08 December 2005 Blog Home : December 2005 : Permalink
29 Nov 2005 by Peter Gee
Trustees of the George Orwell estate yesterday announced that they intend to sue the British government over copyright breeches relating to the George Orwell novel '1984', a novel about a futuristic police state.
Professor Ramsbottom, a trustee of the Orwell estate, said: "Our lawyers have compared George Orwell's novel '1984' with a number of Labour documents. These documents include the Labour party manifesto, known in the Labour party as the 'The Book', and a number of laws passed by the Labour government over the past five years. Our analysis shows there are clearly great swathes of text that have simply been copied and adopted as Labour policy, far too much for this to be just coincidence."
Home Secretary Charles Clarke, said: "This is clearly absolute rubbish. A police state is a political condition where the government maintains strict control over society, particularly through suspension of civil rights and often with the use of the police. We thought police should not be used for that purpose as it is inherently anti-democratic. Name me one thing that demonstrates Labour is heading that way? OK - name me two things? OK - name me three things..."
Read the whole thing but ensure you are not drinking anything at the same time unless you enjoy nasal regurgiation. Its almost as good as pootergeek - who BTW has this excellent Gordon Brown budget summary.…and the lowest unemployment since the Roman invasion of AD 54.
[Cries of “Hear hear!” from Labour benches.]
In the last fourteen quarters, under this Labour government, the seasonally adjusted Hall-Oates coefficient has remained within a fifth of a percent of its optimum range and this year the Ciccone measure is at its highest level (0.876) since the brief and ultimately disastrous Lawson boom years.
[Audible snores throughout the chamber.]
[Ten minutes later:]
…There will also be a one-off oil windfall tax on George Galloway…
Anyone still awake?
[Silence.]
Excellent. I now come to my growth forecast. This was, frankly, miles out. One hundred bloody percent out. So far off I might it might as well have been the product of astrology, not economics. It was the sort of estimate even the Lancet would have been embarrassed to publish.