Tag Archives: George Orwell

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Who are the security services protecting, the public or the elite?

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I saw a video on the BBC news website yesterday that kept me tossing and turning most of the night. It’s a piece about army intelligence officer, Brian Gemmell, who was gathering information on loyalists in Northern Ireland during the troubles in the 1970s, when he stumbled across evidence of child abuse at Kincora Boy’s Home in east Belfast.

Brian Gemmell: Former Army Intelligence Officer
Brian Gemmell: Former Army Intelligence Officer

‘ A former army intelligence officer has said he was ordered to stop investigating allegations of child sexual abuse at a boys’ home in the 1970s.

Brian Gemmell said a senior MI5 officer told him to stop looking into claims of abuse at Kincora Boys’ Home in east Belfast.

He said he presented a report on the allegations to the officer in 1975.

In 1981, three senior care staff at the home were jailed for abusing 11 boys.

It has been claimed that people of the “highest profile” were connected to abuse at the home .’

Kincora abuse investigation stopped by MI5 says ex-army officer

Gemmell presented his report to the senior MI5 officer in charge of the investigation and was summoned to go and see him.

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SSE marks up their expenses by 50% – and they don’t call that profit!

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Just two and a half weeks after energy industry lobbyists, Energy UK, threatened higher bills and power cuts and just three days after the National Grid joined forces with warnings of winter blackouts if investment isn’t increased, SSE is the first of the Big Six to puts the threats into action: hiking dual fuel bills a whopping 8.2% and slashing all investment in new power plants until after the next election.

Blaming government social and environmental levies for a third of the price hike, SSE‘s chief executive, Alistair Phillips-Davies, told The Telegraph today that energy bills will keep on rising for the next decade, but would fall by £110 overnight if the levies were axed. Blaming the freeze in new investment on the “acute political uncertainty” around Labour’s threat to the Big Six‘s power, Phillips-Davies seems to be making us an offer we can’t refuse in a low tone of voice: accept the deal the Big Six are offering or we’ll have to punch your lights out! Continue reading SSE marks up their expenses by 50% – and they don’t call that profit! →

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Perversions made possible by the machine age

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I’ve just been rereading George Orwell’s essay, Benefit of Clergy, a critique of Salvador Dali’s autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dali.

“As a record of fantasy, of the perversion of instinct that has been made possible by the machine age, it has great value.”

George Orwell, Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador Dali

Which set me thinking. What kind of perversion is Orwell talking about here? The machine age has certainly made a lot of things possible, not all of them good. I suppose you could say that lying around in a centrally heated living room bingeing out on TV, junk food, social media and computer games is a kind of perversion made possible by the machine age.

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