Red Nostalgia

The BBC does a From Our Own Correspondent feature on Latvia and the only thing that the Beeb and correspondent Laura Sheeter can find of interest about the country from the front page blurb on is that it's a "former Soviet republic."

That loud ringing noise you're hearing is the clue phone. For some people in the MSM, the collapse of the the Soviet Union is still a melancholy memory, but even the Latvians are getting fed up with this pining for the good old days era of Communist oppression with one commenting,

Why do you refer to us as former Soviet Latvia? It's not who we are any more.

In case anyone hasn't noticed, the USSR was a vile, expansionist police state that died fifteen years ago and good riddance. It's about time for "journalists" to either get over it or start habitually referring to all erstwhile parts of the Empire as "the former British colony" regardless of context.