Just as the World Cup had forced the British media to grudgingly acknowledge the obvious truth that Russia is an extremely interesting country inhabited, like everywhere else, by mostly pleasant and attractive people, we have a screaming reprise of the “Salisbury incident” dominating the British media. Two people have been taken ill in Amesbury from an unknown substance, which might yet be a contaminated recreational drug, but could conceivably be from contact with the substance allegedly used on the Skripals, presumably some of which was somewhere indoors all this time as we were told it could be washed away and neutralised by water.
Amesbury is not Salisbury – it is 10 miles away. Interestingly enough Porton Down is between Amesbury and Salisbury. Just three miles away from Muggleton Road, Amesbury. The news reports are not mentioning that much.
“I am all out of ideas Inspector. What can possibly be the source of these mysterious poisonings?”
Neither Porton Down nor the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has any idea where the substance to which the Skripals were allegedly exposed was made. Boris Johnson’s great “coup” of obtaining a majority vote at the OPCW to expand its powers to place blame for chemical attacks, has proven rather otiose as the OPCW has no evidence on which to base any blame for Salisbury. In fact, four months on, May and Johnson’s shrill blaming of Russia remains entirely, 100% evidence free.
I do however wish to congratulate the neo-con warmongers of the Guardian newspaper for verbal dexterity. They have come up with a new formulation to replace the hackneyed “Of a type developed by Russia”, to point the finger for a substance that could have been made by dozens of state or non state parties. The Guardian today came up with “Russian-created novichok”. This cleverly employs a word that can encompass “developed” while also appearing to say “made”. It also again makes out that novichok is a specific substance rather than a very broad class of substances. The Guardian’s Steven Morris, by this brilliant attempt deliberately to mislead his readers, runs away with this week’s award for lying neo-con media whore of the week. His achievement is particularly good as the rest of his report is largely a simple copy and paste from the Press Association.
I most certainly hope that the couple in Salisbury hospital recover from whatever is afflicting them. The media is, by making this the lead story on all broadcast news after last night’s football, inviting us to make the connection to the Skripals. In which case I assume the couple were perfectly well for five hours after contact, able to be very active and even to eat and drink heavily, before being mysteriously instantly disabled at the same time despite different ages, sexes, weights, and metabolisms and random uncontrolled dosages.
Replicating that would be quite a feat.
Although the ‘Government’ have decreed no government members or royals are to attend the English teams world cup games, Corbyn is not part of this government. With the torys in turmoil over brexit and tottering. Think of the browny points up for grabs if Corbyn bought a ticket for the semi-finals. How may people worldwide will be viewing? Is that what one calls an excellent PR opportunity or too much to wish for?
The following is the first part – ie the first few days – of the timeline of the ‘Salisbury poisonings’ in the Daily Mail (it isn’t dated, as such, but given that it covers the period up until May 18th, it was obviously posted at some point after that):
March 3, 2018 – Yulia Skripal arrives at Heathrow Airport from Russia to visit her father in England.
March 4, 9.15am – Sergei Skripal’s burgundy BMW is seen in suburban Salisbury, near a cemetery, where his wife and son are commemorated.
March 4, 1.30pm – The BMW is seen driving toward central Salisbury.
March 4, 1.40pm – The BMW is parked at a lot in central Salisbury.
March 4, afternoon – Sergei and Yulia Skripal visit the Bishops Mill pub.
March 4, 2.20 pm to 3.35pm – Sergei and Yulia Skripal have lunch at the Zizzi restaurant.
March 4, 4.15pm – Emergency services are called by a passer-by concerned about a man and a woman in Salisbury city centre. Officers find the Skripals unconscious on a bench. They are taken to Salisbury District Hospital, where they remain in critical condition.
March 5, morning – Police say two people in Salisbury are being treated for suspected exposure to an unknown substance.
March 5, afternoon – Wiltshire Police, along with Public Health England, declare a ‘major incident’
March 7 – Police announce that the Skripals were likely poisoned with a nerve agent in a targeted murder attempt. They disclose that a police officer who responded to the incident is in serious condition in a hospital.
March 8 – Home Secretary Amber Rudd describes the use of a nerve agent on UK soil was a ‘brazen and reckless act’ of attempted murder
March 9 – About 180 troops trained in chemical warfare and decontamination are deployed to Salisbury to help with the police investigation.
