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Samizdata quote of the day

· Slogans & Quotations · UK affairs

The arrest of Damian Green is quite appalling and so ridiculously Orwellian that I am almost tempted to vote Tory. I mean it.

– a commenter here

November 30th, 2008 |

5 comments to Samizdata quote of the day

  • Michael Jennings
    November 30, 2008 at 5:17 pm

    I went to my local shop and had a look at the front pages of the Sunday papers this morning. This story was all over the front pages of the Telegraph and Mail on Sunday, but nowhere to be seen on the Observer, Sunday Times, or Sunday Independent. Yes, there is another big story today, and if one of these papers have devoted the entire front page to events in Mumbai, I would understand, but there were other stories on the front pages.

    Credit is due to the Telegraph and the Mail, and I am aware that the story is covered in ways not friendly to the government in some places inside some of these papers (where are more people like Nick Cohen who are of the left but none the less understand what freedom is?) but the differences seem to indicate that that this story is just seen by the editors of all papers as a partisan matter. The story that indicates pretty much unequivocally that Britain is now a police state is seen as nothing more than partisan politics by our newspapers.

    This is a disgrace.

  • guy herbert
    November 30, 2008 at 6:19 pm

    however the Observer and other left-wing papers did criticise the arrest, and lots of left-wing commentators have been outraged.

    Now we are beginning to see some damage-limitation strategy by the Government. Asserting the police are just doing their job and no one in the Government knew has failed. Attacking Green would plainly be counterproductive. So now we see the character of the man accused of leaking being impugned to shore up the Labour tribal base.

    Here is Alan Travis printing the new line:

    Christopher Galley, the 26-year-old junior Home Office civil servant at the centre of the row over the arrest of Tory MP Damian Green, stood as a Conservative council candidate in 2004 and unsuccessfully applied for a job with the Tory immigration spokesman, it emerged today.

    Galley, who is in hiding from journalists at a Home Office safe house in the Midlands, was arrested at 5.50am on November 19 during a raid on his home in Middlesex. It was reported today that Galley quickly implicated Green and told police that he had been “induced” to leak the Home Office documents to the MP.

    It was claimed today that Scotland Yard detectives believe Green was actively engaged in what they claim may have been a political espionage operation targeting the private office of Jacqui Smith.

    The man, even though a civil servant, was a tory who had tried to get a job working for the Conservative party; we are invited to conclude that he was therefore not in any sense a whistleblower (unlike those upright representatives of moral authority Sarah Tisdall and Clive Ponting, whom the wicked Thatcher regime persercuted), but evilly motivated by party interest, and the desire to curry favour for personal advancement.

    Note those passive tenses: “It was reported today”, “it was claimed today”. Claimed and reported by whom? Sources close to the Home Secretary or the Metropolitan Police, perhaps?

  • Peter Briffa
    November 30, 2008 at 6:32 pm

    I think this is rather a telling quote, really. The number of lefties and leftoids I have met who, after a long rant about Blair, Brown and the rest of the bloodsuckers will then say, “But I could never vote Tory”.
    If they could just be persuaded, just this once, if not to vote Tory, at least not to vote for the government, come the next election, that would be some small victory. They don’t have to pledge undying allegiance or anything.

  • Michael Blackburn
    November 30, 2008 at 7:42 pm

    Here’s one lifelong Labour voter (though not in 05) who will be voting Conservative next time.

    My local MP is a Tory in a safe seat but his voting record is far to the left of most Labour MPs.

    I have to say I started to get worried back in 2000 when the government brought in the RIP Act. I was appalled at the time not just by the fact that this was not being reported widely in the press but also that the people I was telling about it were sublimely complacent. As are many when I tell them about the EU communications directive on logging our phone calls and internet activity.

  • Ian Thorpe
    December 2, 2008 at 6:10 pm

    I don’t recall Orwell actually specifying the political colour of Big Brother’s regime so perhaps voting Tory is a case of jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. I’ll stick with the Greens (how appropriate) thanks.

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