Orwell Prize 2014 launch panel: Internet and the modern self with Anna Chen

Had a fun time as a guest speaker for the Orwell Prize 2014 launch event held at the Frontline Club last month, talking about 'Internet and the modern self: manners and abuse online.' Paul Anderson took this video of my bit.

Also on the panel, Helen Goodman MP, Professor Suzanne Franks and Dr Aaron Balick. Chaired by Jean Seaton.
21st October 2013
http://theorwellprize.co.uk/events/launch-debate-2014/

Teaching at the Wigan Pier Workshops for the Orwell Prize

Some of the lovely students from the afternoon session of my Poetry Against the Cuts class at the Wigan Pier Workshops, presented by the Orwell Prize.

The workshops are held in the delightful bright and airy Sunshine House Community Centre in Wigan where Barbara and her helpers looked after us, not only laying on a nice lunch, but sending us home afterwards with a box of the most amazing chocolates they make in their chocolatier classes, and a fabulous wood-turned pen!

John Hegley, Will Self, Andrew Norfolk and Femi Martin are among the writers who have given classes for the workshops.

On Wednesday, Stuart Maconie kicked off the day followed by journalist, author and Orwell Prize judge Paul Anderson and myself teaching our classes.

Via a series of games and exercises, I get the students to end up having written a poem they can carry on developing at home or with their teachers.

I gave as examples a couple of my own poems — Credit Crunch Suicide and Margaret Thatcher Died at the Ritz — plus A Case for the Miners written by Siegfried Sassoon in 1921.

Something goes wrong with my synthetic brain
When I defend the Strikers and explain
My reasons for not blackguarding the Miners.
"What do you know?" exclaim my fellow-diners
(Peeling their plovers' eggs or lifting glasses
Of mellowed Chateau Rentier from the table),
"What do you know about the working classes?"

I strive to hold my own; but I'm unable
To state the case succinctly. Indistinctly
I mumble about World-Emancipation,
Standards of Living, Nationalization
Of Industry; until they get me tangled
In superficial details; goad me on
To unconvincing vagueness. When we've wrangled
From soup to savory, my temper's gone.

"Why should a miner earn six pounds a week?"
"Leisure! They'd only spend it in a bar!"
"Standard of life! You'll never teach them Greek!"
"Or make them more contented than they are!"
That's how my port-flushed friends discuss the Strike.
And that's the reason why I shout and splutter.
And that's the reason why I'd almost like
To see them hawking matches in the gutter.

That's a poem that ought to be making a comeback as it describes so well the attitudes of plenty of people in power today when it comes to the poorest and weakest in society.

Thanks to Kat for organising the event, the volunteers and teaching assistants, and Claire and Emma for being such enthusiastic and motivated teachers who obviously love their job. The whole day was an inspiring uplifting antidote to the toxic attitudes towards young people and teachers being created by some politicians and media.

Madam Miaow makes the Orwell Prize longlist for blogging 2012

Informed witty commentary on China matters available here

The Orwell Prize has just announced its 2012 longlist for blogging and I'm delighted to find that Madam Miaow has made the grade.

My submitted entries here.

Blog longlist here.

Alex Massie Alex Massie
Anna Chen Madam Miaow Says
Bagehot Bagehot’s Notebook
Ms Baroque Baroque in Hackney
BendyGirl Benefit Scrounging Scum
David Allen Green Jack of Kent
Gavin Kelly Economics and the reality of the ‘squeezed middle’
John Rentoul Independent Blogs
Lisa Ansell Lisa Ansell
Pavel Konnolsky The Konnolsky Files
Polly Curtis Reality Check with Polly Curtis
Mick Fealty Slugger O’Toole
Raph Shirley Another stupid human
Rangers Tax-Case Rangers Tax-Case
Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi
Tim Marshall Foreign Matters
Toby Young Telegraph Blogs
Wiggy Beneath the Wig

Walpurgis Eve Royal Wedding: commoner to be sacrificed

Kate Middleton's Friday night nuptuals

I KNEW it! One look at the date of the royal wedding between William and Kate makes it as clear as a Swarovski crystal gunsight what the occult aristocracy shoring up the monarchy have in store for commoner Kate Middleton. As any fule kno, 29th April is Walpurgis Eve, going into the witches' sabbath itself on the 30th, when deals made with satanic forces are at their most potent.

I've already predicted that the first-born will be sacrificed to ensure the continuation of the monarchy, but Stewart Lee has uncovered a Wicker Man scenario that makes much more sense than the Rosemary's Baby nightmare I foresaw. The first-born is a decoy. Duck, Kate. It's your lowly blood they want to fill up on like the contents of an overturned petrol tanker at an M11 truck stop.

The lash-up between the royal family and Beelzebub is already resulting in weaker minds among us being seduced by the romance of royalty, and renowned republicans are folding like origami. Only the other day I found myself in a room full of Orwell Prize progressive where a full two-thirds of the audience now found the royals more attractive than Marilyn Monroe and James Dean put together, and whose leader asked what was so great about elections and republics anyway? The Intellectual giant of the Fabian Society, Sunder Katwala, proudly swore allegiance to the Her Dark Majesty Liz The Queen of Everything and promised that, despite having once been a fearsome republican, he was all better now.

And what of poor Wills? Never mind: his second marriage will be happier and longer-lived. After all, he has his Dad to guide him through this one.

BTW, my birthday falls on 30th April. Heh!

Truly, there are terrible primal arcana of earth which had better be left unknown and unevoked; dread secrets which have nothing to do with man, and which man may learn only in exchange for peace and sanity; cryptic truths which make the knower evermore an alien among his kind, and cause him to walk alone on earth.
-From "The Diary of Alonzo Typer" Howard Phillips Lovecraft

Carnival of Republicanism here

UPDATE: 13:50 Thursday 28th. Squats raided before the royal wedding. Democracy upheld. Rah!

Ferdinand Mount's 'Orwell on the Oligarchs' lecture: how George would have loved the Tory cuts

Well, I saw this coming a mile off. I knew that Ferdinand Mount was a novelist, Sunday Times columnist, Thatcher-era Tory grandee and former TLS editor when I heard him deliver his talk on 'Orwell and the Oligarchs' last night at the annual George Orwell Memorial Lecture hosted by Birkbeck. However, I had no idea he was also a cousin of David Cameron's Mum and a former baronet, yet I still managed to guess, about ten minutes in, on which side his fois gras was buttered.