So on March 7th, three days later, we are being told that the Skripals were likely poisoned with a nerve agent. And presumably – at the time THAT was initially determined – the ‘authorities’ wouldn’t have known whether the Skripals had been poisoned as a consequence of ingesting the nerve agent, or absorbing it through their skin (the former would take effect within minutes, and the latter within hours). But if you DON’T know which way it happened, then it goes without saying that the ‘authorities would have their forensic team/experts persue both of the possible means by which it could have been administered. And IF you were checking the possibility that the nerve agent – as it was being described then – was absorbed through their skin, then the most likely part of the body that came into contact with it would have been their hands, and knowing THAT to be the most likely way, the forensic team would naturally check anything their hands were likely to have come into contact with and OBVIOUSLY check the handle on the outside of the front door at Sergei Skripal’s house as a matter of course (and the handle on the inside of the door and numerous other items in the house, and the handles on his car doors and the steering wheel etc).
AND if they’d done that, they would have determined that there was nothing in the house itself, or on the inside front-door handle, but there WAS a substance on the outside front-door handle. But apparently it DIDN’T happen like that, and the forensic team DIDN’T do that, or think to do it, and it was only some three weeks later that the forensic team checked the outside door handle and found something, by which time it had already been determined that the substance the Skripals and DS Nick Bailey were poisoned by was Novichok, or at least THAT was what they were telling us.
It is of course inconceivable that the forensic team/experts wouldn’t have comprehensively checked the house over as soon as it was established that the Skripals and Nick Bailey had been “likely poisoned with a nerve agent”, which is what was being said on the 7th (and that’s after declaring it a “major incident” two days earlier, and there must have been a reason for doing THAT).
It’s all such a tangled web it’s almost impossible to untangle it without it coming across as incredibly convoluted, but anyway, so a ‘major incident’ is declared on the Monday, and the Police announce that the Skripals were likely poisoned with a nerve agent in a targeted murder attempt on the Wednesday, but they only call in the troops trained in chemical warfare and decontamination on the Friday. It’s all to absurd for words!
And it’s interesting to note that none of Sergei Skripals neighbours saw his car parked outside his house that Sunday morning/early afternoon, which of course the police would have undoubtedly questioned them about, and the police would have notified the media about, if it HAD been seen there, which points to the possibility that they DIDN’T come back to the house for two or three hours after they’d been to the cemetary, and then going into town to have a drink and then some lunch. And if THAT’S the case, then they only left the house the once, and it only takes one person to pull the front door to when going out.
An Afterthought:
IF – after going to the cemetary – the Scripals HAD come back to the house for a while before going into town, then there would have undoubtedly been some Novichok traces on various items in the house, but nothing to that effect has ever been reported by the media as far as I am aware, and if only one of them had been contaminated when they pulled the front door closed when going off to the cemetary, and the OTHER one contaminated when they left to go into Salisbury town centre for a drink and then some lunch, then the possibility of them both becoming incapacitated at exactly the same moment is even MORE inconceivable, and it COULDN’T be MORE inconceivable than it already WAS (in the scenario in which they are both contaminated at the same time)!
Sorry, but I’ve just thought of ANOTHER disparity:
Did Nick Bailey just go to the house to see if anyone else lived there (and if they were in), or did he actually access the house somehow or other (and why would he think to do THAT anyway, if he did). But my point is this: In the first scenario it would seem highly unlikely that he would have any reason to touch the handle of the front door, and in the second scenario surely he would have left traces of the Novichok on various items that he touched whilst in the house (and on the handle of the door of the police car, and on the steering wheel………….). Etc, etc, etc!
Just came across THIS in an article in The Telegraph on March 8th (Posted at 5.31pm):
‘Hundreds of detectives, forensic officers and analysts are working on the case, which has drawn comparisons to the poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko on British soil in 2006.’
I mean I obviously can’t remember everything that happened and when it happened exactly, but what it says (in the article) obviously confirms that forensic officers etc had already been called in. And it also says the following in the article:
‘Officers were guarding London Road cemetery in Salisbury, Wilts, on Tuesday morning, when it was partly closed to the public and sealed off with police tape. The cordon around the spy’s house, some two miles away, has also been widened.’
So the forensic officers etc had been in Salisbury since the Monday or the Tuesday, and Sergei Skripal’s house had been cordoned off (presumably so that the forensic officers could check it over), and yet they didn’t think to check the outside handle of the front door. THAT of course is totally inconceivable!
