During the first phase of the Salisbury incident it was reported that the emergency services were called to a suspected drug overdose involving two people, Sergei and his daughter Yulia Skripal, found collapsed on a park bench. The unsuspecting first responders wore no protection against any nerve agent but were not adversely affected.
There have been conflicting reports, many proven to be completely false, about the Salisbury Incident. It has been suggested that the poison was brought in to the UK via luggage in aircraft, that Russian Agents attacked the victims directly, or that they poisoned flowers at a grave site, put poison in the air conditioning of their car, poisoned their food or drink or even smeared the poison on door handles.
NONE of those methods seem feasible because none are certain to harm the right targets or to ensure that the targets actually received the lethal dose in ways not seen by bystanders.
Claims about the type of material used varied from a binary powder to a liquid, a spray or even a gel and none of the above was plausible given the delays claimed between exposure and collapse.
Novichok is reported to be 5–8 times more lethal than VX nerve agent and its effects are rapid, usually within 30 seconds to 2 minutes. A recent VX attack by two women on the brother of the leader of North Korea resulted in a very rapid death, despite having immediate medical assistance.

To account for the time lapse between exposure and the onset of symptoms the UK officials suggested that the agent was made to have a delayed action potential - again if the intention was to kill this seems highly unlikely as the target would seek medical assistance as soon as the symptoms were noticed and before they collapsed.
As a reason for the Nerve Agent remaining on the door handle of the house the authorities suggested that the chemical must have been in gel form. Presumably those handling that door handle would realise that they had something on their hands and wash them clean but if it really was in gel form it demands that more questions are to be asked.
On 19 March 2018 it was reported that sufficient quantities had been found to send samples to some 20 laboratories in different countries. However, it was still not confirmed as to what form the nerve agent was in when found. The container used to transport the nerve agent in that first incident has still not been found.
Within days of the event the UK government named Russia as the perpetrator of the poisoning but the evidence for that claim was not made public, although it has been assumed, wrongly according to readily available information, that Russia was the only State to have access to the poison or the means to produce it.
This is untrue since it has been reported that the USA was given the task of decommissioning the plant in Uzbekistan where the USSR manufactured the various Novichok nerve agents and so, as with Porton Down, they too would have ensured that samples were retained and that the method of manufacture was also known to them. After the first Gulf War it was reported that Iraq also had the capability to use Novichok nerve agents.
Strangely the UK government also stated that Russia was known to have "stockpiled" this deadly poison specifically for use in assassinations. Given that such small amounts are required to kill and that degradation of the product is said to be fairly rapid that claim seems most unlikely, the more so since these "highly trained assassins" failed if the intention was to kill their target.

Military nerve agents are normally designed to act quickly and then to break down rapidly enabling the advancing forces to move forward without risk. It has been reported that Nerve Agents which remain active in the open air for more than 10 minutes are regarded as "Dangerously Persistent" because they represent a serious risk to advancing forces. Furthermore, as with all organophosphates, or at least the almost pure active ingredients, hydrolisation causes the breakdown of the poison, especially in wet weather, just as the UK had experienced in the very wet and late Spring of 2018. Despite this the authorities stated that the nerve agent remained on the door handle of the house for weeks in the rain AFTER the Police had reportedly searched the house wearing no protection at all.
At one stage the world was told that those poisoned would never recover and that the hospital was considering switching off the life support systems and yet all three early victims recovered and were released from hospital and at least two were then moved to "safe houses".
Press reports suggest that it was a "coincidence" that two of the doctors on-call at the hospital to which the victims were taken had "just completed" a course at Porton Down on how to treat victims of nerve agent poisoning.
Reports suggested that the victims' house will have to be demolished, as will the public house and restaurant they visited. The barriers surrounding areas where the poison was claimed to have been found remained in place for some 6 months with even the soil removed from the area where the victims were found "because of the potential for contamination".

What is forgotten is that members of the public were wandering these areas completely unprotected for weeks with no sign of any adverse effects caused by a substance claimed variously to be between 5 and 10 times more toxic than is the infamous VX nerve agent which itself is known to be lethal at doses as low as 0.3 mg or 0.00001 oz and kills at speeds of 30 seconds to 2 minutes, as seen in the assassination instigated against the brother of the North Korean leader.
In much the same way video footage supposedly showing chemical weapons attacks in Syria also demonstrate that people are happy to walk about in so-called "contaminated areas" with no protection at all and show no signs of illness. In these cases children are the preferred subjects of the video footage but understandably they are frightened as their clothes are ripped off, they are hosed down with cold water and have inhalers thrust in their faces - with the doses released, if any, evaporating into the air. Meanwhile the older children are left still wearing their apparently contaminated clothes.