More sophisticated than John Lloyd, whose carefully selected quotes at last week's talk on Orwell and Russia skewed Orwell into a hater of all things socialist rather than someone opposed to the Stalinist betrayal of the revolution, Ferdy knew how to get his audience on board.

He began well enough with the bleedin' obvious crowd-pleasing observation that the new oligarchs of business are having a larf with their pay. Directors are trousering hundreds of times the average pay of their own workers and Ferdy laid out how it's done with satirical aplomb.

Remuneration for boards of directors is out of control and has little to do with worth, stitched up by "mutual admiration societies" of executives and non-executives, leading to widescale looting and pillaging.

He highlighted the case of US company Household, bought by HSBC for £9 billion and which turned out to be an aggressive lender in the sub-prime market. Its inevitable fall was one of the first examples of collapse leading to the recession.

And yet ...

Building up to a full head of steam, he pleaded for self-examination, pointing out that while Marx and others in the leftist pantheon were willing to tear the mask off others, they failed to fully introspect themselves. And so Ferdy showed us how to do it, generously allowing himself the assumption that his way was the straight and narrow, pursued with enviable crystal clarity.

Thus Ferdy took us from George Orwell's critique of James Burnham's The Managerial Revolution and through to his own conclusion. Burnham, according to my Lovely Companion, made the rightward trek from Trotskyist to "ferocious right-wing-conservative". But he didn't travel far enough to the right for Ferdy, who detected a residual Trotskyism in Burnham's analysis that "capitalism was doomed". The state would take over, he warned, and rentier private capital would be smashed rather than retain any place in business. Orwell disagreed, foreseeing a trajectory towards an oligarchy where bankers and managers displaced scientists and productive talent, snatching a disproportionate share of the rewards. Power would be concentrated in fewer hands at the top and, indeed, Britain now has one of the most concentrated power elites in Europe.

And how does this destructive state of affairs manifest?

Not in the rich and powerful who make up the oligarchy: the upper classes salting away their cash in tax havens, dominating the media, and sucking out all the wealth with devil-take-the-hindmost gusto, apparently. Not in the smashing up our arts, culture and education and returning us to Victorian levels of poverty.

According to Ferdy, it is centralised government that is the Big Bad. After all that preamble, with one bound banking and business were suddenly off the hook and out of the equation, while the "thickening networks of controls" and "gigantism" were doing the damage. The Department of Education, f'rinstance, imposed its power on all aspects of education. What's more, municipal housing equates not with putting a roof over the heads of our citizens but with the loss of freedom for the tenants.

He harked back wistfully to a time of individual freedom before financial controls and regulations became oppressive. We all like to relive our glory days, and Ferdy's would have been around 1982-3 when he was a member of Margaret Thatcher's inner sanctum and heartthrob Ronald Reagan was dismantling US financial controls with the results we are still feeling today.

Ferdy wittered on about the virtues of the coalition government. Theirs is true liberalism, don'tcha know, an "apprehension of oligarchy concentrated in too few hands" aiming at a "devolved, plural, liberal" system without central government telling the little people what to do. The policy of Tory cuts, backed by the LibDems, is "the result of genuine dialogue designed to put right what's gone wrong." A "refreshing" "surfacing impulse to examine and put right the oligarchy".

Thus a banking crisis is turned into a crisis of public services. See what he did there?

It was fitting that this lecture should have been held in Senate House, the architectural inspiration for Orwell's Ministry of Truth.

Such was the tortured logic of the argument that the purpose of the lecture appeared to be to give succour to the Bullingdon bullies and legitimise the coalition government's savage policies. Do these guys sit down over dinner and work out a strategy for deceiving the public via the various media organs and propaganda outlets? Or does this stuff spring fully-formed like Minerva from heads hard-wired to work in self-serving concert? As Orwell wrote, you don't need a beaten dog when well-trained ones will do just as well.

The surreal lurch from a deserved castigation of the greed and corruption of the elite — Ferdy's peers — into an attack on our public services, and everything that made this country a pleasure, was bizarre to behold. If this is the best the right-wing intelligentsia can offer, pack them off to the dreaded Media Studies they loathe so much where perhaps they will learn to make their propagandising a teensy tad less transparent.

Birkbeck's invitation was a truly generous and charitable act, providing Mount's threadbare intellectual cast-off with home and shelter. Ferdinand Mount should be grateful that the great man himself was not in the house to offer the drily stinging rebuttal which some of us were aching to hear.

At close of play, Orwell may have been Mounted, but he certainly wasn't stuffed.

Gauche asks what sort of state is it that Labour wants?

Video: Ferdinand Mount's George Orwell Memorial Lecture, "Orwell and the Oligarchs".

Richest 1,000 could clear the deficit here

Dr Patrick Nolan defends bankers: Orwell Prize launch

I offer in evidence of the depraved mindset of the managerial class imposing the Tory cuts this video from the Orwell Prize launch debate (Thursday 21st Oct 2011) on Poverty and the Spending Review.

The charmless Dr Patrick Nolan argues that the bankers are innocent while the plebs who sneak smokes back across the channel and small businesses who work the system are to blame.

Tumbrils. Now.

More on Dr Patrick Nolan here

Video 3 of Nolan's original speech here.

Harpy Marx's comments from the floor, followed by Penny Red, in video 8 here

Orwell Prize launch debate: poverty and Tory cuts

The nuts were on the platform, but where were the crisps? Laid out with less legroom than a Romanian airline, last night's Orwell Prize drinks 'n' nibbles launch at London's Frontline Club was a hot and sweaty affair with the faintest methane miasma of drains. The worst flatulence, however, was to come as we gained an insight into the mindset running the economy into the ground.

Four members of the intelligentsia did little to challenge the right-wing narrative that the ConDem coalition cuts are necessary, that we all have to share in the misery, and that there's not a lot we can do. David "Mr Polly Toynbee" Walker got off to a promising start, speaking of the invisibility of the poor and questioning the responsibility of the media in "enhancing the opacity of our fellow citizens". He listed achievements and failures of the Labour government to tackle poverty, concluding that the glass was half empty and half full. "Many of Osborne's destructions announced yesterday had been presaged by successive Labour secretaries of State for Social Security and two Labour Chancellors," who'd already targeted groups of poor people on benefits. Thirteen years of Labour government had left a gap of fifteen years in terms of health and longevity between the best and worst off. But he never nailed the argument that we have been reading the current economic situation through a series of distorting mirrors wielded by the Tories.