And in an article on the Sky News website (which I just came across) posted on Monday March 5th (at 18.38), when the story first broke, it says the following:
‘Firefighters were reportedly called to the shopping centre and hospital to decontaminate the areas.’
And right at the end of the article it says:
‘A Public Health England (PHE) spokesman said: “There doesn’t appear to be any further immediate risk to public health.
“PHE understands that those exposed to the substances have been decontaminated, as is standard practice in situations like this.
“Scientists from PHE’s Centre for Radiation, Chemical and Environmental Hazards, will continue to assist the response and review information as it becomes available.”‘
So scientists fromPublic Health England’s Centre for Radiation, Chemical and Environmental Hazards were already there in Salisbury on the Monday.
https://news.sky.com/story/two-people-critical-in-salisbury-hospital-after-exposure-to-unknown-substance-11277462
Am I the only person who though that Julia Skripal on the media after release from hospital did not look like the person in the photos with her dad in the bar?
Why was there no photo of her dad, the double agent?
Was the poisoning of the Skripals a professional state sponsored action? Why the careless discarding of a toxic substance? Farce or folly?
Re my post above on July 10th at 06.47, I say that the authorities wouldn’t have known initially whether the Skripals had ingested the nerve agent – as it was being described at the time – or absorbed it through their skin. But I’ve now realised that they WOULD have known in a matter of hours (not that I believe a word of it all), pretty much as soon as DS Nick Bailey became ill, that it must have been aborbed through their skin. The point being of course that the likelyhood of Nick Bailey being poisoned by ingesting something the Skripals ingested is absolute zero, so the only other possibility was absorbtion through the skin.
This would have been obvious to medical staff at Salisbury Hospital and anyone else who gave it a little bit of thought (which I didn’t of course, but then I didn’t believe a word of it all from the outset), and of course any forensic experts.
My main purpose in mentioning this is just to correct what I said in my post, but given that the authorities would have known within a matter of hours that it must have been absorbed through the skin, then one has to ask why – in the following days – the media disseminated false information – ie that the ‘nerve agent’ could have been slipped into their drinks or their food etc, and citing the Litvinenko case to give weight to THAT possibility. But the primary objective of disseminating all the different scenarios (as to how the Skripals were poisoned) was to reinforce to the n’th degree (in the public’s mind) that it was REAL, precisely because it WASN’T and, as such, was all staged, and the script written months before.
There are many holes and inconsistecies and implausibilities in the episode, but you only have to know ONE to know that it was all fake, and THAT is the impossibility of the Skripals becoming incapacitated at exactly the same moment. And as for the handle of the front door – IF it had all been for real – THAT is the FIRST thing the forensic team would have checked at the house, prior to entering it.
In an article in The Guardian on March 8th with the headline ‘Experts hunt for traces of nerve agent in bid to track Skripals’ attacker’, with a sub-headline which read ‘Impurities found in nerve agent may be key to identifying where it was made – if experts can locate a pure sample’, it says the following:
‘Forensic experts will be looking for traces of nerve agent on the clothes of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, and in the area where the two were attacked, in an effort to track down where the deadly substance was made, researchers say.
If small amounts of pure agent can be recovered, scientists at Britain’s military research lab at Porton Down will analyse them for telltale impurities that can potentially reveal which process was used to make the agent, and hint at where it was produced.
Nerve agents are made in several steps, and each one creates byproducts that are carried over to the next stage of the reaction, meaning that the final agent usually carries a chemical signature of how it was made, and sometimes the equipment used in manufacture.
“Porton Down will certainly be trying to look at environmental samples which will provide the best sort of clue,” said Alastair Hay, an environmental toxicologist at Leeds University who investigated the use of chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds in Halabja in 1988.’
And the article finishes by saying:
‘But chemical forensics may only reveal so much. “They will probably try to do it, every little piece helps, but I would bet on more traditional methods of tracing the source,” the chemical weapons expert said. “I’d say it’s difficult, if not downright impossible to do.”’
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/08/experts-hunt-for-traces-of-nerve-agent-in-bid-to-find-skripals-attacker
As the two Russian agents walked briskly down the street back to their vehicle, fiendishly parked round the corner at the bottom of the road, one of them suddenly cried out “Oh ruddy hell, supposing it rains and washes the novichok off the door handle. Why did no-one think of that. This is ruddy England after all!”
“Shhh, you’ll wake the whole bloody street up”, Dimitri said petulantly. “Well if it DOES, then we’ll just have to come back tomorrow night and do it again”.
