David, this is a thought-provoking piece that I expect will land without ruffled feathers with much of your readership. I have some commentary and pushback.
Firstly, we both have the experience of being British-born immigrants arriving in different countries. Mine is with the US, where I have acquired a visa twice, the second time with far, far greater difficulty, requiring 28 months, nine of which I was separated from my family. One of the costs of making immigration more difficult is that the incentives to circumvent it increase... my wife and I are not surprised by the number of people who bypass US immigration at the southern border (although she is particularly annoyed by it, given what we went through to remain 'above board'). When the process is both slow and wealth-driven (the key criteria not being capacity to contribute to the economy, but merely prior wealth) the deck is stacked against compliance.
With regards to Japan, it is a pleasure to read your account of that charming country, which I have had cause to visit several times, partly for work and partly because a good friend of mine (he and I learned Japanese together) lived much of his adult life in Kyoto, and married a Japanese woman. I always remember his greatest complaint about Japanese culture was that there was a prevailing attitude of 'don't rock the boat', leading to all manner of inefficiencies and blind-eyes-turned, which caused him a great deal of frustration.
I also wish to note here that the Japanese Emperor does not serve a role in state, as our monarch supposedly does, but a role in nation i.e. culture. For instance, kingfisher fishing is a wildly inefficient form of angling, yet the Emperor serves to financially and culturally support this practice so that it does not die out. They do so because it is uniquely Japanese. The closest British equivalent I can think of is chip shop chips, although even here the quality becomes poor once you get south of Birmingham(!). This comparison, I suppose, supports one of your arguments.
(As an aside, I say 'tadaima' when I get home, but my wife, not speaking Japanese, has no idea of the traditional response!)
On the British civil service, who does not have cause to despair...? I have a friend who I once considered myself close to, and indeed whom I once saved from becoming homeless. He ended up in the civil service, as did several other folks that I know, all of whom moved in similar circles. Every single one is a Guardian reader, a pastime I have always been suspicious of, and in the wake of the recent Nonsense this has alas escalated to a certain hostility towards this wrapper-of-fish. This indeed has driven a probably insuperable wedge between myself and my friend, for readers of the contemporary Guardian are simultaneously highly dogmatic and anti-dogmatic - like so many humans, their own highly engrained habits are invisible to themselves.
His vehemence of tone in speaking about Conservative politicians and their voters surprised me, not because I am likely to vote Conservative (I'm not - although post-Nonsense, I certainly shall not be voting Labour either!) but because of the contempt it showed for the British electorate, who were always described in terms of their stupidity and naivety ("turkeys voting for Christmas" was a recurring theme), and yet never was I aware of any attempt to talk to anyone outside the Guardian clique. For myself, I am (evidently) chatty, and when I speak to working class Conservative voters I find their decision perfectly logical - often of the form 'I work hard for a living, and I don't have much respect for those who just want a handout'. But this capacity to respect the electorate for something other than ideological alignment is something the 'old left' has lost. And with it, they have quite lost me.
All this serves as a prelude to the question of British immigration. I agree with your assessment that we are not allowed to discuss this topic, and that this is in essence the problem. Chantelle Mouffe hit the nail squarely on the head in identifying the 'democratic paradox' in that it requires a demos, and the 'left' is committed to 'universal human values' i.e. dogma which is fundamentally incapable of recognising a regional community and its associated attempt at sovereignty. When the 'left' was concerned with human rights as their universal, I was content to play along. Now the Nonsense has destroyed even this practice, I am left abandoned and politically homeless.
I find the Rwanda ploy to be quite despicable and indeed an evident act of desperation. Yet at the same time, when the opposition will not engage in a discussion on the topic, what difference is there between extreme measures such as these and attempts at more reasonable responses? Neither is going to foster the required debate, both will result in the same pigheaded resistance. The notion of political counterweight, essential to the original acceptance of the 'left-right' political divide, is all but vanished.
The difference between Britain and Japan here becomes stark, because Japanese immigration became so watertight because it started from being non-existent - Japan, of course, for many centuries, was simply closed for outside business until United States gunboats arrived with their 'diplomacy'. Britain chose international empire, and as such it has invited other people into the fold. Now it must deal with those consequences one way or another. But neither party, nor the voters that support them, seems willing or able to even begin to discuss how this might be approached. When Brexit is interpreted as racism, and not (as I see it) as a working class revolt coupled to a wealthy class opportunity to wriggle out of EU rules, it blinds anyone so affected.