Lisa Harker (former co-director of the IPPR) wrung her hands but said little of substance. [EDIT: apols to Lisa but I mixed her up with Meg Russell whose performance at the 2010 Orwell Prize shortlist event earlier this year I was trying to forget when, horror-struck by nasty members of the public who had produced a Wanted poster lampooning the Westminster benefit cheats, she'd had to be calmed down by Helena Kennedy.]

Chris Giles of the Financial Times gave us facts and figures proving that the Tories were dissembling with their figures, but the chief source of entertainment for the mob – er, I mean the us – was the twitchy New Zealand Chief Economist for Reform and former adviser to the New Zealand government, Dr Patrick Nolan.

A classic bean-counting wonk too parsimonious even to move his mouth when he spoke, giving the unfortunate impression of a cat who'd just walked into the room backwards, his case seemed to rest on the assertion that there was too big an ageing population, as if this was a nuisance rather than something to be celebrated in an advanced society. He cited Canada as a success story, where a vicious right-wing government had laid into the poor with gusto in order to stabilise the economy. Nolan said you should never run any deficit. He also slagged off Joseph Stiglitz who, as gamekeeper-turned-poacher and a prominent critic of globalisation, is a bit of a hero to many of us seeking an equitable society.

Nolan really won us over with his claim that you don't measure the health service by the number of nurses, or the education system by the number of buildings. It's quality of spending, not quantity, ya dig. He should tell the rich to remember that next time they count their moolah. He was all about why we had to pick up the bill as "communities" and individuals had to take more responsibility because governments had less money.

As my lovely companion murmered, where's this money going to? The debt is all domestic. Then he said something about "it's the bond markets" and I felt my nictitating membrane flutter as it always does when sleep beckons.

The best moment came when my mates got to work from the floor. Sigh! My heroes.

First Louise (Harpy Marx) asked why no-one had mentioned the cost of Trident, "stupid, futile wars", the £1.3 trillion bail-out for the bankers, or the £70 billion lost in tax evasion every year. "It's always the poor who pay for this, this is an ideological attack on the poor." You can listen to her contribution here.

Then Laurie Penny (New Statesman and Penny Red) observed that the panel was allowing the ideology of the right to set the terms of the event. "The financial failings of the rich are being blamed on the moral failings of the poor."

Sadly, the Orwell Prize You Tube Channel has omitted video No 9 which has Nolan's response. Luckily, I made notes and was paying attention. [EDIT: Saturday 23rd Oct, vid 9 — the Nolan Tape —is now up.]

Nolan launched his riposte with a huffy "How predictable you mention banks and tax. I won't ask if you'd actually bothered to look at the statistics ...". He could have responded to Louise's comments by offering evidence in a coruscating counter-argument but instead eyeballed Louise and repeatedly demanded she "clarify which taxes were most prone to avoidance and who are the people who are most cheating the system." (Thanks Carl Raincoat at Though Cowards Flinch for finding the Spectator article written by the Great Man in his neurosis to have the last word.)

I did respond to his haranguing (you can hear my deep Joan Greenwood tones in video 9), and I should add that by this point the audience was most definitely sniggering at him and not with him. "It's easy to blame the bankers," he blustered, the only point where we all agreed. The tetchy sheep doctor should have got his pearl-grey tank-top off our lawn and allowed some proper debate. "Ahem, the Tolpuddle Martyrs," our Jean had to remind him when he Frank Fielded on the notion of protest and we yelled, "Suffragettes!". And totally correct she was, too.

After this staggering lack of empathy for the weakest in society, I want tumbrils rolling in the streets. I may even take up knitting. Or at least do my make-up during the speeches as Laurie "Red" Penny did last night to stave off boredom and fury.

If they want class warfare, may I suggest we give them class warfare?

Gift-wrapped.

Tied up in a neat bow with a red ribbon.

The Orwell Prize You Tube Channel here

How the richest 1,000 could clear the deficit here

Orwell Prize launch debate: poverty and Tory cuts

The nuts were on the platform, but where were the crisps? Laid out with less legroom than a Romanian airline, last night's Orwell Prize drinks 'n' nibbles launch at London's Frontline Club was a hot and sweaty affair with the faintest methane miasma of drains. The worst flatulence, however, was to come as we gained an insight into the mindset running the economy into the ground.

Four members of the intelligentsia did little to challenge the right-wing narrative that the ConDem coalition cuts are necessary, that we all have to share in the misery, and that there's not a lot we can do. David "Mr Polly Toynbee" Walker got off to a promising start, speaking of the invisibility of the poor and questioning the responsibility of the media in "enhancing the opacity of our fellow citizens". He listed achievements and failures of the Labour government to tackle poverty, concluding that the glass was half empty and half full. "Many of Osborne's destructions announced yesterday had been presaged by successive Labour secretaries of State for Social Security and two Labour Chancellors," who'd already targeted groups of poor people on benefits. Thirteen years of Labour government had left a gap of fifteen years in terms of health and longevity between the best and worst off. But he never nailed the argument that we have been reading the current economic situation through a series of distorting mirrors wielded by the Tories.

Lisa Harker (former co-director of the IPPR) wrung her hands but said little of substance. [EDIT: apols to Lisa but I mixed her up with Meg Russell whose performance at the 2010 Orwell Prize shortlist event earlier this year I was trying to forget when, horror-struck by nasty members of the public who had produced a Wanted poster lampooning the Westminster benefit cheats, she'd had to be calmed down by Helena Kennedy.]

Chris Giles of the Financial Times gave us facts and figures proving that the Tories were dissembling with their figures, but the chief source of entertainment for the mob – er, I mean the us – was the twitchy New Zealand Chief Economist for Reform and former adviser to the New Zealand government, Dr Patrick Nolan.

A classic bean-counting wonk too parsimonious even to move his mouth when he spoke, giving the unfortunate impression of a cat who'd just walked into the room backwards, his case seemed to rest on the assertion that there was too big an ageing population, as if this was a nuisance rather than something to be celebrated in an advanced society. He cited Canada as a success story, where a vicious right-wing government had laid into the poor with gusto in order to stabilise the economy. Nolan said you should never run any deficit. He also slagged off Joseph Stiglitz who, as gamekeeper-turned-poacher and a prominent critic of globalisation, is a bit of a hero to many of us seeking an equitable society.

