1978
DIGNITY AND PRINCIPLE * BIG JOE * ATTACK 8136 * UK
In 1997, before the present Prime Minister (Blair) was elected to office, when asked for his candid opinion of his opposite number, the then leader of the Conservative party John Major, replied "He is an unprincipled scoundrel". Most people at the time would have dismissed this comment as at best political knock-about and that not only was off the mark but the opposite was probably a better description. As it as turned out he patently not only has no principles but is, according to the OED description of a scoundrel: one destitute of all moral scruple, a scoundrel of the first rank. This complete lack of moral scruple seems ironic when, it can be said, his whole political positioning seems to be centred on his personality: that of a 'good guy'. This irony is sadly no irony at all, but, true to the Orwellian perspective of 'Engsoc' ('newspeak' for English Socialism) in his book 1984, that what ever is professed by Big Brother (the state) is actually the opposite of what it is doing: Ministry of Truth = Ministry of Lies, etc., As the globalised economy moves into the 21st century its 'national' management by the British government metamorphosis's ever more into a kind of media centred soap opera, with the key personalities presented on a kind of rota system so that the inconsistency of their rhetoric is extremely difficult to follow by the those who tend not to study the spectacle too closely. Behind this inconsistency is a hard and purposeful strategy; that of keeping their position and what used to be known as ideology in a constant state of flux: always becoming. This is a consistent development from the previous modernist political paradigm of certainty, with its formal and well rounded class based political narratives. Now, with the uncertainty of long term employment, pensions, house pricing, terrorism, etc.) and consistent with the informationalised economy, a precarious and uncertain social and political landscape is the order of the day; one based not so much on the liberation of humanity, but, more like the Christian Church at the height of its powers, based on a moral distinction of good and bad (or evil).
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