“And supposing it rains again!”
Dimitri didn’t bother responding, and they continued on in silence back to their rented car, both glancing up at the starless sky, and praying that it wouldn’t rain.
But as they drove along the A36 back to their B & B in Southampton, a few spots of rain appeared on the windscreen, and then it just got heavier and heavier and heavier.
“Oh ruddy hell!”, said Stanislav.
The next night, in the early hours of the morning, they drove back to Salisbury and repeated their dirty deed, and as they drove back to Southamton under a clear sky, they were feeling more optimistic. They only slept a few hours, and the first thing Stanilav did when he woke up was look out the window to see if it was still dry. It was, but it was cloudy now, and looked like it could possibly rain soon.
“The problem is that if it DOES rain at some point, we won’t know whether the targets went out before it DID. I mean maybe they’re just going to stay home all day!”
“Well”, said Dimitri, “we’ll know soon enough if they came into contact with the stuff because it will be all over the news.What will be will be, and there’s no point fretting about it. We can only hope that they go out sooner rather than later, before it DOES rain.”
“And if they DON’T, and it pours with rain, we’ll have to go back AGAIN!”
They washed and dressed and went downstairs to the dining room, and ate their cornflakes in silence, both feeling somewhat despondent that the success or failure of their mission was at the mercy of the weather.
After breakfast they went back upstairs to their room and put the TV on, and tuned it to the BBC News channel, then they took out the little travel chess set they’d brought with them. Every now and again, when it was Dimitri’s turn to move, Stanilav would go to the window to see if it had started raining or not. And of course, they were both keeping half an ear on the news.
“Oh ruddy hell!” It was Stanilav of course. “What if a neighbour or a friend pops in to see them, and then they see themselves out and pull the front door to themselves! And then supposing Scripal and his daughter don’t go out today, and then the neighbour or friend becomes seriously ill and is taken to hospital and……”.
“Yes”, Dimitri interjected, “I know where you’re going with it. Everything would have been for nothing, and a non-targeted person killed. The Assassination Planning Department really didn’t think all of this through properly”.
Just a few minutes later there was a sudden loud crack of thunder, and shortly afterwards the rain started, and within seconds it was torrential.
“Oh ruddy hell!”
(NB Yes, I know Yulia only arrived the day before the alledged poisoning took place, but I am of course just pointing out the absurdity of an assassination mission being planned in such a way, and the absurdity that it WOULD be. And needless to say anyway, it doesn’t take two people to pull a door to.)
And in case you didn’t see it, last week – on July 5th – there was an article on the Sun’s website (and presumably in the hard-copy newspaper itself) with the headline ”RAIN SAVED SKRIPAL’ Security chiefs believe sudden Salisbury downpour saved poisoned ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal’s life’, with a sub-headline which read ‘Rain diluted the substance, which was sprayed on Mr Skripal’s door, reducing its potency’. The article was by the Sun’s political editor Tom Newton Dunn, and in the article it says the following:
‘ Novichok is sensitive to moisture and its potency downgrades with contact to water or prolonged exposure to the air. A senior security source told The Sun: “The truth is we got very lucky. If it wasn’t for the rain, Skripal would certainly have died, and probably Julia too”. The revelation solves the four month mystery over how the assassination team managed to bungle the hit on the former Russian military intelligence officer. The Kremlin has always claimed Soviet-designed Novichok could not have been used because the weapons grade nerve agent would have instantly killed the double agent.’
The Daily Mirror also carried the story on their website the same day, with the headline ‘Sergei Skripal escaped death ‘after sudden shower reduced potency of deadly Novichok nerve agent”, and a sub-headline which read ‘The Russian ex-spy’s door handle in Salisbury was sprayed with deadly quantities of the nerve agent’, and it says much the same as the Sun article, as well as citing the Sun.
As far as I am aware – having done a web search – these are the only two newspapers that covered it, and it would appear the Mirror recycled the story from the Sun.
So this revelation blows the Kremlin claim that the Skripals would have been instantly killed right out of the, er, water…. and it makes perfect sense of course! One is left overwhelmed with admiration for the perseverance and dedication of the analysts who spent the past four months getting to the bottom of this mystery. And thank heavens the rain hadn’t washed off ALL the Novichok during the three weeks or so before the forensic experts thought to check the handle of the front door, otherwise we may never have known precisely how the Skripals – and DS Nick Bailey – came to be contaminated that day. Well done to everyone involved!