Nolan really won us over with his claim that you don't measure the health service by the number of nurses, or the education system by the number of buildings. It's quality of spending, not quantity, ya dig. He should tell the rich to remember that next time they count their moolah. He was all about why we had to pick up the bill as "communities" and individuals had to take more responsibility because governments had less money.

As my lovely companion murmered, where's this money going to? The debt is all domestic. Then he said something about "it's the bond markets" and I felt my nictitating membrane flutter as it always does when sleep beckons.

The best moment came when my mates got to work from the floor. Sigh! My heroes.

First Louise (Harpy Marx) asked why no-one had mentioned the cost of Trident, "stupid, futile wars", the £1.3 trillion bail-out for the bankers, or the £70 billion lost in tax evasion every year. "It's always the poor who pay for this, this is an ideological attack on the poor." You can listen to her contribution here.

Then Laurie Penny (New Statesman and Penny Red) observed that the panel was allowing the ideology of the right to set the terms of the event. "The financial failings of the rich are being blamed on the moral failings of the poor."

Sadly, the Orwell Prize You Tube Channel has omitted video No 9 which has Nolan's response. Luckily, I made notes and was paying attention. [EDIT: Saturday 23rd Oct, vid 9 — the Nolan Tape —is now up.]

Nolan launched his riposte with a huffy "How predictable you mention banks and tax. I won't ask if you'd actually bothered to look at the statistics ...". He could have responded to Louise's comments by offering evidence in a coruscating counter-argument but instead eyeballed Louise and repeatedly demanded she "clarify which taxes were most prone to avoidance and who are the people who are most cheating the system." (Thanks Carl Raincoat at Though Cowards Flinch for finding the Spectator article written by the Great Man in his neurosis to have the last word.)

I did respond to his haranguing (you can hear my deep Joan Greenwood tones in video 9), and I should add that by this point the audience was most definitely sniggering at him and not with him. "It's easy to blame the bankers," he blustered, the only point where we all agreed. The tetchy sheep doctor should have got his pearl-grey tank-top off our lawn and allowed some proper debate. "Ahem, the Tolpuddle Martyrs," our Jean had to remind him when he Frank Fielded on the notion of protest and we yelled, "Suffragettes!". And totally correct she was, too.

After this staggering lack of empathy for the weakest in society, I want tumbrils rolling in the streets. I may even take up knitting. Or at least do my make-up during the speeches as Laurie "Red" Penny did last night to stave off boredom and fury.

If they want class warfare, may I suggest we give them class warfare?

Gift-wrapped.

Tied up in a neat bow with a red ribbon.

The Orwell Prize You Tube Channel here

How the richest 1,000 could clear the deficit here

Orwell Prize blogging won by Winston Smith

Had a lovely time last night in the domed wood-panelled hall of Church House in Westminster for the Orwell Prize winners announcement.

Bunged up with bronchitis as I was, there was no way I was going to miss this event. Lots of mates turned up in support (thank you, guys 'n' gals) and I hung around with fellow shortlisters Laurie (Penny Red) and David (Jack of Kent) but missed Hopi Sen and Tim Marshall.

I was convinced that either David or Laurie would win. Laurie because she is a rising young woman writer of the left and talented youth is what we majorly need. Or David because he has had some spectacular wins in the last month or so, taking his vorpal Sword of Truth to the antedeluvian libel laws on behalf of Simon Singh and Dave Osler. Plus they are both clear and passionate writers (Laurie is rilly passionate) and clarity is a quality Orwell considered vital to good political writing.

Blog prize judge Richard Horton, last year's winner, said that it's no coincidence that as Labour has gone into opposition there's been a growth of organic voices from the left, reflected in the shortlist. He said of Madam Miaow:

"Every post is entertaining and informative. From the impact of the X-Factor on Chinese diplomacy to the inner voice of Tony Blair as he looks in the shaving mirror every morning, and what must that be like. This is a blog that doesn't do the obvious. It doesn't do big news or big issues. It follows the writer's own agenda, it goes outside the commentariat, and we thought it was all the better for that."

Which, of course, softened the blow when Winston Smith got it (hey, the name alone clinches it). He couldn't be present in person due to his activity behind enemy lines so his publisher accepted the prize on his behalf. Well done, Winston, whoever you are. And even though you refer to those at the bottom of society as the "underclass".

Peter Hitchens won the prize for journalism. I sort of expected this. I disagree with his politics, obviously, but he is utterly sincere about his beliefs and betrays no cynicism.

Andrea Gillies won the book prize with Keeper. I know nothing about this but it looks like a fascinating investigation into what makes us human, and how much of our soul is tied up with our memories.

The shortlisters were whisked off to dinner all the way across the hall where we dined on quail's egg salad, roast lamb with potatoes au gratin, and strawberry shortcake confection with clotted cream. Jack Of Kent's lovely friend, Sally, donated David's dessert to me while he was table-hopping. Ya see? Priorities. No wonder my networking skills are a Big Fail.

More at Harpy Marx

Orwell Prize blogging won by Winston Smith

Had a lovely time last night in the domed wood-panelled hall of Church House in Westminster for the Orwell Prize winners announcement.

Bunged up with bronchitis as I was, there was no way I was going to miss this event. Lots of mates turned up in support (thank you, guys 'n' gals) and I hung around with fellow shortlisters Laurie (Penny Red) and David (Jack of Kent) but missed Hopi Sen and Tim Marshall.

I was convinced that either David or Laurie would win. Laurie because she is a rising young woman writer of the left and talented youth is what we majorly need. Or David because he has had some spectacular wins in the last month or so, taking his vorpal Sword of Truth to the antedeluvian libel laws on behalf of Simon Singh and Dave Osler. Plus they are both clear and passionate writers (Laurie is rilly passionate) and clarity is a quality Orwell considered vital to good political writing.

Blog prize judge Richard Horton, last year's winner, said that it's no coincidence that as Labour has gone into opposition there's been a growth of organic voices from the left, reflected in the shortlist. He said of Madam Miaow:

"Every post is entertaining and informative. From the impact of the X-Factor on Chinese diplomacy to the inner voice of Tony Blair as he looks in the shaving mirror every morning, and what must that be like. This is a blog that doesn't do the obvious. It doesn't do big news or big issues. It follows the writer's own agenda, it goes outside the commentariat, and we thought it was all the better for that."

