Gleaned from a link in ML’s latest (both Davids) post: ‘That Paper Is Dead: The Power of Propaganda’:
In amongst the replies etc was mine, no gem, but twitter is all about that off-the-cuff response
Starmer has the coldest little piggy eyes, he’ll be a very safe pair of hands for the establishment. I suspect he will ratchet up belligerence towards Russia, China, and the other Official Enemies. Exactly like Biden if not quite so mentally disarrayed.
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Saw this the other day about Orwell. Surprising.
For what it’s worth…
Thanks for posting… but yikes.
Comrade Hakim (claims to be an Iraqi doctor notwithstanding the curious/spurious American accent) is a sneering little prick, to be blunt. His whole attack is essentially to ask why did this man not have 2023 values eighty years ago and why is he so anti-Communist?
The quote from Shooting An Elephant is trash. Orwell refers to the yellow faces of his football opponents and the onlookers, which is not the same as labelling them “yellow-faces”. He hated his Burmese Days as anyone who has read the book could attest.
Orwell relates how he felt pressured to be the decisive and ruthless white man, and to shoot an elephant that had run amok (but calmed back down). In the very first sentence he says that “…I was hated by large numbers of people - the only time in my life I have been important enough for this to happen to me.”
Written in 1939, he concludes the story by asking “How much longer can we go on kidding these people?” (i.e. propping up a corrupt and racist Empire). It is an outstanding piece which I first read aged about fourteen and have reread many times since. Somewhat derivative of Graham Greene [MI6 asset btw] but emphatically not “garbage”.
That Orwell snitched on Communists/fellow-travellers is not news. The lists are not suppressed. Not praiseworthy, I agree, but he had seen how the supposed Socialist/Communist blocs had undermined opposition to Fascism in Spain (and was shot through the throat while fighting with POUM).
Orwell did sometimes seem to see a Jewish conspiracy everywhere, as did many other people at the time. I doubt they all could have been wrong… My own grandmother seldom missed an opportunity to warn against “the Jews” running the BBC and the newspapers, for example. Strangely I have been able to restrain myself from hate crimes, despite this trash upbringing.
Orwell was one of the two or three greatest English writers of the twentieth century and to condemn him for reflecting accurately the times he lived in is crass. Orwell himself refused to join the snotty intellectuals who tried to lynch Rudyard Kipling, commenting “He dealt largely in platitudes, and since we live in a world of platitudes, much of what he said sticks.”
I could rant on and on but have wasted quite enough time on this pipsqueak and his cancellation campaign
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Very well said, K! Eric had his faults, dim cwestiwn (mae’n Dydd Dewi Sant heddiw 
). But yes indeed, he’s one of the greats. Up there with Cobbett and Engels in uncovering the ordinary, much-deprived lives of the common Brits of his time. But also a great original writer.
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And happy St David’s day to you too @Rhis
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Diolch yn fawr iawn iawn!
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It’s also celebrated, to a lesser extent, in Brittany, France.
Those bloody Welsh get everywhere!
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That makes it sound like there’s a common Celtic ancestry, Dewi founded monasteries there I gather.
Or maybe something even older that was Christianized. The pre-Julian Calendar date would be very close to the spring equinox.
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I’m no expert on this stuff, but apparently St David’s mother was quite big in Brittany (which, yes, has a Celtic heritage). In medieval Brittany, St Non, mother of St David and a saint herself, may have been more popular than St David. Place-names, for example Saint-Divy (Sant-Divi in Breton), and medieval churches dedicated to St David and St Non can still be identified in Brittany.
The language that Bretons speak is Celtic, although it varies from the various Celtic languages spoken in the British Isles.
As an aside, France is a very large country with many borders. Lots of languages are spoken, and that includes within the French language. I live in south west France, where the language is scattered with Spanish and Latin. They have a hard job understanding Parisians in my neck of the woods!
As another aside, the most perfect French is spoken in Tours (pronounced Tour), which is known as the gateway to south west France, and was where the French Communist Party was founded in the 1920s.
I’m good at useless facts in the early hours of the morning.
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Apologies to Rhis for wandering a bit off subject, something I often do (I’m afraid!).