As has been reported the so-called Novichok nerve agent can be created by mixing two common agricultural organophosphate insecticides. Such mixes occur frequently and often unintentionally in agricultural and industrial situations but the risk posed by such mixtures is denied.
No authority knows the potential toxicity of these mixes of chemicals.

It is reported that the former spy and his daughter will be held in a "safe house" under armed guard and may well be given new identities.
Just how much this farce has and will cost the UK no one will ever know but it must run into £millions - and all for a former spy who had been proven to be a double agent.
Then just as Salisbury was beginning to recover from that debacle news came of a second incident again involving a couple suspected of a drug overdose and once again it was reported that a Police officer was also affected. Soon the story was just of the two victims, who were reported as being known drug addicts and alcoholics. Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess were found unconscious in nearby Amesbury on 30 June 2018.

Once again the first responders were not aware of the potential danger and so were unprotected but suffered no adverse effects.
It was confirmed that the couple had both been poisoned by the same Novichok nerve agent and sadly, despite treatments, Dawn Sturgess died on 8 July.
After speaking to the recovering Charlie Rowley the Police found a perfume bottle which the couple claimed to have found. The bottle was reported to have contained the nerve agent Novichok. Mr Rowley claimed that he had to cut a sealed cellophane bag to access the unused perfume bottle and that he spilt some of the contents over his hands when he was fixing the supplied spray system to the bottle. By then he would have known that the contents were not perfume. However reports say that he washed the chemical off of his hands but that Dawn Sturgess had sprayed some of it on her wrists. Strangely, despite spilling the liquid, neither realised that the liquid was not perfume at all and he later found her unconscious in the bath and called the emergency services.

Oddly reports suggest that Mr Rowley was seen in a van with others the following day but later officials suggested that he did not suffer immediately because he washed the chemical from his hands. This seems unlikely since the UK government itself has confirmed in the past that skin applications of organophosphates have exactly the same action as injecting them directly into the blood stream. Washing the chemical off of the skin is unlikely to stop that penetration and Porton Down managed to "accidentally kill" a serviceman "volunteer" by dripping the much less deadly OP Sarin on to a thin cloth over his skin.(The Maddison case)

Mr Rowley was reported as "not able to remember" where he found the perfume bottle but said that they had thought they were lucky to find a "really expensive perfume", as it was in its original and sealed packaging but the media suggested that it was the same sample which was used in the earlier attack.
Clearly it could not have been because the bottle was in sealed packaging and had never been opened.

On 4 September it was reported that Mr Rowley was suffering from Meningitis and had lost his sight but he apparently recovered. He was later reported as suggesting that he might well die within 10 years, listing many, but not all, of the poisoning symptoms experienced by thousands of people who are suffering from poisoning by organophosphates and who may well face the same fate.

It was also reported that the Emergency Service vehicles involved in these incidents had been burned and buried - this despite the fact that no emergency medical service staff had been reported as adversely affected at any time.
The phenomenal costs and waste of resources in these incidents has never been questioned.

On 5 September the UK Prime Minister reported to Parliament that two men, which she claimed to be Russians travelling using false names were the subject of international arrest warrants for their part in the Skripal poisonings. Later reports suggested that the two were not only recorded as travelling from, and back to, Moscow but also using various airports in places all over Europe. If so they may not even be citizens of Europe or Russia and would be travelling using false passports. Unless someone has inside knowledge of Secret organisations then identifying who those men were will be extremely difficult. But the UK government managed to convince the world that their assumptions were correct, much as they did regarding Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction, which never existed.
It can only be hoped that the information that the government relies so much upon has been really obtained from reliable and accurate sources on this occasion but the history of the way this incident has been handled does not inspire confidence.
Rather belatedly the media now ask if there were two sources of the Novichok, which of course there must have been if what has been reported has any truth in it. One was supposed to be a gel and the other a spray in a perfume bottle - or perhaps none at all? Interestingly the Chief Commissioner of Police was named as Mark Rowley while the person who reportedly found the perfume bottle was Charlie Rowley. A coincidence no doubt - but with at least 5 people exposed to a rare nerve agent and a used container holding that nerve agent being found only on one of the later victims perhaps there is much more to this than we are being told?