This can only get worse before any opportunity to get better emerges.
Thank you for this thought-provoking piece, and apologies for the length of my reply, but I do not have time this morning to shorten it.
The Rwanda thing is a ploy and and evident an act of desparation, as you rightly observe, but the government has been more or less driven to it by the failure of the 'new elite' to give an iota of ground on the immigration issue. We are I think going to see exactly the same thing happen with the ECHR as did with the EU - a failure to take into account genuine, good faith push-back, with the result that the push-back becomes stronger and eventually the argument becomes compelling to leave.
Aye, on the one hand I favour withdrawing from the European Commission on Human Rights in so much as I do not believe that it is still engaged in anything related to our human rights promises. On the other, a British replacement under current conditions is no more likely to recover these promises, especially when the political climate is such that any number of placards can be constructed under the rubric of 'imagined rights are legal rights'.
Many thanks for your patience with my verbosity! I have a lot of words to unload each week to prevent my head from exploding, and you have become a favoured export destination. 😂
Thank you, that's fascinating - I've been pondering the link between boundaries and holiness (as in Leviticus) and the way in which the collapse of our boundaries reflects the collapse of a sense of sacred 'ethne' in just the way you describe Japan as retaining. I retain a little hope however - Brexit showed that there is still some life in the old dog, and present circumstances will force a choice. We may be in for (a form of) long Civil War though.
The link between boundaries and holiness interests me as well. Terry Eagleton wrote a very interesting book in which he associated evil with the lack of boundaries; this is an observation that initially struck me as strange, but I increasingly see his point.
I hadn't heard of that from him, which book was it? Biblically evil is associated with the forces of chaos, often imaged as the sea, which is why in Revelation at the end of time 'there is no sea', and divine creativity is associated with putting a boundary around the sea. More thought needed!
The pass was sold long ago. I remember talking to two then young aspiring members of the “elite” - both recent graduates with first class degrees from Oxbridge, who went on to become successful lawyers, senior civil servants and heads of NGOs. They were objecting to the fact that Poland had incorrect views on gay issues, abortion, immigration etc. It did not seem to occur to either of them that the people of Poland had a perfect right to decide these matters for themselves. If in due course the Poles as a country became more “liberal” (which in fact I think they have) that should be as a result of their own agency and evolution, not because right thinking elites in the rest (West, really) of Europe forced them to do. Still less would it occur (it did not come up for discussion) to this young couple that a significant minority, perhaps even a majority, of the UK had similar reservations about these issues. Hence the shock about Brexit. Or Boris’ victory in 2019. But these young people are now middle aged fully paid up members of the elite establishment, and they are still determinedly stealing us, with all their peers, to that liberal, globalist, technocratic sunlit upland. And apparently we can do nothing to stop them, or to change the direction of travel. George Orwell saw it clearly as early as the 1930s I think, when he said that the distinguishing characteristic of the English intellectual was his hatred of England. But in his day they were not yet in charge. They are now.
Japan is under the same pressures as Poland, and they can be intense. Luckily for Japan there is not an equivalent in Asia of the EU or Council of Europe, which act as Trojan horses for technocratic projects in Europe.
Such an interesting article. The contrast between Haneda airport and Heathrow must be stark. I always feel arriving 'home' that I am transiting in some third world hellhole, fighting through the foreign hordes at border control to be permitted entry to my country by an official who doesn't have English as a first language, where the walls are covered in advertisements that feature every race on earth, apart from own, and all the signs welcome me to a 'global' city or some such fatuous nonsense.
You have put your finger right on the problem. The Blob needs to go. I picture it as a cartoon fungus that grows exponentially filling the space around it, blotting out everything in its path. I particularly like the metaphor of the Blob vomiting out Dominic Raab. So true.
"In intentions, at any rate, the English intelligentsia are Europeanized. They take their cookery from Paris and their opinions from Moscow. In the general patriotism of the country they form a sort of island of dissident thought. England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during 'God Save the King' than of stealing from a poor box. "
As always, he's still spot on! That attitude has permeated throughout the media, the arts, politics, the civil service. Tragic.
