Ignorance is Strength?

Maybe it's because I'm reading 1984 at the moment but I can't help but feel suspicious of what comes from the lips of the Prime Minister at the moment.

At PMQs we get the tiresome to-ing and fro-ing between Brown and Cameron where all Brown ever seems interested in is talking of how the Tories would cut spending and he is investing in the economy. Yet when it is shown that the government are actually planning cuts in key areas, there seems to be a dreadful retrospective reinterpretation of the figures. Gordon, we're not idiots.

Then there's this whole helicopters fiasco. The army plainly think that they don't have enough. If anyone is authoritative on whether or not we have enough helicopters, I'd say the army are. Lord Malloch Brown, a government minster, made comments recently suggesting that the UK army 'lacks helicopters'. Yet today, our gracious Leader, Gordon Brown reassured us all that we are fine. The army are fine. The helicopters are fine. If anything we could probably do with fewer helicopters.*

Its just tiresome. No, in fact, its not just tiresome. It's worrying and its insulting. It's insulting to think that the government think we'll just swallow anything they give us and it's worrying to think that someone is quite blatantly giving us bare faced lies - either the army or the government.

Take this, from the BBC:

"For the operation we are doing at the moment we have the helicopters that we need," Mr Brown told a news conference.

Which doesn't fill me with faith, if I'm honest. The really worrying bit is this though:

"The PM said the minister had 'corrected any misrepresentation' of his comments.

Compare this with the following:

"times 17.3.84 bb speech malreported africa rectify"

-G. Orwell, 1984, Chapter IV.

This was an instruction given Winston Smith, the lead character in Orwell's first draft of Gordon Brown's 2010 General Election manifesto (commonly referred to until now as '1984'). Smith worked in the Ministry of Truth and it was his job to retrospectively 'rectify' the reporting of what Big Brother had said to fit it inline with The Party's line. Orwell goes on to say, 'even the written instructions which Winston received... never stated or implied that an act of forgery was to be committed: always the reference was to slips, errors, misprints or misquotations.'

Or 'misrepresentations'? