Another summary blog

I am working on a George Orwell blog. I am reading a lot of Orwell recently, and trying get into his mind. Over in America, he seems to be massively misunderstood, and so expect a blog from me on my take on Orwell in the next week or so.

It is has been quite an interesting week so far. About a week ago, I played football and threw my back out within about ten minutes and had to go home. Then it got better. Today, at the gym, it just decided to stop working again, and now it hurts when I walk. Quite badly actually. It is annoying, because I have a goal at the gym, and this is severely impeding that goal. I can’t work my stomach because it hurts my back to try. I don’t want it to get to the point where I lose patience and give up.

Secondly, The EDL march in Leicester has been banned, which means my city being invaded by a bunch of racist xenophobic useless thugs has been prohibited.

Thirdly, last Thursday Leicester City’s Chairman Milan Mandaric told manager Paulo Sousa that he had the full backing of the Board after a terrible start to his managerial life at Leicester. On Friday morning he was sacked. On Saturday morning, the Board had appointed ex-England manager Sven Goran Eriksson as our new Manager. I’m not sure what to think. Sven hasn’t exactly had the best track record. Granted he wasn’t too bad at Manchester City. Sky News played with our emotions over the subject, on the Friday night by telling us that Leicester City had been in contact with Martin O’Neil over his possible return to Leicester. O’Neil is by far our most successful manager, having taken over in 1995, a struggling first division side, and by 2001 when he left, we were finishing 6th in the Premier League, and had won the old Coca Cola Cup and played in Europe. A massive achievement. Since then, we have been awful. Don’t tease us by suggesting he might have came back!!! I hope Sven achieves what apparently in less than 10 games, Sousa couldn’t. Our board tend to give managers about ten minutes to prove themselves, and if we haven’t won the Premiership and the Champions League in that time, they’re fired. It’s Monday now, i’m surprised Sven still has a job.

I am currently obsessed with Pineapple juice. It’s like a slice of heaven. Although I don’t believe in heaven. It needs to be Atheist/factual. So, Pineapple juice is a little slice of the event horizon.

It took Baroness Warsi 36 seconds to say “due to Labour’s terrible legacy“, in a question totally unrelated again, to the answer she gave. This isn’t a record. She has to up her game. Although, if Kenneth Clarke is correct and Double Dip recession hits, the Tories can no longer use that as the start of every answer, because it will be they who caused it this time. I have emailed Baroness Warsi to tell her she is slacking, with this bandwagon thing.

EDIT: As I wrote this, the Transport Secretary when asked what he feels about the Child Benefit cuts, said “We didn’t want to inherit the mess by Labour”. Three seconds! BLAM! RECORD!!!

The most important part of this summary blog, is the last part. Today, I booked flights for me and Ash to Paris over New Years. Which means, by the end of 2010, I have met the person I wish to spend my life with; I will have spent ten weeks in Australia; and I will have spent New Years in Paris. All in all, 2010 has been a pretty perfect year so far. The best of the decade, i’d say. I am supremely looking forward to introducing Ash to my friends. They will love her. I have never been to Paris, and the thought of visiting the Louvre, and Versailles, and Sacre Coeur excites the life out of me. Ash has been before, and loved it. My mum and dad have been a few times, and loved it. I cannot wait. Plus, we will be there for New Years and I can’t think of a better way to spend it, than in Paris with my Aussie. New Years 2008, I spent in London whilst living down there. A street party at Embankment, and then back to my student flat and our attempt to sneak friends in (which succeeded), whom then had to hide when some idiot set the fire alarm off at 6am the following morning. So, to have spent New Years in London and then New Years in Paris, is something not many people get to do during the course of their life. A little on the morbid side, Paris has a few grave sights i’d like to visit. Ash has been to Jim Morrison’s grave. I would quite like to see Napoleon’s and Chopin’s. I believe Sartre and Beauvoir are buried in Paris too. Whilst in London, I would like the visit the grave sight of Karl Marx. Purely because he was a genius.

We have exiled beauty….

“I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”

A stunningly imaginative and beautiful choice of words, straight from Ecclesiastes. Language that if written today, would become the wasteful mutterings of the unimaginative.
George Orwell took the very same passage from Ecclesiastes, and to prove the point that i’m trying to make, he translated it into Modern English….
“Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.”