Which, of course, softened the blow when Winston Smith got it (hey, the name alone clinches it). He couldn't be present in person due to his activity behind enemy lines so his publisher accepted the prize on his behalf. Well done, Winston, whoever you are. And even though you refer to those at the bottom of society as the "underclass".

Peter Hitchens won the prize for journalism. I sort of expected this. I disagree with his politics, obviously, but he is utterly sincere about his beliefs and betrays no cynicism.

Andrea Gillies won the book prize with Keeper. I know nothing about this but it looks like a fascinating investigation into what makes us human, and how much of our soul is tied up with our memories.

The shortlisters were whisked off to dinner all the way across the hall where we dined on quail's egg salad, roast lamb with potatoes au gratin, and strawberry shortcake confection with clotted cream. Jack Of Kent's lovely friend, Sally, donated David's dessert to me while he was table-hopping. Ya see? Priorities. No wonder my networking skills are a Big Fail.

More at Harpy Marx

What A Carve Up! review: ‘a point where greed and madness can no longer be told apart’

I don’t know which induces nausea in me the most: whether it’s Tony Blair’s Joker Jack grin as he trousers £20 million thus far for services rendered, or Stephen Byers’ ‘gorblimey, I’m only a cabbie, mate, at five grand a shot’ routine.

Who makes me reach fastest for the sick bag? Could it be Geoff Hoon, Iraq War dogsbody, who was prepared to do whatever it took to make his bones and get the Iraq war going and will do the same to join the ranks of the Croesus Class as revealed in the recent Channel 4 sting?

Or, on the other side: Eton posh boy David Cameron taking de-elocution lessons to mispronounce words like “probbly” instead of “probably”, who voted for the Iraq war, who flipped his house and who now distances himself from the expenses scandal like he and his party had nothing to do with it? Or the other posh boy, Nick Clegg, who is even wealthier than Cameron and, like him, descended from royalty but who constantly implies his roots are Sheffield salt-of-the-earth?

Welcome to the three wings of the one-party state: the Business Party.

As Fabrice Tourre, the accused Goldman Sachs trader, wrote before he unloaded worthless investments to ‘widows and orphans’: ‘ … the entire system is about to crumble at any moment.’

Fabrice was specifically referring to the banking system, but we can hear the creaks and the groans of the whole edifice before it goes down.

Career politicians are like the canaries down the mine. They know what’s coming, which is why they’ve ditched any pretence at social concern or ‘stakeholding’ and are leaping desperately like salmon in spawning season to join the super-rich as they shear off from the rest of us. For three deregulated decades, the powerful have been psychotically pillaging us and our poor little planet and now, ‘at the point where greed and madness can no longer be told apart’, it just can’t take it any more.

It’s this lunacy that drives the plot engine of Jonathan Coe’s What A Carve Up!, and about which he is so viscerally angry. In his 1994 novel, Coe compresses the criminal class running the country — and the world — into one sociopathic, homicidal, fratricidal family: the Winshaws.

They have already carved up the key industries between them. The family seat , Winshaw Towers in Yorkshire, has spawned Henry, a backstabbing Tory minister; Thomas, a voyeuristic banker who creates nothing tangible and yet, as one of Thatcher’s beloved ‘wealth creators’ pockets a fortune in ‘commissions, interest, fees, swaps, futures, options … no longer even paper money. It could be scarcely said to exist’; and Hilary, a media mogul who doesn’t believe a toxic word she writes in her populist columns. Dorothy, the battery farmer who wouldn’t touch the cruelly-reared unhealthy muck she feeds the masses, carries shades of Margaret Thatcher whose chief contribution to the world in her former career as a food scientist was to devise ever more effective methods of pumping air into ice-cream, so making even bigger profits from thin air. What a brilliantly untoppable metaphor that was. Roderick, the lascivious art dealer, creates the market of mediocre crap from which he profits. And Mark, the little shit who sells arms to Saddam even as the West is gearing up for the first Gulf War, is a portrait of homicidal malice, organising William Tell-style shooting competitions for his arms-dealing buddies aiming at apples balanced on the heads of hapless Filipino prostitutes.

Minor author Michael Owen is commissoned by mad Aunt Tabitha Winshaw to write a family history which she hopes will expose them in all their rottenness and maybe exact a revenge for the murderous betrayal of her beloved brother, Godfrey, the only good person in their grotesque number, by his own kith and kin. In delving into the family mystery, Michael comes to learn who he is and suffers at first hand from the predations of the dreadful clan.

Coe’s satire might have been overtaken by grim reality, but it still gives us a searing perspective from which to make sense of the current crop of horrors: of Blair; Iraq Mk II; of Tourre’s revelation of how bankers run the economy with mad pointlessness, their sole aim to move money into their own pockets: ‘What if we created a ‘thing’ which has no purpose, which is absolutely conceptual and highly theoretical and which nobody knows how to price?’

The banks took our money and, like all good monsters, bounced back more profitable than ever. And yet there is still practically no public control or accountability. Frigsample, they refuse to lend for mortgages although the Tories sold off the public stock and Labour refuses to build anywhere near realistic levels of new housing. How’s that for being caught between a rock and a hard place?

You’d think this was the time for the party we voted for to take charge and protect us from the predations of the corporations. New laws, perhaps. But, no. The governent bleats that its hands are tied. The blackmailing swine might take off to where regulations are even slacker, where taxes for those who can most afford it remain at rock bottom.

Yet miraculously, one holiday aboard music industrialist David Geffen’s yacht and Lord Mandelson criminalises British children who want to share the little pleasure left to them with anti-downloading laws. The government also rushed through legislation to bang up youth who imaginatively find new legal ways to get high while Ken Clarke who, as boss of British American Tobacco, brought the cancerous joys of smoking to a new generation of young Chinese, runs for political office. Again.

Talking left before an election as ever, promises are whispered by Labour of a Robin Hood tax of 0.0000000001 per cent on deals done throught the City, the same City that’s supposed to yield riches for ‘Britain’ which never trickles down to us. I think they mean ‘trickle down’ in the sense that we are the sparrows stitting by the horse’s arse to see if any nourishment gets pooed out. Will that legislation see the light of day? Will it, fuck!