Interestingly the initial suspicions fell on a suspected couple, male and female, who were thought to have sprayed the Nerve Agent on to the first two victims but that soon changed. More recently it was reported that a search was begun for four people, one of which was a woman, who were travelling in a Romanian-registered vehicle. Given the proximity of Romania to the Ukraine and Russia and the use of a perfume bottle perhaps these would be more likely suspects for such amateurish assassination attempts?
On the basis of who gains advantage from these events some Ukranian involvement cannot be ruled out, especially given the recent assassination in that country.
Astonishingly two characters appeared on Russia Today admitting that they were two of the individuals in Salisbury at the time of the first incident. The story they told about being there for sight-seeing was ridiculed and investigators claiming to be independent of any official organisations reported having evidence that they were indeed Russian Agents. This was the very same organisation which had earlier declared having found evidence of Nerve Agent use in Syria but they claimed not to have had any information from the Secret Services and to have only used publicly available information. Some of that public information had been exposed as having been false. If the men identified were the would-be "trained assassins" then they were incompetent as they failed in their main task, which is almost as unlikely as the story they told.
Rarely if ever have assassination targets escaped their fate so easily.
Given that the incident involved a proven double agent reportedly released in an exchange by Russia and that the former spy was reported to still be in contact with his former associates in Russia was it possible that the two Russians were simply passing information and that unknown assailants decided to silence him in ways that implicated his former controllers?
Despite serious doubts over the accuracy of reports international condemnation and sanctions were meted out to Russia.

Later it was reported that the Emergency Service vehicles were so contaminated that they had to be burned and then buried.
Later in June 2019 in the “i” paper it was reported that no less than "24 cars, vans and 4x4 vehicles" had to be disposed of after the nerve agent attack" in Salisbury.
At the time the official safety advice for the public was simply to wipe potentially contaminated surfaces and wash the clothes they had worn.
The cost of replacing those emergency vehicles is reported to have been £891,922 - including 8 ambulance service vehicles and 16 police vehicles.
Surely a few wet wipes would have been far cheaper…
This despite the fact that none of the Emergency Service staff had been affected by any exposures.

Further reports stated that the possessions of the Policeman who had been hospitalised had been destroyed and that the house occupied by the original victims was to be dismantled by the military and that the work would take several months.
On 1^st March 2019 the work on these incidents was reported to have taken those involved some 13,000 hours, at great cost)

Even more surprising were the reports published in the press on 20 January 2019 that neither the Police nor the Ambulance crews were actually the first to assist the former spy and his daughter. It appears now that a Lieut-Col Alison McCourt and her 16 year-old daughter Abigail rushed to the aid of the couple thinking they were suffering from heart attacks. It was reported that the couple were unable to breath and that they administered first aid in what they thought was a "routine situation" for someone like Lieut-Col McCourt with her nursing experience.
If direct contact with the victims so soon after their poisoning had no ill effect on those who first assisted how were the emergency service vehicles so badly contaminated that they had to be destroyed?
Similarly it was reported that traces of Novichok had been found in a hotel room used by the two "Russian Agents" months after they had left, but none of those working in the hotel or staying in the same rooms in the intervening period had been affected.
Just how deadly is this deadly Novichok?

If only we could trust the UK government to tell us the truth about these matters - but clearly we must use caution.

Meanwhile the UK Police who themselves identified a dozen criminal actions in some of the pesticide poisoning cases referred to above refused to get involved because they had to "prioritise expenditure". The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman also refused to help to expose the criminality, deception and perversion of justice by employees of government agencies, preferring instead to advise one of the victims to take legal action against those involved - in the knowledge that the courts would not allow such a case to proceed. Given that there is blatant deception and inaccuracies in the medical records of poisoned people it was interesting that the Information Commissioner's Office repeatedly refused to enforce the Data Protection and Access to Medical Records regulations.
Likewise the Serious Fraud Office refused to investigate the way £millions were misappropriated in the failure to successfully bring cases before the courts.

In August it became apparent that Government itself assisted the chemical and insurance companies to defend in court cases brought by those poisoned by organophosphates. The government was asked to provide details of which cases they defended but denied holding any records pertaining to that information. An MP with former links to the Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs then wrote that it was "Commonplace" for government to defend in such cases, providing details of two of them, and so DEFRA was asked once again to provide details. Their interesting reply was that it is "not in the public interest" to supply that information, implying as so often that the inquirer was "vexatious". The High Court referred the matter to the Ministry of Justice which suggested that it would take a member of staff over 3 days to collate that information and that it would cost some £600.
Clearly there must be a large number of cases. (There were over 1,000 OP Sheep Dip poisoning cases alone)