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6706913/salisbury-rain-saved-poisoned-sergei-skripals-life/
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/sergei-skripal-escaped-death-after-12861872
Afterthought: And isn’t it an amazing coincidence that the story in the Sun (and the Mirror) about a rain-shower having diluted the Novichok etc, should appear the very next day after the media is first reporting about Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley. And especially in view of the fact that she died a few days later.
Anyway, I just did a search to see if there was a timeline of events somewhere, and came across one on the website of the Belfast Telegraph, and it said the following:
July 2
Wiltshire Police warn of the dangers of contaminated drugs after the couple fall ill. Detectives believe they may have taken heroin or crack cocaine. The pair are in a serious condition at Salisbury District Hospital.
So I did another search to ascertain if THAT story had been covered by the media at the time, but couldn’t find anything, except the statement itself on Wiltshire Police’s website, which went as follows:
We are issuing an urgent warning to drug users in the south of Wiltshire after two people fell seriously ill in Amesbury over the weekend.
Emergency services were called to an address in Muggleton Road on Saturday evening after a man and woman, both in their 40s, were found unconscious in a property.
They are both currently receiving treatment at Salisbury District Hospital and are both in a serious condition.
Det Sgt Eirin Martin, from Salisbury CID, said: “At this stage we believe the two patients have fallen ill after using from a contaminated batch of drugs, possibly heroin or crack cocaine.
“Of course, we would always advise against the taking of any illegal drugs, but, following the incident over the weekend, we are urging drug users to be extra cautious.
“Our main priority is the safety of the public, which is why we have taken this unusual step of issuing this warning about drugs which may be in circulation in the south of the county.
“We are also asking anyone who may have information about this batch of drugs to contact police. You can contact us anonymously if you prefer, we just need to know how these people came to fall ill and where the drugs may have been bought from or who they may have been sold to.”
You may also see a police presence in and around Amesbury as our investigations continue, so we urge the community to not be alarmed.
DS Martin added: “At this stage there is nothing to suggest there is any risk to the wider public.”
[Ends]
It’s interesting to note that they say how they “have taken this unusual step”. Given that the warning was unlikely to be seen by many people on their website, one would have thought the obvious thing for them to do was to contact regional and local TV and radio stations and ask them to please put out the warning in their news broadcasts, and maybe they DID, but I can’t find anything about a warning issued by the police in ‘print’, so to speak.
Anyway, the fact that the ‘rain-shower’ story appeared the very next day after the ‘Amesbury’ story broke is more than a little suspicious, to say the very least. The likelyhood of it being a coincidence is about absolute zero!
I just came across the following article in The Guardian a bit earlier dated Friday the 13th of April (some five weeks after the alledged poisoning) and headlined: ‘Russia tested nerve agent on door handles before Skripal attack, UK dossier claims’, and with a sub-headine which read ‘Previously classified intelligence about poisoning of former Russian spy sent to Nato’, and it begins as follows:
‘Russia had tested whether door handles could be used to deliver nerve agents and had targeted the email accounts of Sergei and Yulia Skripal since at least 2013, according to previously classified intelligence over the Salisbury attack that has been made public. The UK released the intelligence on Friday linking Russia to the attack on the former double agent and his daughter.’
Well if THAT’S the case, then WHY did it take three weeks or so to determine that the handle of Sergei Skripal’s front door had been coated in Novichok – ie take some three weeks before anyone thought to check the front door handle? Oh right, of course, it was top secret – as it would be of course – so they were reluctant to convey this information to the investigaters and forensic experts in Salisbury.
So the forensic teams/experts didn’t themselves think to check the front door handle, and the chemical weapons experts called in a few days later didn’t think to check it, and MI6 or whoever didn’t think to tell anyone working on the case in Salisbury about their dossier and the Russians fiendishly experimenting to determine if door handles could be used to deliver nerve agents.
Top Secret Memo To President Vladimir Putin
Dear President Putin,
After many months of testing if nerve agents can be delivered by coating them on door handles, we have conclusively concluded that they can. The only problem we found was that if the door handle in question is exposed to the elements – and rain specifically – the nerve agent will be washed off.
