Alright, let’s talk about ducks. I’ve got a very instructive true story on that subject.
When we published the well-known video about the duck house (3.3 million views), some people who follow British politics were reminded of a similar story that happened in England.
It’s a fascinating story, so let me tell everyone about it in our new video. Let’s compare the “duck house here” and the “duck house there.”
In 2009, Conservative MP Sir Peter Viggers tried to claim £30,000 in parliamentary expenses for maintaining his garden, and—under a separate line item—£1,645 for a floating duck house.
The house was 5 feet tall (about 1.5 meters) and was meant to “protect ducks from foxes.”
Here’s a photo of the duck house:
Sir Peter got nowhere: he was never reimbursed. And he ended up regretting that he had even tried. Journalists got hold of the claim, and such a scandal erupted that it sent shockwaves through Parliament.
The story of how this guy wanted to spend taxpayers’ money on a duck house stayed on front pages for weeks.
Viggers was trampled and crucified. He was torn apart and humiliated. He was thrown to the lions.
An audit of other MPs’ expenses began as well, and that exposed many more violations. British Prime Minister David Cameron demanded that Viggers resign, which he did, repeatedly telling the press how remorseful he was. The duck house was sold (according to Viggers himself, the ducks didn’t even like it), and the £1,700 raised from the sale went to charity.
Against the backdrop of Britain’s duck scandal, what’s happening here looks even more outrageous. A huge secret estate belonging to the prime minister is worth 30 billion rubles (roughly hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars) and was financed by gas oligarchs.
We proved that it is guarded by the FSO (Russia’s Federal Protective Service).
That a no-fly zone has been established over it.
And a lot of other interesting things came to light too, including birch groves being cut down because of “Ilyusha Medvedev’s allergy”.
And what came of it? Nothing.
Alright, I understand perfectly well what to expect from the authorities, the prosecutors, and the deputies.
But what about the press? Even the remaining independent media can’t keep something in the spotlight for more than a day, let alone keep developing the story.
Dear Russian journalists, do you think Cameron demanded Viggers’s resignation because he was personally outraged by the duck house? Of course not—he was simply crushed by the press. Through endless coverage, they created such an atmosphere and such intense pressure that the British prime minister was forced to do what the public wanted.
It’s a perfect story. Great visuals. Traffic. Clicks. Interesting. Socially useful. And still, nobody does anything.
Alright then. This isn’t a post complaining about journalists. It’s a post about how, in the Beautiful Russia of the Future, the duck-house affair will be resolved the way it was in Britain, not the way things work here now.
A fact is exposed --- the media and public opinion put pressure on politicians --- politicians resign.
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