Orwell was Left wing. He was Socialist (although, not in the practical sense, he was a scientific Socialist). He believed, and stated on many occasions in essays, that it is the job of the Left, to question society, to not allow corruption and lies to become common place. That real intellectualism is a product of the Left, because to be “Left” you have to be dissastisfied with the current “systems” and offer change, you have to think, you have to be Utopian and not settle for the notion that reality is unchangeable. Where as the Right, or “Conservativism” is just the opposite, and is what it states, Conservative, no reason to question, no reason to disbelieve what you’re being told. Orwell, was in short, great.

He goes on to state that the modern use of the English language is similar to snow, in that it covers the truth, it blurs the outlines, and so is perfect for political and business talk.
There are two problems I see with this modern use of language.
1) It’s lazy. The quote from Ecclesiastes is a beautiful string of words. The use of metaphorical speech together with ease of flow, is incredible. It’s beautifully thought out and expressed. The point it makes it clear and it makes you want to read it over. The second, and recreated quote, as proven by Orwell, merely opens a book on popular phrases, and shoves them together. For example “element of the unpredictable” and “taken into account“. Simple phrases, we’ve all heard a million times before. Nothing new or provocative in the slightest. And that is exactly the point Orwell was making.

The free market does not allow for such wonders of creativity. Books like Jordan’s autobiography top the charts every year, spilling the beans on her lugubriously uninteresting life. Because as a population is working longer hours, for less pay; the only leisure time we have, we spend on our Xbox’s or reading easy to follow but disastrous excuses for “literature”. It’s easy. We have no time for beauty. Beauty requires thought. Our society doesn’t like thought. It likes blind acquiescence. The plethora of literature that passes by unnoticed, is unnerving. And so where is the incentive to write and to contemplate the beauty of the imagery one can create using words that haven’t already been seen a million times before, why would they want to? Evidently, it is 100 times easier to pick commonly abused phrases out and weld them together. Phrases like “leave no stone unturned” that, when first uttered, were almost ingenius, but using them over and over, is laziness of it’s worse kind. Especially in a Nation growing in it’s sense of Nationalism, it would make sense to utilise the language of the Nation we so candidly defend, in the best way possible, rather than relying on pre-spoken phrases. You’re no longer a citizen of England, you’re a Robot of England. Your voice works, but your brain is disengaged. We could be a Nation of Thomas More, Shakespeare, Hemmingway, Byron. Instead, we’re men in suits rushing to get on the Circle and District line, desperately clinging onto the hope that we wont be late into the Office for the unfathomably boring Powerpoint Presentation the boss is putting on later.

A tirade of idioms like “Take no prisoners” which seemingly posess no determinable meaning whatsoever, suddenly become common place. Because, we’re lazy with language. Language has been a artform of pure beauty for centuries. Existentialist Philosopher Albert Camus notes “We have exiled beauty; the Greeks took up arms for her” before pointing out quite rightly that: “We are ashamed of beauty. Our wretched tragedies have a smell of the office clinging to them, and the blood that trickles from them is the color of printer’s ink.” He’s fantastically right.

2) Political talk manipulates modern language, in order to seem acceptable. When the Chinese robbed hundreds of their homes, in order to build the Olympic Villiage, it wasn’t described as theft, or robbery, it was described as “transfer of population”. Suddenly, theft is almost respectable. No one questioned it. If they’d have said “We’ve just evicted people from their homes, they had no choice, they now have nowhere to live, because, well, WE WANT MEDALS!!!!“, there’d have been outcry and public dismay.

It allows phrases like “freedom” to appear. They never define what they mean by Freedom, similarly, they never define what they mean by Democracy, and yet “transfer of population” is fine when it’s in the pursuit of “freedom” and “democracy“. Freedom, when stripped bare (arrgggh, i did it, a useless common metaphor) , means the freedom to gain unimaginable wealth at the expense of the labour of others.
Perhaps I’m not clear enough. An old couple, not so long ago, died together in their homes during the winter, as a direct result of fuel poverty. Not too long ago, E-On Chief executive was caught saying “Rising fuel costs, means more money for us hahahahaha“. Is that what Politicians mean when they keep repeating “freedom“? Why cloak greed behind a tirade of disingenuous language?
Orwell calls Political Speech “The defence of the indefensible.” He’s right. Political language has to be vague, in order to advance the interests of what Chomsky calls the “two factions of the business party“; be it Democrat or Republicans, Labour or Conservative.