> Japan, to the Japanese, is, then, a home... the national interest is a genuine phenomenon; the preservation of a settled way of life is something that is worth defending...
..and then, in dreaming, the clouds methought would open, and show riches ready to drop upon me; that, when I waked, I cried to dream again.
"And their geopolitical status is similar: island nations, on the edge of big continents, who nowadays essentially serve to project US power in their respective regions".
I used to smile when I saw Japanese politicians and business leaders arguing against Brexit and threatening all kinds of disaster if the British people dared to go through with it. I would inquire ingenuously when Japan proposed to become a small, unimportant part of China.
"Japan in many respects has more extreme problems than Britain. Its population is older (it has a median age of 49.1, versus Britain’s of 40.1); its birth rate is lower (1.3 per woman, whereas in Britain it is 1.6); it has a much bigger national debt (263% of GDP, versus 100.5%); and it is much more reliant on the USA for its security..."
I would argue that both Japan and the UK are grossly, dangerously overpopulated; so a lower birth rate is a very good thing indeed. At https://data.footprintnetwork.org/#/ you can see that the UK's population currently exceeds the number that could be sustained indefinitely by 240%, and Japan's by a whopping 570%. The UK now imports more than half the food consumed by its inhabitants. That leaves as many as 40 million people dependent on "the kindness of strangers" for their daily sustenance. What happens if, for any of the many possible reasons, the flow of food from poorer nations slows down or is cut off?
As for "security", neither the UK nor Japan has any particular need for it. No nation seems at all likely to attack or invade them - especially since both have argunably been occupied by the USA for the past 78 years.
So agree with you about overpopulation. If we had no immigration, our native declining birthrate would have given us more space, cheaper housing and, as I've been saying for years, food security!! We survived WW2 (when I believe we produced about half our food) on starvation rations, because of the bravery of the merchant convoys and the skill of the Royal Navy - although at massive cost to them both. Now, even though farming is hugely more efficient, we have no Navy and the supply chains for food are so precarious, we would be starving within a month if an amalgam of the various conflicts kicking off around the globe become WW3. It's food security and a naval and air defence that we need as a priority.
Meanwhile, did you just assume my gender.....? 🤦🏼♀️
People of good will are likely to disagree about some things - especially in view of the fog of disinformation imposed on us. But I hope we can agree that we prefer to agree, on the truth!
I actually don't think overpopulation is stupidly ignored; my theory is thatTPTB are fully aware that they could not stop or even slow it down if they tried. So they do not try, in order to avoid being humilated and shown up as impotent.
The Chinese managed to take the edge off their increase for a number of years, allowing India's population to catch up and even slightly overtake China's. As I recollect, when I was young there were about 600 million Chinese and 400 million Indians. Now there are about 1.4 billion of each, but the Chinese rate of increase has apparently checked markedly.
Your very clear piece underlines the fact that the conservative party has, particularly in this century, stopped preserving and doing many of the things that are natural for countries like ours used to be and of course Japan. Conservatism has vanished and the civilisation preserving job it did for so long has been abandoned for all intents and purposes, leaving mounting fear and loathing in its wake.
"Not incidentally, in 2019 [Muhammad Qassem Sawalha] also went as part of an official Hamas delegation to Moscow - a year after, it is worth remembering, the Russian state had carried out two chemical weapon attacks against British citizens on UK soil".
Oh come on, please! Such an intelligent, insightful, and generally well-informed blogger should not be airing such ridiculous conspiracy theories. I think Rob Slane wrote the most comprehensive destruction of the UK government's absurd contradictions: https://www.theblogmire.com/category/skripal-case/ Three years later it is still well worth reading just for the sheer humour of it all. Other categorical refutations have come from people like John Helmer and Craig Murray. The latter, one of the UK's best-informed, most uncompromisingly honest, and fearless journalists, wrote this: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/07/wheel-out-the-skripal-story-again/
The coup de grace was this simple illustration with the caption, “I am all out of ideas Inspector. What can possibly be the source of these mysterious poisonings?”
David, this is a thought-provoking piece that I expect will land without ruffled feathers with much of your readership. I have some commentary and pushback.
