Winter is Coming

Things are a bit dull here in VT. I have had an awful cold for the best part of a week and now Irena has it. I also have to go to the dentist and I am not looking forward to that. That naughty doggie Tina spends a lot of her time looking out of the window, watching the doings of all of the local cats.

I had a rather unpleasant confrontation with our Bulgarian neighbour, who does not like it when I park next to his apartment. Usually, I park a bit further down the street, but of course someone else had decided to park there. Good grief! Anyone would think that this part of VT is becoming another town in the UK. Blooming cars everywhere! Well, in the end I could not be bothered to argue with him and so I moved my car about 200 metres along the street.

Yes, it is not long to Christmas and the government in the UK seems to giving out a few early prezzies. It is good to know that my TPS pension will be going up again and so will my State pension, when I finally get it. Here in Bulgaria, the prices in the supermarkets have gone up quite a lot. My dear wife is a big fan of Kaufland, but she also likes shopping in Lidl as well. (Yes, I am sure that my friend Peter considers Lidl to be dreadfully inferior and working class, but it really is quite a bit cheaper). Irena says that a lot of prices for food have gone up 20, 30 or 40%. Some things have nearly doubled in price. It does make a big difference what you buy and where you buy it, of course, and many Bulgarians are not so affected by price rises as many Brits are. For a start, Bulgarians living in the countryside pay hardly any danak (the BG equivalent of Council Tax) on their houses. If you live in the Bulgarian countryside, you are going to use wood to heat your house and that will be relatively cheap or even free, whereas poor Brits will soon be paying two or three (or even four) thousand pounds a year. And another problem that many Brits have is huge mortgage payments every month, now made worse by rising interest rates. Quite a few Bulgarians in the country areas grow some of their own fruit and veg, as well as keeping chickens. These days, Brits are lucky if they find any eggs on the supermarket shelves. (Oh Eggwina Currie, where are you, now that your country needs you?)

What might make a difference here in BG is the adoption of the euro. The Bulgarians have been talking about it for years and it appears that it finally is going to happen, in January 2024. Lots of Bulgarians (and quite a few expats) seem to think that joining the euro will lead to another round of price rises and higher inflation. Well, maybe that might happen, but then again we already have plenty of inflation in BG at the moment WITHOUT the euro. The leva has been "pegged" to the euro for quite a few years now and so maybe adopting the euro will not make a big difference to prices in BG. Can prices just carry on going up and up forever, if wages and salaries do not go up much? People will stop buying the most expensive and unnecessary things.

Yes, the Russian strikes on the Ukrainian power stations and electricity grids have been devastating. Ukraine is not the UK. Winters in Ukraine are much more severe. The temperatures in the winter can get as low as minus 20 at night and it will not get above freezing all day. Large cities become uninhabitable if there is no electricity. A large block of flats is what many Ukrainians call “home” and they are just big, cold concrete boxes without electricity. The deliberate missile strikes on Ukrainian electricity networks are attacks on civilians, old people and children. Will these attacks make the Ukrainian government more willing to negotiate and to find a peaceful settlement? Well, did Hitler’s attacks on London persuade the British government try to make peace with the Nazis? I do not think so. Everyone in Europe now knows Putin’s true character. 

Is Putin a war criminal? Well, he was the one who really started the war, even though he keeps calling it a “special military operation”. Yes, it is true that in the Second World War the American and British planes did bomb German cities, but that was only after the Luftwaffe, the German airforce, had already bombed London and one or two other places. This targeting of power stations and water plants is aimed at civilians and therefore it really is a war crime. It has much the same result as shooting unarmed civilians, although I think that I would prefer to be shot and not die of hyperthermia. This destruction of the power stations has the potential to kill tens of thousands of Ukrainian old people and children, but it probably will not make any difference to what is happening on the battlefield. No, it will make the Ukrainian army even more determined to win.