Here’s a Greyzone piece about Keir Starmer…
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A subject of perennial interest to me, Rob. I consider the land of France to be a collection of submerged nations, needing liberation and sovereign independence, Breizh being one of them, with Euskadi being another, though that nation straddles the border between the French and Iberian states. Maybe you should think of yourself as living in Occitania…?
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A large chunk of south west France used to be ruled by England. This came about because of the marriage in 1152 between Eleanor of Aquitane and Henry II. Henry II was the great-grandson of William the Conqueror, so a French connection already existed (although the Normans did originally hail from Scandanavia). Eleanor produced five sons, the best known of which is undoubtedly Richard, born in 1157, who became known as Richard the Lionheart, and in French: Richard Coeur de Lion (apparently Richard couldn’t speak a word of English). These people who called themselves aristos and royalty were basically a bunch of hoodlums who, whenever the opportunity arose, stole the assets of other hoodlums. During his lifetime, Richard the Lionheart held varies titles, amongst which were Duke of Aquitaine, Duke of Gascony, Count of Poitiers, Count of Anjou, Count of Nantes and Overlord of Brittany. I like the Overlord one! and in 1189 he also became Richard I of England.
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Apparently the Brezhoneg soldiers who were fighting off Richard’s great-great grand-dad, William of Normandy, who, before he invaded England, was already trying to conquer them (they were independent then), used to call to him: “Bon jour batard!”
They seemed to know the Norman French of their neighbours as well as their own Brezhoneg language, which is virtually a dialect of Kernowek and Cymraeg. They liked to rile William - or Guillaume, I guess - by taunting him with his illegitimacy.
When I lived in Kernow for a while, as a child, I used to hear stories from the Brezhoneg onion-sellers who still used to ride round the lanes of Kernow early in the growing season, selling strings of early onions hung in braids on their bike handle-bars; having come over with bikes and onions from Breizh in their fishing boats. They said that when the two Celtic languages were still extant common speech in both lands, Breizh and Kernow, the people could speak to each other with no more difficulty than English-speakers understanding Broad Scots. That was generations back, of course; but the stories of those times still persisted, even in the late 1940s.
Incidentally, do you spot the cognacy between Guillaume and my name: Gwilym in Cymraeg; Williams in English. All related! Those Norman thugs got everywhere a thousand years ago, batards indeed!
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Rhis fascinating stuff. You might want to give a further account of the time you spent in Kernow as a child.
No, I didn’t get the connection with your name. As always, history is full of surprises.
I’ll give another little example: Hay-on-Wye is not really Wales, being on the borders. Hay has a long history as a settlement, dating back at least 1000 years, and due to its location it’s always been a football in wars between the English and the Welsh, not to mention the French. Hay has quite a strong French connection in the shape of Bernard de Neufmarché, a Norman lord who apparently fought beside William the Conqueror in the Battle of Hastings; you know, 1066 and all that. As a reward, Neufmarché was later given land in Herefordshire, along the Wye valley, including Hay which was then known as ‘La Haye’. There are two castles in Hay-on-Wye and Neufmarché is known to have built the smaller of the two, which is near St. Mary’s Church on the western edge of town and is now an almost completely unrecognisable ruin. The main castle in Hay, which still stands in the center of town, was probably also built by him. Bernard de Neufmarché went on to marry a Welsh princess and ended-up the lord of most of Brecon as well. He died in 1125 at the grand old age of 75. Not bad for a Frenchman who liked his wine.
Is Rhis a long lost relative of Bernard de Neufmarché? (I believe an American woman now owns that castle in Hay, so forget your inheritance).
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My parents got work in Kernow in1947, when I was seven. I went to a local school, and in no time I had a strong Kernowek accent! I can still conjure it up, m’dear! There for about two years.
Lots of food for thought. I would simplify by asking “Why are you such a duplicitous rat-bastard?” If permitted a follow-up it would be “How do you sleep at night?” but the answer is undoubtedly something along the lines of “…a tincture of gin…”. Bought and paid for many years ago is Keef.
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Re-read Orwell’s essay on doublethink, in ‘Nineteen Eighty Four’. That makes it clear. The power of wilful self-delusion in human psychology seems unfathomable. I encounter it all the time in places like the Off-G btls. Add to that the famous dictum: “It’s difficult to get a man to see something when his income [career, status]…”
Obvious why a dork like Dobbin is now PMette-in-waiting. The English-raj class like his pliability. He passes muster as their trusty.
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