Firstly, we both have the experience of being British-born immigrants arriving in different countries. Mine is with the US, where I have acquired a visa twice, the second time with far, far greater difficulty, requiring 28 months, nine of which I was separated from my family. One of the costs of making immigration more difficult is that the incentives to circumvent it increase... my wife and I are not surprised by the number of people who bypass US immigration at the southern border (although she is particularly annoyed by it, given what we went through to remain 'above board'). When the process is both slow and wealth-driven (the key criteria not being capacity to contribute to the economy, but merely prior wealth) the deck is stacked against compliance.
With regards to Japan, it is a pleasure to read your account of that charming country, which I have had cause to visit several times, partly for work and partly because a good friend of mine (he and I learned Japanese together) lived much of his adult life in Kyoto, and married a Japanese woman. I always remember his greatest complaint about Japanese culture was that there was a prevailing attitude of 'don't rock the boat', leading to all manner of inefficiencies and blind-eyes-turned, which caused him a great deal of frustration.
I also wish to note here that the Japanese Emperor does not serve a role in state, as our monarch supposedly does, but a role in nation i.e. culture. For instance, kingfisher fishing is a wildly inefficient form of angling, yet the Emperor serves to financially and culturally support this practice so that it does not die out. They do so because it is uniquely Japanese. The closest British equivalent I can think of is chip shop chips, although even here the quality becomes poor once you get south of Birmingham(!). This comparison, I suppose, supports one of your arguments.
(As an aside, I say 'tadaima' when I get home, but my wife, not speaking Japanese, has no idea of the traditional response!)
On the British civil service, who does not have cause to despair...? I have a friend who I once considered myself close to, and indeed whom I once saved from becoming homeless. He ended up in the civil service, as did several other folks that I know, all of whom moved in similar circles. Every single one is a Guardian reader, a pastime I have always been suspicious of, and in the wake of the recent Nonsense this has alas escalated to a certain hostility towards this wrapper-of-fish. This indeed has driven a probably insuperable wedge between myself and my friend, for readers of the contemporary Guardian are simultaneously highly dogmatic and anti-dogmatic - like so many humans, their own highly engrained habits are invisible to themselves.
His vehemence of tone in speaking about Conservative politicians and their voters surprised me, not because I am likely to vote Conservative (I'm not - although post-Nonsense, I certainly shall not be voting Labour either!) but because of the contempt it showed for the British electorate, who were always described in terms of their stupidity and naivety ("turkeys voting for Christmas" was a recurring theme), and yet never was I aware of any attempt to talk to anyone outside the Guardian clique. For myself, I am (evidently) chatty, and when I speak to working class Conservative voters I find their decision perfectly logical - often of the form 'I work hard for a living, and I don't have much respect for those who just want a handout'. But this capacity to respect the electorate for something other than ideological alignment is something the 'old left' has lost. And with it, they have quite lost me.
All this serves as a prelude to the question of British immigration. I agree with your assessment that we are not allowed to discuss this topic, and that this is in essence the problem. Chantelle Mouffe hit the nail squarely on the head in identifying the 'democratic paradox' in that it requires a demos, and the 'left' is committed to 'universal human values' i.e. dogma which is fundamentally incapable of recognising a regional community and its associated attempt at sovereignty. When the 'left' was concerned with human rights as their universal, I was content to play along. Now the Nonsense has destroyed even this practice, I am left abandoned and politically homeless.
I find the Rwanda ploy to be quite despicable and indeed an evident act of desperation. Yet at the same time, when the opposition will not engage in a discussion on the topic, what difference is there between extreme measures such as these and attempts at more reasonable responses? Neither is going to foster the required debate, both will result in the same pigheaded resistance. The notion of political counterweight, essential to the original acceptance of the 'left-right' political divide, is all but vanished.
The difference between Britain and Japan here becomes stark, because Japanese immigration became so watertight because it started from being non-existent - Japan, of course, for many centuries, was simply closed for outside business until United States gunboats arrived with their 'diplomacy'. Britain chose international empire, and as such it has invited other people into the fold. Now it must deal with those consequences one way or another. But neither party, nor the voters that support them, seems willing or able to even begin to discuss how this might be approached. When Brexit is interpreted as racism, and not (as I see it) as a working class revolt coupled to a wealthy class opportunity to wriggle out of EU rules, it blinds anyone so affected.
