Something Needs Saying.

The BNP are racist fascists and if you vote for them you are a racist fascist.

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It's not said often enough and it's not said loud enough, so here it is again:
The BNP are racist fascists and if you vote for them you are a racist fascist.
I guess most politicians can't say it as it's not a great tactic to insult the electorate, and the media, if they still have any pride (so not the mail) want to keep at least a veneer of neutrality, so they won't say it.

The facts are simple, the BNP is a party that believes it is not possible to be non-white and British, who encourage the use of the term "racial foreigner" for British citizens, who support "repatriation" and senior members of whom were once filmed saying they wanted to machine gun Muslims. Talk to any BNP member or supporter and you are only one pint of (ironically foreign) larger away from hearing the words "of course Hitler was right about some things.

The BNP is not a protest vote. The Independent Kidderminster Hospital and Health Concern party was a protest vote, Martin Bell was a protest vote, the BNP are an organised fascist party with racist policies. Of course in a democracy they have the right to talk their bullshit, but to vote for them is to support their policies, in short to be one of them.

Did I mention this?
The BNP are racist fascists and if you vote for them you are a racist fascist!

A Good Week for the World.

Every so often the mire of conflicting self interest that is the international community resolves itself into a cohesive unit. For a short time there will be a run of good news stories that move us all in a positive direction. The last week or so has been one of those. Of course it will all run back to shit in the blink of an eye, but let's have a look at the hope while it's still there.

The UN General Assembly meeting, usually an Irish Parliament of pointless rhetoric, and the G20 summit, with a not much better track record, has seen a couple of good announcements.

First the world seemed to unite at last (and all too briefly) around a nuclear non-proliferation/disarmament theme. Russia indicated that she might give support to, or at least not block, further sanctions against Iran on the nuclear issue. With Russia on board, rather than the old position of lending tacit support to Iran, then it may be possible finally to bring enough pressure to bear that Tehran could be coaxed into following Libya's lead and abandoning their weapons programme.

The old, "great" powers of the nuclear world have been taking action too to at least reduce the hypocrisy where we declare to the world that nukes are bad while stockpiling our own. Gordon Brown announced a unilateral 25% cut in at least Britain's delivery system. There are strategic implications and flotilla logistical problems that make the anchor faced matelot in me shudder, but those deserve their own post. Perhaps if we are serious about Britain leading a new wave of disarmament then the best method would be to follow the lead of South Africa or Ukraine and unilaterally disarm, but at least it is a move in the right direction. And it is clearly a part of a general trend, as US-Russia disarmament talks enter a second week, perhaps the two largest nuclear powers might be headed for a further step down.

In something of a surprise the week also brought encouraging signs of action on climate change, with China announcing moves finally to reduce emissions, with similar noises coming from the Indian sub-continent. If these laggards on the environmental stage can be brought up to speed then maybe we can at least eliminate the schoolyard "but china isn't doing it" objections to carbon limits.

And in a no-doubt happy but painful sounding story, a woman in Indonesia has given birth to a 19lb baby!

That' the good news, the normal shitstorm of selfishness international political system will now be resumed.

Many mans doubleplusungood know newspeak.

Many persons malreport ungood used oldspeak words as newspeak. Doubleplususualwise these crimethinkers unknow meaning of newspeak unhaving read Big Brother's seminal 1984 (which sabateurs untruthwise claim Orwell wrote). Samewise persons have plusungood knowledge of Big Brother, Thinkpol, crimethink and Room 101. These duckspeaking oldthinkers are doubleplusun-notannoying.

Ok that's (more than) enough newspeak. I had had the idea of starting a new blog written entirely according to the principles of newspeak, as set out in the appendix to 1984, but it took me far too much effort and made my brain hurt just to write that much. Incidentally I couldn't have got that far without cribbing off the Newspeak Dictionary and I will be forever in the debt of the fabulous Mitchell and Webb for coining the newspeak word "doubleplusunnotannoying" .

The point, if you only know oldspeak is this:

So often on the internet people* decry a statement, usually by a politician but often a social worker, reporter or charity spokesman as "newspeak". The thing is that if they had properly read and understood 1984, and particularly the appendix on the nature and development of newspeak then they would know that the uses they rail against are the opposite of newspeak.

To twist and distort the meaning of words is an horrible thing, and it damages the political debate, but it is not automatically newspeak. Newspeak is not language abusing the existing definitions of words, but a language that eradicates all but the desired definition. It is not the use of new words, almost the opposite, it relies on the removal of words from the lexicon. Newspeak is not the language used by your political opponents, rather its purpose is to deny language to your political opponents (so that it is impossible even to think a heretical thought as thought relies on words).

These same offenders pull the same trick with Big Brother, Thought Police and Doublespeak, and it's just fucking irritating. I haven't read Brideshead Revisited, and so I steer clear of references to Sebastian or Brideshead, however apt what I think that they mean would be. Is it too much to ask that others do the same with Orwell?

Take this as a warning, from now on when I see such a reference to 1984 I shall hunt down its author and beat them to death with a shovel.


*Well I say people, really I mean a certain type of person. Well I say person, more a viciously right wing, half educated wingnut with opinions far in excess of their intellectual capacity. This wingnut hangs around the comments section of the Daily Mail, or the Have Your Say section of the BBC News site, spewing forth hate on pretty much anyone different from them in appearance or opinion.