Office talk, similar to political language; people in suits, using deeply clouded language to cover up their true meaning, is quite morbidly institutionalised now. It has embedded itself into the very economic core of society and so is not going to simply float away. You will often hear “We have a strong customer focus” instead of “we’re manipulating your thoughts, for profit“. You’ll hear “Our vision” means “our commitment to greed, is so strong, we’ll even right this clever web of words on business cards“. “Go the extra mile on this one“…. means… “from today, you have no social life, no family, no friends, you’re now utterly dedicated to making me money, I own you, bitch.“

The business world has a list. They have four categories, and they pick words from those categories, to make a meaningless bundle of bollocks. You can do this too, i’ll give you all the tools you need. One word from each category, and you are now, a businessman…
ADVERB:
Enthusiastically, Completely, Continually, Dramatically, Pro – actively, Assertively, seamlessly.
VERB:
Build, Enhance, Maintain, Supply, Restore, Create, Utilize, Promote.
ADJECTIVE:
World-Class, Multimedia based, Long Term, High Impact, Diverse, Competitive, Cutting Edge, Market-driven, High standards in.
NOUN:
Data, Resources, Leadership Skills, Infrastructures, Materials, Solutions, Benefits for all, Technology.
There you go, congratulations, you’re now a businessman.
If I owned my own Corporation, i’d go with “Dramatically utilise high impact infrastructures.” It’s meaningless, it’s the language of the idiot, but apparently, it means i’m “professional” so it must be right.
The only way to combat such lack of imagination, such laziness is to think. Think about what you’re saying. Yes, in a way, the English language is forever changing. But the English language is also a tool for the individual to utilise, not to simply adhere to whatever the rest of society is doing. Even our Politicians of days past have been masters of language. Elizabeth I once proclaimed “I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king”. Our politicians, are simply celebrities with buzz words and spun PR nonsense. Society is growing ever more pretentious with how it uses language.

“Here may we reign secure, and in my choice To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell. Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. “

It isn’t a case of using the correct grammar. It’s a case of refraining from pulling as many Latin inspired words out of a “How to sound intelligent” book as possible, and utilising the power and the beauty of the English language and it’s capabilities. That’s where the true genius lies. As shown in the quote above, taken from Paradise Lost, by Milton. Two simple sentences, exploding with power, beauty and genius.

You do not need to use archaic lexis in order to combat modern English language laze, you just need to open your mind to the shear weight of words that can be used along side other words to create something as beautiful as…
“I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”

Leicestershire County Council to the rescue!

Our friends over at the deeply Orwellian Conservative controlled Leicestershire County Council have decided to take it upon themselves to waste an unfortunate amount of time, paper and money on the single most ridiculous questionnaire in the history of the World ever. (Perhaps a slight exaggeration, but it’s still a questionnaire of disturbingly shit proportions).

The cover letter reads “YOUR HELP IS REQUESTED TO IMPROVE TRAVEL IN LEICESTERSHIRE“. My instant reaction was, ahhh good! This will give me the chance to air my annoyance at the road “improvements” taking place at the bottom of my road, signposted to take place for eight weeks, but actually taking place for most of my life.

The letter cotinues:
“This information will be used to help reduce travel problems, by reducing traffic delays, improving bus services, making roads safer, reducing the impact of traffic on residents and improving walking and cycling.”
Sounds wonderful. Perhaps they’ll start understanding that the bus stop they placed, about 5 metres from the bus stop that was already there, meaning that our bus comes to halt, twice in the space of fifteen seconds, is quite possibly the most ridiculous idea any Councillor has ever conceived. Perhaps they’ll understand that the bus lane that remains empty for most of the day, could be used to ease the enormous amount of traffic in the adjacent lanes during the week.
It’s a much needed survey, and so my mind lit up with joy the moment I read the letter. Perhaps they’ll note that the train station, which holds only ten car parking spaces, the same as it did in 1950, which forces people to park in spots labelled “for private use only“, leading to a mass of fines, is simply lazy and primitive. But I thought, perhaps this survey will allow me to address these issues? The cover letter, afterall, does state “By taking part in this survey you will be playing a vital role in helping to influence transport planning“… A vital role! My answers to this survey are THAT important, I must conclude that the survey i’m about to open is full of questions that will provide councillors with immense insight into my issues with transport in Leicestershire. The drunk chavs on the bus, the two bus stops metres apart from each other, the cycle lanes, the empty bus lanes, it’ll ask me for a detailed opinion on all of those, surely?

And then I opened the survey.