Don’t wait for the politicians to protect you. I watched the videos of last year’s Orwell Prize debate. If you sit through Nick Cohen’s headline-grabbing indictment of the liberal press and giggle at Peter Hitchens’s retort that Nick was pissed (yeah, yeah), you get to the really telling stuff. Labour right-winger (at least he was pre-Bair when everything shifted tectonically to the right) Frank Field warns us ominously of something nasty coming down the pipeline. At first, I thought, yay! Someone’s warning us that the looting of society by Milton Freidman fans at the top has gone too far and unless we rein it back we are in for an Apocalypse. But, no. As we leave the Age Of so-called Enlightenment behind, what is Frank’s concern? Not that life for ‘Brits’ (meaning the middle and working classes) is turning into a living hell, but that the ‘mob’ is getting out of hand and has already, shock horror, targeted the home of a banker. When you deduce that the banker in question is the questionable Fred The Shred it makes you realise where these politicians’ misplaced priorities have been leading us.

Frank wouldn't like What A Carve Up! one little bit, themed as it is around the 1964 movie of the same same starring Kenneth Connor, Sid James and Shirley Eaton in the low-brow comedy thriller about a revolting family who get bumped off one by one at the reading of a dead patriarch's will. One man's revenge fantasy is another man's nightmare.

Now I understand why Frank’s lot have been building prisons and training up riot police to do their worst.

Coe not only made me laugh darkly in recognition of the state we’re in, but he also made me cry and rage at the same time. His unfolding of the personal tragedy of his protagonist through the grinding destruction of the NHS and how it affects real lives is one of the most moving things I’ve read. These are the people who’ll be in the ‘mob’ protesting when they realise that none of the political parties will defend them. These are the people for whom the issues are of life and death while the fiddlers burn down the town in their insatiable hunger for more, more, even more moolah.

And what happened to the far left forces who were supposed to have built a powerful alternative by now? An honest movement that would have trounced the Business Party at the polls and maybe led us into a world where we produce for need not greed? Well, during my sojourn in their ranks organising the press for the Socialist Alliance and Stop The War Coalition, I watched them creaming themselves at the first sight of fame in the public eye. As one prominent SWP member told me when I objected to the destructive swathe left by one crass opportunistic, nepotistic and exploitative leader, now trying to kick-start his media career via his breakaway RCP-style sect, ‘Self-interest and ego will always play a part. So what?’

Clegg, Cameron and Brown, differentiated only by the colour of their ties, declare in an anti-Spartacus trope, “I am Tony Blair!” “No, I am Tony Blair!” “No, I am Tony Blair… and so is my best friend!”

A carve up indeed. More gravy?

What A Carve Up! review: ‘a point where greed and madness can no longer be told apart’

I don’t know which induces nausea in me the most: whether it’s Tony Blair’s Joker Jack grin as he trousers £20 million thus far for services rendered, or Stephen Byers’ ‘gorblimey, I’m only a cabbie, mate, at five grand a shot’ routine.

Who makes me reach fastest for the sick bag? Could it be Geoff Hoon, Iraq War dogsbody, who was prepared to do whatever it took to make his bones and get the Iraq war going and will do the same to join the ranks of the Croesus Class as revealed in the recent Channel 4 sting?

Or, on the other side: Eton posh boy David Cameron taking de-elocution lessons to mispronounce words like “probbly” instead of “probably”, who voted for the Iraq war, who flipped his house and who now distances himself from the expenses scandal like he and his party had nothing to do with it? Or the other posh boy, Nick Clegg, who is even wealthier than Cameron and, like him, descended from royalty but who constantly implies his roots are Sheffield salt-of-the-earth?

Welcome to the three wings of the one-party state: the Business Party.

As Fabrice Tourre, the accused Goldman Sachs trader, wrote before he unloaded worthless investments to ‘widows and orphans’: ‘ … the entire system is about to crumble at any moment.’

Fabrice was specifically referring to the banking system, but we can hear the creaks and the groans of the whole edifice before it goes down.

Career politicians are like the canaries down the mine. They know what’s coming, which is why they’ve ditched any pretence at social concern or ‘stakeholding’ and are leaping desperately like salmon in spawning season to join the super-rich as they shear off from the rest of us. For three deregulated decades, the powerful have been psychotically pillaging us and our poor little planet and now, ‘at the point where greed and madness can no longer be told apart’, it just can’t take it any more.

It’s this lunacy that drives the plot engine of Jonathan Coe’s What A Carve Up!, and about which he is so viscerally angry. In his 1994 novel, Coe compresses the criminal class running the country — and the world — into one sociopathic, homicidal, fratricidal family: the Winshaws.

They have already carved up the key industries between them. The family seat , Winshaw Towers in Yorkshire, has spawned Henry, a backstabbing Tory minister; Thomas, a voyeuristic banker who creates nothing tangible and yet, as one of Thatcher’s beloved ‘wealth creators’ pockets a fortune in ‘commissions, interest, fees, swaps, futures, options … no longer even paper money. It could be scarcely said to exist’; and Hilary, a media mogul who doesn’t believe a toxic word she writes in her populist columns. Dorothy, the battery farmer who wouldn’t touch the cruelly-reared unhealthy muck she feeds the masses, carries shades of Margaret Thatcher whose chief contribution to the world in her former career as a food scientist was to devise ever more effective methods of pumping air into ice-cream, so making even bigger profits from thin air. What a brilliantly untoppable metaphor that was. Roderick, the lascivious art dealer, creates the market of mediocre crap from which he profits. And Mark, the little shit who sells arms to Saddam even as the West is gearing up for the first Gulf War, is a portrait of homicidal malice, organising William Tell-style shooting competitions for his arms-dealing buddies aiming at apples balanced on the heads of hapless Filipino prostitutes.

Minor author Michael Owen is commissoned by mad Aunt Tabitha Winshaw to write a family history which she hopes will expose them in all their rottenness and maybe exact a revenge for the murderous betrayal of her beloved brother, Godfrey, the only good person in their grotesque number, by his own kith and kin. In delving into the family mystery, Michael comes to learn who he is and suffers at first hand from the predations of the dreadful clan.

Coe’s satire might have been overtaken by grim reality, but it still gives us a searing perspective from which to make sense of the current crop of horrors: of Blair; Iraq Mk II; of Tourre’s revelation of how bankers run the economy with mad pointlessness, their sole aim to move money into their own pockets: ‘What if we created a ‘thing’ which has no purpose, which is absolutely conceptual and highly theoretical and which nobody knows how to price?’

