Reproduced in full for more exposure and to make censorship harder

oday we learn of a SLAPP from Russia, much like what we get from America except this time from Europe (or Eurasia), not America.

A friend told me that this site has “no RSS or Atom feed though, so not fully professional shop…”

From the article at Barents Observer: (reproduced in full for more exposure and to make censorship harder)

In a surreal case filed with a British court, the Russian fishery tycoon puts the blame on our newspaper for damages inflicted on him by EU sanctions.

According to Vitaly Orlov, he is suffering “serious harm to his reputation” because of articles published by the Barents Observer.

The billionaire has repeatedly threatened our newspaper. The threats have now materialised in a lawsuit filed with the High Court of Justice in London.

Vitaly Orlov is based in Murmansk and has key parts of his business activities in the Barents Sea and the Arctic. He shuns public attention and rarely gives interviews or comments to the press.

On 24 September, a representative of Devonshire Solicitors, a London-based law firm that represents Orlov, showed up at the office of the Barents Observer in Kirkenes, northern Norway, without prior notice. The woman had travelled all the way from the UK to Kirkenes to physically hand over the court papers.

The claims are based on five news articles published by the Barents Observer in the period from 21 May 2025 to 7 January 2026. They all concern Norebo, the company that is 100% owned by Orlov, and cover the international sanctions imposed on the company on 20 May 2025.

In all the articles, we refer to the EU’s 17th Sanctions Package against Russia, in which Norebo is listed. According to the document from the EU Council, Norebo’s fishing vessels have been involved in Russian state intelligence activities.

About two months after the listing in the EU Sanctions Package, Norway followed suit and banned Norebo’s vessels from Norwegian ports and waters. Norebo subsequently took Norway to court, and this case is now coming up.

It is, of course, not the Barents Observer that has found a link between Norebo and Russian intelligence. We have only referred to the EU Council and its sanctions list. We could have added more text from the EU’s Sanctions Package, for example the following:

“Norebo JSC thus implements and supports actions by the Government of the Russian Federation, which undermine or threaten the security in the Union, several of its Member States and third countries by engaging in and supporting actions aimed at interfering with critical infrastructure, including submarine infrastructure.”

The Barents Observer’s coverage of Norebo and the international sanctions is fully in line with normal reporting and internationally recognised journalism codes of ethics. All five articles in question are based on solid references to sources, including Norebo’s own press releases.

Clearly, Vitaly Orlov does not like the Barents Observer shedding light on his company and its activities. As a matter of fact, he is reportedly deeply troubled by the articles—not only economically, but also mentally. In the documents delivered to the court, Devonshire writes that “the Claimant’s reputation has been damaged, and he has been caused continuing distress, hurt and embarrassment.”

The Barents Observer is based in a democratic country where independent journalism and freedom of the press are firmly rooted in the law and society. It is the responsibility and obligation of the press to report on critical developments.

That includes Russia’s biggest fishery company and its activities in the EU, Norway, and elsewhere.

What Vitaly Orlov’s lawsuit boils down to is that the richest man in the Russian fishery industry does not like the Barents Observer.

Orlov is specifically targeting our newspaper. He could have gone after the Norwegian broadcaster NRK, the newspapers DN and Fiskeribladet, or any of the many other media companies that have covered Norebo’s activities and its inclusion in the international sanctions lists. But the Russian billionaire chose to set his London-based lawyers on the Barents Observer.

This hardly comes as a surprise. Orlov knows that the Barents Observer is a small and financially vulnerable company. He wants us to waste our limited time and resources on an absurd case.

Consequently, we see his claims as a dirty attack on the freedom of the press and as an attempt to break our small and independent newspaper.

The billionaire demands that the Barents Observer pay him “damages.” In addition, he also demands an injunction to restrain our newspaper from publishing “the same or similar imputations” in the future.

In other words, Vitaly Orlov demands that the Barents Observer stop writing about him—now and forever. His lawsuit is aimed at punishing and intimidating not only the Barents Observer, but also other media interested in covering his business activities.

Russia extensively uses intimidation as a tool to silence opponents. With a significant degree of success, this tool is applied not only domestically, but also against opponents abroad.

Over many years, the Barents Observer has grown used to attacks and threats from various actors in Russia. Following the start of the war against Ukraine in 2014, Russian authorities and services have actively tried to close us down. The attacks have targeted not only our company, but also our journalists. Half of our staff is now on Russia’s wanted list.

Threats, attacks, and Vitaly Orlov’s court case notwithstanding, the Barents Observer will never abandon its free and independent reporting.

Promising times ahead

oday it’s a Friday and it’s a first Friday of November.

From what we can gather, permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal will only be considered next year, during or after a Hearing (there’s no date booked for a Hearing yet).

From what I can gather, this can drag on for years to come. We can cope with that. Time isn’t an issue for us.

In the meantime my journalism and investigations go on. The legal challenges are legal challenges and they ought not get in the way of important EPO stories and other exclusive coverage we have.

Days ago I got a lot of material from a new whistleblower. That had nothing to do with patents or the EPO.

“Customer Service” 101 is something like “Customer is Always Right”

t risk of overgeneralising, I’ve hardly found truly useful and friendly staff at Manchester City Council’s “Customer Service” (and yes, they actually used the word “CUSTOMER”!).