This can only get worse before any opportunity to get better emerges.
Thank you for this thought-provoking piece, and apologies for the length of my reply, but I do not have time this morning to shorten it.
With unlimited love,
Chris.
The Rwanda thing is a ploy and and evident an act of desparation, as you rightly observe, but the government has been more or less driven to it by the failure of the 'new elite' to give an iota of ground on the immigration issue. We are I think going to see exactly the same thing happen with the ECHR as did with the EU - a failure to take into account genuine, good faith push-back, with the result that the push-back becomes stronger and eventually the argument becomes compelling to leave.
Aye, on the one hand I favour withdrawing from the European Commission on Human Rights in so much as I do not believe that it is still engaged in anything related to our human rights promises. On the other, a British replacement under current conditions is no more likely to recover these promises, especially when the political climate is such that any number of placards can be constructed under the rubric of 'imagined rights are legal rights'.
Many thanks for your patience with my verbosity! I have a lot of words to unload each week to prevent my head from exploding, and you have become a favoured export destination. 😂
Astutely observed and clearly written.
It's a pity you're probably right.
While the silk slippers and the hobnailed boots milee on the stairs you'll find me beavering away in the woodshop wearing sandals. Fu*k'em!
Thank you, that's fascinating - I've been pondering the link between boundaries and holiness (as in Leviticus) and the way in which the collapse of our boundaries reflects the collapse of a sense of sacred 'ethne' in just the way you describe Japan as retaining. I retain a little hope however - Brexit showed that there is still some life in the old dog, and present circumstances will force a choice. We may be in for (a form of) long Civil War though.
The link between boundaries and holiness interests me as well. Terry Eagleton wrote a very interesting book in which he associated evil with the lack of boundaries; this is an observation that initially struck me as strange, but I increasingly see his point.
I hadn't heard of that from him, which book was it? Biblically evil is associated with the forces of chaos, often imaged as the sea, which is why in Revelation at the end of time 'there is no sea', and divine creativity is associated with putting a boundary around the sea. More thought needed!
The pass was sold long ago. I remember talking to two then young aspiring members of the “elite” - both recent graduates with first class degrees from Oxbridge, who went on to become successful lawyers, senior civil servants and heads of NGOs. They were objecting to the fact that Poland had incorrect views on gay issues, abortion, immigration etc. It did not seem to occur to either of them that the people of Poland had a perfect right to decide these matters for themselves. If in due course the Poles as a country became more “liberal” (which in fact I think they have) that should be as a result of their own agency and evolution, not because right thinking elites in the rest (West, really) of Europe forced them to do. Still less would it occur (it did not come up for discussion) to this young couple that a significant minority, perhaps even a majority, of the UK had similar reservations about these issues. Hence the shock about Brexit. Or Boris’ victory in 2019. But these young people are now middle aged fully paid up members of the elite establishment, and they are still determinedly stealing us, with all their peers, to that liberal, globalist, technocratic sunlit upland. And apparently we can do nothing to stop them, or to change the direction of travel. George Orwell saw it clearly as early as the 1930s I think, when he said that the distinguishing characteristic of the English intellectual was his hatred of England. But in his day they were not yet in charge. They are now.
Japan is under the same pressures as Poland, and they can be intense. Luckily for Japan there is not an equivalent in Asia of the EU or Council of Europe, which act as Trojan horses for technocratic projects in Europe.
*steering* not stealing.
Such an interesting article. The contrast between Haneda airport and Heathrow must be stark. I always feel arriving 'home' that I am transiting in some third world hellhole, fighting through the foreign hordes at border control to be permitted entry to my country by an official who doesn't have English as a first language, where the walls are covered in advertisements that feature every race on earth, apart from own, and all the signs welcome me to a 'global' city or some such fatuous nonsense.
You have put your finger right on the problem. The Blob needs to go. I picture it as a cartoon fungus that grows exponentially filling the space around it, blotting out everything in its path. I particularly like the metaphor of the Blob vomiting out Dominic Raab. So true.
As George Orwell said
"In intentions, at any rate, the English intelligentsia are Europeanized. They take their cookery from Paris and their opinions from Moscow. In the general patriotism of the country they form a sort of island of dissident thought. England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during 'God Save the King' than of stealing from a poor box. "
As always, he's still spot on! That attitude has permeated throughout the media, the arts, politics, the civil service. Tragic.