Yours Sincerely,
Professor Petr Pushkin DFG VBN, Nerve Agent Delivery Testing Laboratories
So on March 28th we learn that it was the door handle wot done it, and then a couple of weeks later it’s revealed that the Intelligence Services have known since before the (alledged) poisonings that Russia was experimenting with doing exactly THAT. Well I mean if you weren’t ALREADY convinced that it was Russia wot done it, this dossier and the evidence therein leaves no doubt whatsoever, and the dastardly Mr Putin was undoubtedly behind the whole operation. End of. Case proved.
It’s all to absurd for words of course! But when the story is relentlessly ‘hammered’ home – as it was – along with the inconceivability factor AND the emotionalisation pretty much from the outset, the instigators/ conspiritors knew that the majority of people wouldn’t think to question any of it and, as such, see the super massive black holes in their narrative, or the absurdity of Vladimir Putin ordering it done at ALL, let alone just two days before the celebratory events to mark 100 days to go to the football AND three months or so before the event itself. But if those who wrote the script had had the investigaters discover the Novichok on the door handle more-or-less straight away – as would undoubtedly have happened had it all been for real – then there couldn’t have been all the endless ‘speculation’ to keep the story in the MSM every single day for several weeks, ‘hammering’ the story home in the process.
NB Needless to say I heard about ‘Russia’ testing to see if door handles could be used to deliver nerve agents at the time it was being reported in the media, but I only heard the basics, and NOT the details.
Thanks to Alan for pointing out the problems with the door handle theory (and it can only be a theory). It is beyond reason this was the source of the main contamination and any reasonable person would understand that. Another issue I have is, if it was put on the door handle, the alleged assassins couldn’t have been sure it would hit its target Sergei (the arrival Yulia may have been unexpected). What if he wear gloves, what if he didn’t return to the house etc. A very uncertain way of attacking someone for a trained assassin.
If it was left on the handle the killers would know it wouldn’t take full effect for a while (however literature stating that nerve agents course ‘signs’ within minutes. From the OPCW’s own website ‘When exposed to a low dose of nerve agent, causing minor poisoning, characteristic symptoms are increased production of saliva, a running nose and a feeling of pressure on the chest. The pupil of the eye becomes contracted (miosis) which impairs night-vision. The accommodation capacity of the eye is also reduced so that short-range vision deteriorates and the victim feels pain when he tries to focus on an object nearby. This is accompanied by headache. More unspecific symptoms are tiredness, slurred speech, hallucinations and nausea.’ – the Skirpal’s apparently well enough to go to the pub and Zilli’s?) so to be sure they would have had to follow them all evening until they were sure of their ‘hit’. This leads to question any witnesses of 2 furtive Russian agents, which of course there is none. Surely all CCTV should have been released to the public to identify the possible killers. Alas, none. Of course trained agents could hide but why would you want to take that chance. They had no idea when the substance would take full effect so they could have been around all night. All of which in probability makes the story sound absurd.
That the ‘container’ has no been found in Rowley’s house (as I predicted it would in a previous post) was the obvious next step in the official narrative. The original story collapsed due to Putin correctly saying the Skirpal’s would be dead if a nerve agent was used. So, possibly due the the Trump-Putin summit (although the recent Russian hacking indictment in the US may derail that) the new ‘novichok’ story unfolded, with a possibly targeted vulnerable person for news effect. Now with a better sample Porton Down can triumphantly declare it was novichok made in Russia by Putin. Possibly even traceable fingerprints on the bottle (wait for THAT one). Case closed. I read a few posts that predicted this would happen when the Skirpal’s case collapsed so it is no surprise.
Of course that all raises further questions. If the novichok was in a bottle where is the ‘applicator’ to get the stuff on the handle? Why would the assassins leave the novichok bottle to be found anyway? It’s not like you can buy it at Boots (ha). The idea was to kill the Skirpals’ but they didn’t so keeping the novichok for another attack would seem reasonable. If the novichok was in liquid form when the bottle was opened surely it would have been breathed in and thus super deadly. If it was in gel form, why would Charlie and Dawn even bother to touch it? It can’t be a powder as officials have already stated it was a gel on the handle (I have another problem that the officials said it was found on Charlie’s hands – but Sam the eyewitness said Charlie had a shower before he had a fit. How could it survive that. What happened to Sam by the way)
Lastly, I have huge problems with the narrative the day Dawn fell ill. Why did agencies return to the house and close and shut off electric and gas and enter Charle’s house again only to leave a short time later. I suspect to remove the real cause of the illness and plant the bottle, citing a ‘gas leak’ as the reason for returning.