Mr Rowley meanwhile was reported to be about to bring a case against Russia for murder but the only person who died was under the impression that she was using perfume, suggesting death by misadventure rather than a deliberate attempt to kill her.
If Russia could be held responsible for that murder then the UK would be equally responsible for any deaths caused by their enforced use of deadly organophosphates used in Sheep Dip and Warblecides, which was made compulsory by law, often twice a year..
Around the world hundreds of thousands of people every year are adversely affected by organophosphates in insecticides, herbicides, industrial chemicals, veterinary medicines, pharmaceuticals, fire retardants and a host of other products.
Little known is that the Government's own Committee on Toxicity warned those exposed to organophosphates to be wary of vaccinations because of the effects on the immune and hormone systems induced by the poison. It has long been known that these chemicals can induce autoimmune diseases, diabetes, and a host of other cardiorespiratory, neurological, dementia, digestive problems, etc., all of which are rapidly increasing in the population.
Government officials refuse to address concerns that these poisons have been deliberately added to our food for decades and that because they are regarded as pesticides they escape the requirement for declaration as additives on food labels.
We are all exposed in our food and environment to these cumulative irreversible DNA damaging poisons.

In August 2019 reports suggested that Novichok "had been found in a second Policeman" and yet, even for those occupationally exposed to persistent agricultural organophosphates, specialists say that they are unable to detect the poisons in the blood and even if metabolites of the poisons are found in urine samples it is stated that these are merely background levels that do not confirm poisoning.
Interestingly western experts were also able to diagnose poisonings in Syria even though they were unable to do so in their own troops during and after the Gulf War, despite admissions that even the tents they slept in had been treated with OPs.

Many people have been poisoned by this group of chemicals including those service personnel who served in the Gulf War and those who "volunteered" for the experiments at Porton Down in the 1950s; but also; Farmers who used pesticides, Sheep Dips and warblecides; pilots, aircrew and passengers in aircraft (the Aerotoxic Syndrome); members of the public harmed by crop spraying and use by councils and the railways; veterinarians and their staff; nurses in hospitals and schools; delivery drivers; council maintenance and sports ground staff; and a host of others.
For more information on those at risk see the article here.
Very few of them have been properly diagnosed and fewer still receive the correct medical treatment. For most their poisoning is officially denied.

The World Health Organisation admits to at least 200,000 deaths being caused by organophosphate pesticides EVERY year and that this figure is likely to be a gross underestimate because few of the induced illnesses are recognised as caused by the poisons - that means some 2 million people may be dying needlessly every year - and probably more if the real levels of induced illnesses and chronic poisoning cases were admitted..

What is interesting is that some 29 countries have accepted the dubious evidence presented by the UK government of Russia's alleged involvement in this crime and yet not one of those countries has taken action to stop the poisoning of its own citizens by the cumulative and irreversible organophosphate poisons used in agriculture, aviation and industry.

On 9 October, the Executive Council of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the body that administers the treaty, reviewed a revised proposal from Russia that would bring Novichoks under the treaty’s verification regime, along with a class of potential weapons known as carbamates (also used in agriculture). The Report stated that
"Like other nerve agents, the known Novichok agents bind to acetylcholinesterase, an enzyme that dismantles the neurotransmitter acetylcholine after it is released into synapses. Without rapid medical intervention, the buildup of acetylcholine blocks brain signals from reaching muscles that control respiration and maintain blood pressure. Distinctive chemical groups jutting from the Novichok molecules may allow them to bind to other enzymes—and perhaps trigger a long-lasting syndrome in victims who survive an attack."
“People were worried about a Pandora’s box,” fearing such a listing would force them to regulate ingredients of the weapons .....That could hamper the chemical industry and might clue in enemies on how to cook them up. (Who has the agents now is anyone’s guess.) Indeed, the U.S. government for years classified the Novichok agents as top secret. “There was a desire among Western countries to keep the information as limited as possible to avoid proliferation issues,”

Interestingly in December 2019 Norman Baker, the former Liberal Democrat MP who wrote a book criticising the official story of the late Dr Kelly's supposed "suicide", published his critique of the official story of the Novichok poisonings. Clearly he did not mention all of the inconsistencies in the Government's version of events but at least he was questioning the accepted story.
He suggests that "we have been fed a pack of lies"
Peter Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday was also strongly critical of the way the authorities deliberately misled the pubic over the claims of the Syrian government's use of chemical weapons in Syria.

It is NOT the task of the victims of crimes encouraged by the State to act.
Such actions should be the responsibility of those in government as part of their duty to protect the health of the population and to ensure the enforcement of the laws and regulations enacted by the State.

Sadly corruption is no longer merely condoned but it is now encouraged if it supports current political policy.