Defence Staff, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, said: “The significance of the worst scenarios in terms of a full-scale invasion would be on a scale not seen in Europe since the Second World War”.
Oil prices immediately surged past $100 (£74) a barrel after the invasion news to hit their highest level for more than seven years.
Russia is the second biggest exporter of crude oil, and is also the world’s largest natural gas exporter.
The price of oil topped $103 a barrel, and the RAC warned that UK petrol prices were set to rise further. However, the UK only gets 6% of its crude oil and 5% of its gas from Russia.
Earlier Putin said he was recognising the independence of two self-proclaimed people’s republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine.
The breakaway regions were seized by Russian-backed rebels after Russia invaded Crimea in 2014. Mr Putin launched that attack after mass street protests in Ukraine that ousted pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych.
Since then more than 14,000 people have died in conflict with Ukraine.
Kyiv and its Western allies have always rejected Putin’s claims that Ukraine was being run by neo-Nazis, saying Ukraine was now a nation with growing democratic institutions.
