Undiplomatic Incident

I still can't get used to seeing my old home town splashed across the media on a daily basis.  Even weirder is to constantly see it at the centre of a major diplomatic incident triggered by a chemical attack on a retired Russian spy.  The repercussions of the Salisbury incident seem to be spiraling out of control as the UK and Russia engage in tit for tat diplomatic expulsions and insults are exchanged.  It doesn't help that the UK authorities only seem to have belatedly launch any kind of investigation into the actual events of the incident in order to establish the facts.  Ordinarily you would do that before you start flinging accusations around and threatening punitive measures.  But hey, what do facts matter when we have a Foreign Secretary and Defence Secretary who both seem to believe that diplomacy should be conducted at the level of the school playground, shouting 'Yah, boo, sucks' at the Russians before thumbing their noses at the Kremlin.  I bet the newly re-elected Putin (in a surprise victory) is quaking in his boots.  All it's done, in reality, is annoy him enough to deploy his weather machine against us, bringing snow and chaos back to our shores.

Mind you, whilst pleased that some kind of investigation into the incident seems finally to have started, I've been left confused by the police appeal for more information on the movements of the victim's car.  I mean, surely it would have been wherever he was, or in close vicinity?  Unless they are trying tell us that it was able to drive itself around, like KITT from Knight Rider.  And if it was like KITT, surely it would have been able to warn him about an imminent attack:  'Sergei, I detect a nerve agent, novochek, according to my sensors, in the vicinity - evacuate the area immediately.'  I was hoping that last week's revelation that yet another retired Russian spy living in the UK had not, as at first thought, died of natural causes but instead had been strangled to death (an easy mistake to make), might draw the attention away from Salisbury.  Sadly, it just hasn't caught the public imagination in the way that a city centre nerve agent poisoning seemingly has.  Perhaps if it had been revealed that he had been strangled with a cord that his assassin pulled out of a watch - as in From Russia, With Love - or maybe strangled between the thighs of a female Russian agent called something like Vulva Fellatio, it would have grabbed the public's attention more. 

I'm still tending to the idea that it wasn't the Russians at all behind the attack.  The local Chamber of Commerce is still my prime suspect.  Although their plan to attract more tourists with the publicity generated by a false flag chemical attack seems to have badly backfired, as, apart from reporters and soldiers in NBC suits, the city's streets have been largely deserted since the incident.  Obviously, we can't discount SPECTRE - let's not forget those reports of a bald man stroking a long haired white cat outside the Zizzi restaurant in Salisbury - which has form for trying to create tension between Russia and the west in the hope of triggering a nuclear exchange which will leave their Chinese clients masters of the smouldering radioactive cinder left in the wake of such an outcome.  Ordinarily, of course, the next stage would involve SPECTRE launching that rocket from its Japanese volcano base to hijack US and Russian satellites in an  attempt to ramp up the tension.  Unfortunately though, said volcano recently erupted.  I say erupted, but I think we all know that was simply the result of a pre-emptive strike by MI6, whose top agent infiltrated the facility and forced Blofeld to pull the self destruct lever.  Even now, SPECTRE are probably negotiating with Karl Stromberg to loan them his super tanker which can swallow nuclear submarines whole...