Airstrip One

Which was of course George Orwells’ name for the UK in his novel Nineteen Eighty Four.  As I watched the Iraq War Inquiry on the rolling news last night I began to ponder the first crime that the protagonist of Orwells’ novel, Winston, commited.  Not withstanding the multitude of ‘Thoughtcrimes’, his first real act of rebellion was to buy a diary and writing implements.  This allowed Winston to keep a record of the announcements made by the Party.  Almost immediately this allowed Winston to perceive the deception and misinformation that the Party fed the ‘proles.  Arguably this really just pushed Winston out of denial, since his job was to delete any reference in the archives to ‘nonpersons’, those who had angered the Party and subsequently disappeared.

With the level of deceit that has become customary for our leaders to employ, I started to wonder if maybe this is something that needs to be done now.  Sounds a little paranoid, right?  Consider the example of Peter Mandelson.  If I recall correctly, Comrade Mandelson was the MP for Hartlepool to begin with.  He was removed to avoid a corruption scandal, quietly fading into the background for a while.  Then he re appeared and not long afterwards was sent off to the EU parliament to avoid another scandal.  Everyone sort of forgot about him until the Supreme Leader, Comrade Brown summoned him back from Europe to try and save his failing Premiership.  Interestingly, Mandelson didn’t just come back.  There were always rumours about the Blairite/Brown split in New Labour and Mandelson was definitely one of Blairs.  And thus, we the taxpayer paid a ‘moving allowance’ of over £250,000 to smooth the transition between the EU parliament and the UK one.  That would seem to be somewhat in the nature of a bribe, but we’re not that cynical.  Are we?

Anyway, back he came.  But not as an MP.  There was nowhere for him to go as an MP and he has a … dubious, success rate as an MP.  Clearly then, the way forward was to award him a Peerage.  With this crude bit of political flim flammery, the Supreme Leader got his fixer and Comrade Lord Mandelson of the Sith was born.  This was the beginning of the Supreme Leaders unusual policy of having a Cabinet that was over 50% unelected officials.  Certainly members of the Upper House had appeared in the Cabinet before, but never in such numbers.  I think many people have an instinctive distrust of Dark Lord Mandelson and that is a Very Good Thing.  But few people seem to remember that even Tony Blair had to get rid of Mandelson because he was so corrupt.  Even fewer people remember the actual reason Mandelson was cast out in the first place.  I suspect that if more people remembered the truth about Comrade Lord Mandelson, Brown could never have brought him back.

They say we live in the Age of Information.  This is almost correct, we live in the Age of Disinformation.  Our government continually contradicts itself and is caught in blatant lies on an almost daily basis.  Yet nothing ever comes of it.  The Iraq War Inquiry is a perfect example.  It is widely accepted (I hope!) that Blairs government lied through their rotten teeth to involve us in the War for Oil.  Now we have an Inquiry into what went on.  On the surface, this is great – only last night I watched one of our top military officers gleefully lay the blame for our high casualty rate at the door of Whitehall.  But this was an illegal war.  The focus should not be on who mismanaged the occupation but on who caused it to occur.  Tony Blair is a war criminal.  He should be treated as such.  The comedian Frankie Boyle remarked that latterly Blairs focus was on his ‘legacy’ and that said legacy was assured.  He would be remembered as a mass murdering bastard.  I certainly hope so.

Well, ramble over.  Have a pleasant day and remember to check your TVs for hidden cameras.  Remember, Lord Mandelson of the Sith knows where you live…

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