Yesterday I identified one lady there whom I said was nice and helpful to me (2 weeks earlier). Instead of receiving a smile another lady there took that as some sort of offensive remark, stating, “am I not also nice?” (Paraphrasing here)

She had only spoken to my wife, so I responded by saying that I don’t know (yet). Having deal with 7 or 8 at “Customer Service” (only one was male), I can say only one or maybe two seemed genuinely nice.

Since “Customer Service” is a person-facing (“Customer”) service, then we clearly have a problem here.

We didn’t walk in to have a fight with them, but I think they get many difficult “customers” (we saw one), so they are easily agitated and generally assume/presume they need to call “Security” or involve threats. As I’ll note in a later part, their security staff there (probably some contractor like G4S) almost outnumbers all other staff, maybe even outnumbers staff and customers combined.

Lopsided and misguided allocation of staff/money?

Way too slow, indicative of severe understaffing issues

s noted in the previous part, when dealing with Manchester City Council it seems like we deal with finger-pointers, who either point to “Web site” or point back at you.

When the stuff – not staff – they point at (e.g. Web site) isn’t working they don’t know what to say. They escalate and get more hostile if not combative – to the point of trying to escalate to “security” and intimidate so as to discourage criticism.

This has all the signs of a failing operation. It’s unwilling to hear or properly deal with problems.

When we went there yesterday we were prepared to present and deal with four problems.

The first concerned a payment. What we discovered was a bit shocking.

A guy called “Josh” (maybe not the same spelling) was there explaining to me that, contrary to what his colleagues said to me 2 weeks earlier, it can take four weeks to process webforms.

4 weeks!

Why not hire more people to deal with this?

Josh explained he knew this because he had worked in a relevant department before. He said there was no “Other Option” and when one decides to “set up” something online it can take almost a month for staff to get around to it. I explained to him that taking 4 weeks to process a request is far too low, more so when there is some urgency involved. I told him that even 2 weeks would be too much and 2 weeks already passed, so we were justifiably impatient. When a Town Hall or local council, for example, takes monthly payments and suppose some address or bank account change/s, it’s unreasonable to take 4 weeks to process the update. It would cause issues, inevitably.

Payments are needed for Town Hall to run. It’s what pays the salaries of the employees we saw there. I sometimes try to very politely get this point across (withoutn seeming rude or confrontational). If they suck at collecting money, how much worse would they be at things they do not financially benefit from?

We’ll revisit the point at a later part as someone in a different department confirmed this delay to me. He said 3 weeks, not 4 weeks.

It’s still way too long.

We don’t need staff to just say “Web site” (that does not work!) or “phone” (where nobody answers!)

s promised and long planned, today we write a report card for the Town Hall, which saw services deteriorate significantly but refuses to hear about it.

If it doesn’t want to improve or even to listen, then we need to write about it.

My wife and I went there yesterday to discover more or less what we expected and had long anticipated.

Confirming this and documenting this is still necessary.

When my wife did the talking she noticed the staff was being unhelpful, pointing at “Web site” or “phone” or “app” or whatever. But we were already there.

My wife spoke first, as we wanted to see how they deal females of ethnic minorities.

Minutes later, when I weighted in, she noticed a guy (almost everyone there is female, this is the first time I see a male) trying to make eye contact with her by which to sort of ask to get me to not talk.

This is bizarre. They simply weren’t open to any critical feedback. They don’t want to know and hear about the issues.

What are those issues? We’ll explain those in parts to come. There are many issues we’ve identified.

We got a lot done today, but it’s in pen and paper form (for now)

he upcoming matches for ManCity are a mixed bag as very soon there will be a hard match against Napoli (is KDB still there?), then an away game against Arsenal 5 days later.

We didn’t go to the ManCity stadium as we typically do on Thursdays. Instead, as planned for days already, Rianne and I went to City Council to study the state of affairs.

I will have a lot more articles than I originally planned.

I now have a notebook full of notes. I wrote many things today. It’s for articles about local authorities failing to provide very basic services. I am told by people in other countries that it’s the same there. One told me “hold their feet to the fire” and another (in the US) urged me to contact local newspapers to increase pressure. From pressure comes change/reform.

One also joked (partly): “I presume that some surrogate to service is available for those who are active customers of hostile foreign entities?”

Well, I assume very rich people don’t need to go through the same channels/routes, but I don’t know enough about this to report on it.

Another generation of addicts

o me it is genuinely hard to understand why people use experimental injections (and risky needles) in an effort to lose weight. There are natural and beneficial ways to lose weight (even gain muscle mass in the process). They don’t cost much, either.

2 months ago somebody wrote: “That was my first reaction when I received an email letting me know that my attempt to buy Mounjaro from MedExpress had been approved – despite entering false details to meet their weight criteria.”

They only try to sell more and more of the stuff (Mounjaro), irrespective of health.

This is an industry. It’s a money-making thing, not a health thing.

There are known negative interactions with other drugs, it is widely known that the weight may come back when the drug is no longer taken, and there are various very serious side effects, even blindness (allegedly).

Obesity is not an illness and there are ways to tackle excess fat which don’t involve pills, injections etc.