The banks took our money and, like all good monsters, bounced back more profitable than ever. And yet there is still practically no public control or accountability. Frigsample, they refuse to lend for mortgages although the Tories sold off the public stock and Labour refuses to build anywhere near realistic levels of new housing. How’s that for being caught between a rock and a hard place?

You’d think this was the time for the party we voted for to take charge and protect us from the predations of the corporations. New laws, perhaps. But, no. The governent bleats that its hands are tied. The blackmailing swine might take off to where regulations are even slacker, where taxes for those who can most afford it remain at rock bottom.

Yet miraculously, one holiday aboard music industrialist David Geffen’s yacht and Lord Mandelson criminalises British children who want to share the little pleasure left to them with anti-downloading laws. The government also rushed through legislation to bang up youth who imaginatively find new legal ways to get high while Ken Clarke who, as boss of British American Tobacco, brought the cancerous joys of smoking to a new generation of young Chinese, runs for political office. Again.

Talking left before an election as ever, promises are whispered by Labour of a Robin Hood tax of 0.0000000001 per cent on deals done throught the City, the same City that’s supposed to yield riches for ‘Britain’ which never trickles down to us. I think they mean ‘trickle down’ in the sense that we are the sparrows stitting by the horse’s arse to see if any nourishment gets pooed out. Will that legislation see the light of day? Will it, fuck!

Don’t wait for the politicians to protect you. I watched the videos of last year’s Orwell Prize debate. If you sit through Nick Cohen’s headline-grabbing indictment of the liberal press and giggle at Peter Hitchens’s retort that Nick was pissed (yeah, yeah), you get to the really telling stuff. Labour right-winger (at least he was pre-Bair when everything shifted tectonically to the right) Frank Field warns us ominously of something nasty coming down the pipeline. At first, I thought, yay! Someone’s warning us that the looting of society by Milton Freidman fans at the top has gone too far and unless we rein it back we are in for an Apocalypse. But, no. As we leave the Age Of so-called Enlightenment behind, what is Frank’s concern? Not that life for ‘Brits’ (meaning the middle and working classes) is turning into a living hell, but that the ‘mob’ is getting out of hand and has already, shock horror, targeted the home of a banker. When you deduce that the banker in question is the questionable Fred The Shred it makes you realise where these politicians’ misplaced priorities have been leading us.

Frank wouldn't like What A Carve Up! one little bit, themed as it is around the 1964 movie of the same same starring Kenneth Connor, Sid James and Shirley Eaton in the low-brow comedy thriller about a revolting family who get bumped off one by one at the reading of a dead patriarch's will. One man's revenge fantasy is another man's nightmare.

Now I understand why Frank’s lot have been building prisons and training up riot police to do their worst.

Coe not only made me laugh darkly in recognition of the state we’re in, but he also made me cry and rage at the same time. His unfolding of the personal tragedy of his protagonist through the grinding destruction of the NHS and how it affects real lives is one of the most moving things I’ve read. These are the people who’ll be in the ‘mob’ protesting when they realise that none of the political parties will defend them. These are the people for whom the issues are of life and death while the fiddlers burn down the town in their insatiable hunger for more, more, even more moolah.

And what happened to the far left forces who were supposed to have built a powerful alternative by now? An honest movement that would have trounced the Business Party at the polls and maybe led us into a world where we produce for need not greed? Well, during my sojourn in their ranks organising the press for the Socialist Alliance and Stop The War Coalition, I watched them creaming themselves at the first sight of fame in the public eye. As one prominent SWP member told me when I objected to the destructive swathe left by one crass opportunistic, nepotistic and exploitative leader, now trying to kick-start his media career via his breakaway RCP-style sect, ‘Self-interest and ego will always play a part. So what?’

Clegg, Cameron and Brown, differentiated only by the colour of their ties, declare in an anti-Spartacus trope, “I am Tony Blair!” “No, I am Tony Blair!” “No, I am Tony Blair… and so is my best friend!”

A carve up indeed. More gravy?

The Political Elite's God-Given Right To Rip You Off: Orwell Prize debate

OK, hangover gone.

For a great account of the Orwell Prize debate, 'Have the political classes been fatally weakened?', at Thursday's shortlist event, see Laurie at Penny Red.

It was a truly flesh-crawling example of how skewed and corrupt is the mentality of these people who are running and ruining our lives.

I will just add to Laurie's report that Meg Russell (Deputy Director, UCL Constitution Unit, whatever the hell Oxbridge bootboy/girl club that is) also told us that, regarding the expenses scandal, the public was wrong to call the MPs' – ahem – misdemeanours "crimes", because only a few of them technically broke the law. Well, who made those laws in the first place? Like a true bureaucrat, she was nit-picking over the definition of "crime", rather than addressing what they actually did. As long as it's in triplicate it must be true.

She flapped so pathetically over the witty "Wanted" posters portraying greedy MPs as felons on the run that I feared the poor thing might need smelling salts. To her delicate sensibilities, this mockery of the powerful was worse than the original rip-off. As Helena Kennedy observed, she had no sense of humour. Which authoritarians do? To mangle a quote from Russell Brand, the lack of nuance is the hallmark of the despot.

Meg also insulted the audience, saying that it had been proved that we'd have all done the same if we were in the politicians' position. What utter fuckry is this? Why is the not-so-intelligent intelligentsia trying to naturalise such warping of human relations? I hope you never get the chance to put that thieving mentality into practice, Meg, There should be special cells in Holloway and Pentonville reserved for those who abuse high office to pillage the public purse.

In Meg's world, though, no-one should be accountable. Power should be given full rein to feed us shit-sandwiches and we'd have to say, "Yummy!". The words, "Thank you, baas," after each kicking — such sweet music to their ears — would be made mandatory.

I did like Helena Kennedy, though. She said that poor Meg had gone native. Mixing with the movers and shakers who flattered her and made her feel important, of course she made excuses for them. Helena finished by saying that Labour should get back in and start acting like a left party. And at that I whooped. Even though I know they won't.

Debate: Has the political class been fatally weakened?
Panel: David Halpern, Helena Kennedy, Cristina Odone, Meg Russell, Jodie Ginsberg (chair)

Watch the debate here

The Political Elite's God-Given Right To Rip You Off: Orwell Prize debate

OK, hangover gone.

For a great account of the Orwell Prize debate, 'Have the political classes been fatally weakened?', at Thursday's shortlist event, see Laurie at Penny Red.

It was a truly flesh-crawling example of how skewed and corrupt is the mentality of these people who are running and ruining our lives.

