Has anybody followed this...?
To recap, the Libertarian Party started a campaign to send every MP a copy of 1984 on November 5th - by way of a warning as to what the country is coming to like...
Hundreds of people - well 645 to be precise - including myself paid a fiver to have the book sent. It was organised by The Libertarian Party but not everybody that sent a book was a member.
Amazingly, there has been no press coverage of the event although a press release was sent out - we can only imagine why the 'meeja' considered it un-newsworthy...
So far, just three MPs have acknowledged receipt of their gift - I'll let Leg-Iron summarise their amazing response...
This time it's Paul Flynn, MP. Once again, the comments are piling up.
When Tom Harris mentioned the book, in response to the comments he used the 'think of the children' line in an attempt to silence dissenting voices. That didn't work so he ended with a one-line dismissal of the whole thing and then forgot about it. Just as O'Brien does in 1984, Tom Harris used doublethink to erase the entire thing from his memory. Pure Righteous, through and through.
Kerry McCarthy's approach was to imply that whoever sent the book must be in favour of having drug-addled prostitutes on the streets. Another deflection, another argument of the irrelevant, which she continued in a second post. Finally she resorted to a lie and closed down the blog because fifty comments apparently constitutes an organised attack. Kerry, to quote your colleague Tom, 'Oh, wake up'. Fingers in ears. La-la-la. Same response as Tom with a different irrelevant deflection. Another pure Righteous.
My first impression of Paul Flynn's response was that he had chosen smoking, and the smoking ban, as his irrelevant deflection. It is clear that he doesn't like smoking, and what he doesn't like can't be allowed. That is genuine Righteous thinking. In his case it seemed to have worked at first. The first comments were about the smoking ban, but the tone is changing.
To be fair, I have the impression that whoever sent him his book mentioned the smoking ban as an example of our government's imposition of its personal views on us all. Mr. Flynn appeared to believe that a pro-smoking group was behind the sending of the book. So I guess he's never read it because in the book, smoking indoors is not banned. It's one of the few things that is allowed. Not a good choice for a protest about a smoking ban.
It wasn't about the smoking ban. It wasn't about 'the children'. It wasn't about prostitutes in Bristol. Tom Harris and Kerry McCarthy cannot see further than their own personal prejudices. I hope, in Paul Flynn's case, it was a matter of mistaking the intent behind the book, and not just a Righteous standard deflection method. Reading the rest of his blog, he comes across as pure Labour and full-on Righteous 'thou shalt not', especially where his personal hate, smoking, is concerned, but he's nowhere near as pompous and self-absorbed as the other two. Is he just as bad, or is there a spark of decency in that Labour party yet? Is there one ear listening?
