In an interview with Deutsche Welle’s, Germany’s public international broadcaster, reporter Zhanna Nemtsova asked Boris Johnson, “Mr Johnson, you argue that the source of this nerve agent, Novichok, is Russia. How did you manage to find it out so quickly? Does Britain possess samples of this?”
Johnson, after some preamble, replied, “When I look at the evidence, the people from Porton Down, the laboratory… they were absolutely categorical, I mean, I asked the guy myself, I said, ‘are you sure?’ and he said ‘there’s no doubt.’ And so, we have very little alternative but to take the action that we have taken.”
On the Andrew Marr show, Sunday 08th April, Marr said, “In that German TV interview, it wasn’t clear that he was saying it was absolutely categorical that it had come from Russia. He was saying that it was absolutely categorical that it was Novichok, which is what the Porton Down guy said, so to that extent it wasn’t actually a slip.” This was after BBC News had gone so far as to talk over the question asked by Zhanna Nemtsova to make it appear she was asking about the Novichok sample and not Russia.
What we have here is a typical (these days) double whammy, Johnson was lying and then Andrew Marr lied (after BBC news’ deliberate distortion) about Johnson lying.
Since 2010 we have been living in a land of lies from David Cameron’s pledge that there would be no more top down reorganisations of our NHS, to the Department for Work and Pensions claims of ‘Making work pay’ by driving people into poverty, to Jeremy Corbyn being a Russian stooge and a Jew hating anti-Semitic.
The problem is that the evidence against this sea of lies is readily available to anyone with a browser and an Internet connection, but we cannot make an inch of progress because we are lost at sea in the relentless bombardment of continued lies from the government and the mainstream media. It’s a non-stop tidal wave of the most feral and wilful bullshit.
This is far worse than a house built on sand, although a cess pit in reality, it means the house is propped up by lies and each new lie stalls what should have been inevitable long ago, the fall of house Conservative. The only way the Conservatives are clinging to power is by increasing the lies they tell in order to completely undermine democracy and block accountability.
The Conservative government are utterly reliant on the lies they tell to cling to power and for every day that democracy is stalled people die. It started with the weakest and most vulnerable people but it is now sweeping across the country as our public services crumble.
I am a political animal and I have Margaret Thatcher to (largely) thank for that. As a Community and Youth Worker I watched helplessly as she stripped us bare and the Youth Service became a shadow of its former self.
Thatcher was the start of the neoliberal assault on Britain, through the Tory lite years of New Labour until 2010 and Cameron’s rise to power on a pack of lies. He took the gloves off and launched what the Conservatives still hope will be the final (neoliberal) solution for Britain. With the death of Thatcher, far from her being “a historic footnote in a culture that had abolished history”, the worst was yet to come.
Daily, the lies become more fantastical, emboldened by every lie that supersedes them, the government and the media play up their own deceit as if it is a twisted moral virtue and, in fact, become affronted when they are challenged, as happened when Craig Murray was interviewed by a visibly pissed off Kay Burley for Sky News, which was subsequently dumped, but released by Murray himself.
I have only ever used the expression ‘you couldn’t make it up’ sparingly, now I can’t use it at all. It is difficult not to believe they believe their own lies. Watching Theresa May in PMQs, is that faux outrage or is she convinced of her lies? Is it performance art or is it diabolical self delusion?
Whatever it is, it is the sickness of our time, a sickness George Orwell wrote about and warned about in 1984 (“The citizen, in exchange for promises of well-being such as food, health care, education, and security, forfeits her freedom and gets neither.” – Matt Reimann – 1984 review).
Unimaginably here we are. People voting for their own enslavement (gig economy and bullshit jobs). People voting to die. People voting to lose their National Health Service. People believing the lies and, indeed, stridently, vocally and physically, protecting them. Thanks to the right wing media, specifically (but not exclusively) the Mail, Sun, Express and Telegraph, Jeremy Corbyn has been resolutely monstered in the minds of many.
To quote the Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil track, “We gotta get out of this place, If it’s the last thing we ever do.”
A few days ago I wrote about my mistaken idea that we have to somehow take back our humanity. The actual and real truth is that our humanity is all we’ve got to counter the times we are living in.
I am an old hand at depression, it’s as familiar to me as dirt, yet I find myself in a new place. I will not allow these people to steal my bitterly fought for and hard won love of life for a pack of lies. At 67 I am determined of this, they shall not have my mind or my life. If they want my life, they are going to have to take it, but I will not surrender it to them or give up the fight.
I have learnt to care for the little things in life, that’s how I personally hold my own in these evil times. The daffodils are more lovely this year than last, seen through the multi-coloured prism of my age and survival. They can’t take that away from me, nor the rich memories of my own lived history which so inform my present these days. I have discovered the resilience of age and consider it a blessing, even though I am ill and physically weak, inside I am a furnace of and for life, which burns much stronger than it did in the ignorance of my youth.
It does not matter to me that I might not see the restoration of humanity and justice to politics, it matters only that I am humanity and humanity is the greatest gift the universe has bestowed upon each and every one of us. For free. No questions asked. I will not be treated as if I owe rent on my own life, that is an abomination that no one has the right to demand.
In these times, just being alive is an act of rebellion, they really do despise us that much. If the offence of ordinary people is in being alive in the deluded minds of the so called ruling elites, then it behooves us live to the best of our ability, if we can, not just for ourselves, but for each other, for those who didn’t make it, for every oppressed life, and hope that offends them to their miserable bones.
Hey, I am going to die anyway but I plan to go out laughing and grateful for the most astonishing gift that nature can bestow, this little journey of life. It’s been tough at times, but its been a blast. Until then, fuck ’em. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
KOG. 08 April 2018
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https://blog.bookstellyouwhy.com/george-orwells-prophetic-political-vision
Fear and Loathing in Great Britain 
Reblogged this on disabledsingleparent.