Allow me to relay some of the questions to you, and i’d appreciate if someone could decipher how any of this is intended to improve bus service, reduce traffic, and help cyclists. It came in the package of a “Personal Travel Diary”:

Your Destination Address, please give full postcode if known:

Activity, purpose of visit:

What time did you arrive at your destination:

Cost:

Name of location where parked vehicle:

Okay, you might be able to conclude that they will collaborate all information gained, and if some roads are used more than others, the buses might be more wisely distributed. However, why they need to know my “activity” and the time I arrived, is beyond me. But still, it might, if very slightly, and vaguely be used to a productive end. Although, I wont hold my breath.

The cover letter states that they have specifically asked a sample of Leicestershire residents to answer the survey, to help them to understand the travel concerns of residents and the “problems they experience“, well as of yet, they haven’t once asked for about any problems i’ve experienced. Perhaps pages 10-13 will cover that?

Page 10-13:

What type of accommodation does your household occupy?

How many rooms do you have?

How long have you lived at this address?

If you have lived at this address for more than five years, where did you move from?

How likely is it that your (yep, your, not you, but your) will move within the next twelve months?

For each person in the household who is working or has ever worked, please indicate how long they have worked at their present address or how long it is since they last worked:

Please indicate the type of job the person is doing.

Thinking about all the sources of income such as salary/wages, benefits, pensions etc, please tick which of the following best represents income of your household before taxes and other deductions.

I have to wonder, how does knowing how many rooms my house has, help to provide a more efficient bus service? Will the cycle lanes be improved now that my faceless Tory councillors know i’m not likely to move within the next twelve months? If I stopped people in the street and said……. “It’s completely anonymous because I don’t want to know your full name, but how much do you earn? Where do you work? Are you going to move house any time soon? How many rooms do you have?” ……..I’m likely to be told to fuck off at best, and shot, at worst. Why is any of what they asked, their business whatsoever? There are more questions requesting my private information, than there are dedicated to travel issues. And not once does it ask me for any problems i’ve experienced. They merely gave me a three page travel diary to fill out, which, as far as I can tell, is so deeply irrelevant and useless, it may as well be called “Personal life, with a bit of travel on the side for no particular useful reason Questionnaire”.

The disclaimer, quite reassuringly (and when I say reassuringly, I mean, not at all reassuringly) states: “Your responses will be treated in confidence. This question is asked only so we can group together responses from households with similar levels of income”. Why is that important? Are we playing the Class game again? The rich pile and the pool pile? And who is going to “treat it in confidence“, it’s not like a doctor, who actually knows his patient. None of us know these people, we’ve never seen these people, and they’re telling us we can be sure our private information is safe with them?
The cover letter ends rather comically, with “We’d like to reassure you that the information that you provide will be completely anonymous...”….. well yes, in the sense that you don’t know my name, but you know now my wages, my age, if I hold a driving licence, whether i’m disabled, my gender, my employment status, when I moved in, how many rooms my house has, where I travelled to and from every day, and the activities I undertook – such as school journeys and where I work, so “completely anonymous” is not an entirely truthful assessment.
I’m tempted to email the Conservative Council a survey of my own, entitled “Wildlife Protection Questionnaire”
My questions would start with…”I don’t want to know your name but...”:

Have you ever seen a bird? Where was it? At what time?
After answering those naturally irrelevant questions, i’d get to the important Animal protection questions.

When did you last go for a poo? How long did it take, including wiping?

If you have boobs, what is your breast size? (Are they real?)

When you woke up this morning, what were the exact words you used to greet the person lying next to you?

Can I come and camp in your moat?

How often do you touch yourself, you dirty bastard?

Do you/have you ever had homosexual thoughts?

What are you wearing

The Conservativeblogs page of our head Councillor, David Parsons, in between blaming Labour for everything that is wrong with the World, states that because of Labour, “we are one of the lowest funded local authorities in the country”. In the next paragraph, he claims one of his biggest achievements is “Delivered over £28 million in efficiency savings without affecting performance” ….. It begs the question, how underfunded are you, if you’re able to save £28,000,000? It’s almost as laughable as the Tory MP for Rutland, Alan Duncan claiming Rutland Council is underfunded. Rutland, poor? Really? They’re a funny bunch, so this survey isn’t all that surprising.

I think they’d appreciate my efforts to conserve and protect the Wildlife in the City of Leicestershire. Perhaps I should run for Council, I would fit right in!