> Japan, to the Japanese, is, then, a home... the national interest is a genuine phenomenon; the preservation of a settled way of life is something that is worth defending...
..and then, in dreaming, the clouds methought would open, and show riches ready to drop upon me; that, when I waked, I cried to dream again.
Hugely salient, well articulated narrative. Thank you ; food for thought.
"And their geopolitical status is similar: island nations, on the edge of big continents, who nowadays essentially serve to project US power in their respective regions".
I used to smile when I saw Japanese politicians and business leaders arguing against Brexit and threatening all kinds of disaster if the British people dared to go through with it. I would inquire ingenuously when Japan proposed to become a small, unimportant part of China.
"Japan in many respects has more extreme problems than Britain. Its population is older (it has a median age of 49.1, versus Britain’s of 40.1); its birth rate is lower (1.3 per woman, whereas in Britain it is 1.6); it has a much bigger national debt (263% of GDP, versus 100.5%); and it is much more reliant on the USA for its security..."
I would argue that both Japan and the UK are grossly, dangerously overpopulated; so a lower birth rate is a very good thing indeed. At https://data.footprintnetwork.org/#/ you can see that the UK's population currently exceeds the number that could be sustained indefinitely by 240%, and Japan's by a whopping 570%. The UK now imports more than half the food consumed by its inhabitants. That leaves as many as 40 million people dependent on "the kindness of strangers" for their daily sustenance. What happens if, for any of the many possible reasons, the flow of food from poorer nations slows down or is cut off?
As for "security", neither the UK nor Japan has any particular need for it. No nation seems at all likely to attack or invade them - especially since both have argunably been occupied by the USA for the past 78 years.
So agree with you about overpopulation. If we had no immigration, our native declining birthrate would have given us more space, cheaper housing and, as I've been saying for years, food security!! We survived WW2 (when I believe we produced about half our food) on starvation rations, because of the bravery of the merchant convoys and the skill of the Royal Navy - although at massive cost to them both. Now, even though farming is hugely more efficient, we have no Navy and the supply chains for food are so precarious, we would be starving within a month if an amalgam of the various conflicts kicking off around the globe become WW3. It's food security and a naval and air defence that we need as a priority.
Meanwhile, did you just assume my gender.....? 🤦🏼♀️
People of good will are likely to disagree about some things - especially in view of the fog of disinformation imposed on us. But I hope we can agree that we prefer to agree, on the truth!
I actually don't think overpopulation is stupidly ignored; my theory is thatTPTB are fully aware that they could not stop or even slow it down if they tried. So they do not try, in order to avoid being humilated and shown up as impotent.
The Chinese managed to take the edge off their increase for a number of years, allowing India's population to catch up and even slightly overtake China's. As I recollect, when I was young there were about 600 million Chinese and 400 million Indians. Now there are about 1.4 billion of each, but the Chinese rate of increase has apparently checked markedly.
Your very clear piece underlines the fact that the conservative party has, particularly in this century, stopped preserving and doing many of the things that are natural for countries like ours used to be and of course Japan. Conservatism has vanished and the civilisation preserving job it did for so long has been abandoned for all intents and purposes, leaving mounting fear and loathing in its wake.
"Not incidentally, in 2019 [Muhammad Qassem Sawalha] also went as part of an official Hamas delegation to Moscow - a year after, it is worth remembering, the Russian state had carried out two chemical weapon attacks against British citizens on UK soil".
Oh come on, please! Such an intelligent, insightful, and generally well-informed blogger should not be airing such ridiculous conspiracy theories. I think Rob Slane wrote the most comprehensive destruction of the UK government's absurd contradictions: https://www.theblogmire.com/category/skripal-case/ Three years later it is still well worth reading just for the sheer humour of it all. Other categorical refutations have come from people like John Helmer and Craig Murray. The latter, one of the UK's best-informed, most uncompromisingly honest, and fearless journalists, wrote this: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/07/wheel-out-the-skripal-story-again/
The coup de grace was this simple illustration with the caption, “I am all out of ideas Inspector. What can possibly be the source of these mysterious poisonings?”
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Screenshot-515_LI.jpg