I will just add to Laurie's report that Meg Russell (Deputy Director, UCL Constitution Unit, whatever the hell Oxbridge bootboy/girl club that is) also told us that, regarding the expenses scandal, the public was wrong to call the MPs' – ahem – misdemeanours "crimes", because only a few of them technically broke the law. Well, who made those laws in the first place? Like a true bureaucrat, she was nit-picking over the definition of "crime", rather than addressing what they actually did. As long as it's in triplicate it must be true.

She flapped so pathetically over the witty "Wanted" posters portraying greedy MPs as felons on the run that I feared the poor thing might need smelling salts. To her delicate sensibilities, this mockery of the powerful was worse than the original rip-off. As Helena Kennedy observed, she had no sense of humour. Which authoritarians do? To mangle a quote from Russell Brand, the lack of nuance is the hallmark of the despot.

Meg also insulted the audience, saying that it had been proved that we'd have all done the same if we were in the politicians' position. What utter fuckry is this? Why is the not-so-intelligent intelligentsia trying to naturalise such warping of human relations? I hope you never get the chance to put that thieving mentality into practice, Meg, There should be special cells in Holloway and Pentonville reserved for those who abuse high office to pillage the public purse.

In Meg's world, though, no-one should be accountable. Power should be given full rein to feed us shit-sandwiches and we'd have to say, "Yummy!". The words, "Thank you, baas," after each kicking — such sweet music to their ears — would be made mandatory.

I did like Helena Kennedy, though. She said that poor Meg had gone native. Mixing with the movers and shakers who flattered her and made her feel important, of course she made excuses for them. Helena finished by saying that Labour should get back in and start acting like a left party. And at that I whooped. Even though I know they won't.

Debate: Has the political class been fatally weakened?
Panel: David Halpern, Helena Kennedy, Cristina Odone, Meg Russell, Jodie Ginsberg (chair)

Watch the debate here

Orwell Prize: Madam Miaow makes the longlist

May I just say, "Blimey!"?

I've just heard from the organisers of The Orwell Prize that I've made the longlist in the Blog category. "They are awarded to the book, the journalism and the blogposts which are judged to have best achieved George Orwell’s aim to ‘make political writing into an art’."

When I submitted my entry a few months back I didn't dream I'd get anywhere in this prestigious award so I am delighted to have made the final fourteen.

"This year’s shortlists, of six in each category, will be announced at Thomson Reuters, Canary Wharf on Thursday 15th April at 7pm. The announcement will be followed by a debate entitled ‘have the political classes been fatally weakened?’"

Commiserations to my comrades who also submitted their blogs for consideration. A special mention for Splintered Sunrise who I was convinced would lead the pack and at least get this far as his writing style, wicked wit, and sharp incisive analysis outshine us all in the left. Also for Harpy Marx whose knowledge of the political landscape teaches me much.

Congratulations to the others on the list. You may recognise some of them. Well done.

David Osler Dave's Part
David Smith Letter from Africa
Gideon Rachman rachmanblog
Hopi Sen Hopi Sen
Iain Dale Iain Dale's Diary
Jack of Kent Jack of Kent
Laurie Penny Penny Red and others
Madam Miaow Madam Miaow Says
Mary Beard A Don’s Life
Morus PoliticalBetting.com; Daily Kos
PC Ellie Bloggs A Twenty-First Century Police Officer
ray The Bad Old Days Will End
Tim Marshall Foreign Matters
Winston Smith Working with the Underclass

More about this year's prize here

PS: Ha! I can't believe this news came in just after I succumbed and posted a funny pet video. George must be spinning. Or maybe not. He did, after all, own a poodle called Marx, thus proving a fondness for mutts combined with a sense of humour. Hey, perhaps the pet pooch video is the perfect Orwell blog item. Judges, please note.

EDIT: Other left blogs submitted and worth checking out include: Andy Newman Socialist Unity, Phil BC A Very Public Sociologist, Lenin's Tomb, Kevin Blowe Random Blowe, Jim Jepps The Daily (Maybe), Sunny Hundal Liberal Conspiracy, and Neil Clark

My essay on George Orwell here. Written as a review of John Newsinger's insightful biography.

Orwell Prize: Madam Miaow makes the longlist

May I just say, "Blimey!"?

I've just heard from the organisers of The Orwell Prize that I've made the longlist in the Blog category. "They are awarded to the book, the journalism and the blogposts which are judged to have best achieved George Orwell’s aim to ‘make political writing into an art’."

When I submitted my entry a few months back I didn't dream I'd get anywhere in this prestigious award so I am delighted to have made the final fourteen.

"This year’s shortlists, of six in each category, will be announced at Thomson Reuters, Canary Wharf on Thursday 15th April at 7pm. The announcement will be followed by a debate entitled ‘have the political classes been fatally weakened?’"

Commiserations to my comrades who also submitted their blogs for consideration. A special mention for Splintered Sunrise who I was convinced would lead the pack and at least get this far as his writing style, wicked wit, and sharp incisive analysis outshine us all in the left. Also for Harpy Marx whose knowledge of the political landscape teaches me much.

Congratulations to the others on the list. You may recognise some of them. Well done.

David Osler Dave's Part
David Smith Letter from Africa
Gideon Rachman rachmanblog
Hopi Sen Hopi Sen
Iain Dale Iain Dale's Diary
Jack of Kent Jack of Kent
Laurie Penny Penny Red and others
Madam Miaow Madam Miaow Says
Mary Beard A Don’s Life
Morus PoliticalBetting.com; Daily Kos
PC Ellie Bloggs A Twenty-First Century Police Officer
ray The Bad Old Days Will End
Tim Marshall Foreign Matters
Winston Smith Working with the Underclass

More about this year's prize here

PS: Ha! I can't believe this news came in just after I succumbed and posted a funny pet video. George must be spinning. Or maybe not. He did, after all, own a poodle called Marx, thus proving a fondness for mutts combined with a sense of humour. Hey, perhaps the pet pooch video is the perfect Orwell blog item. Judges, please note.

EDIT: Other left blogs submitted and worth checking out include: Andy Newman Socialist Unity, Phil BC A Very Public Sociologist, Lenin's Tomb, Kevin Blowe Random Blowe, Jim Jepps The Daily (Maybe), Sunny Hundal Liberal Conspiracy, and Neil Clark

My essay on George Orwell here. Written as a review of John Newsinger's insightful biography.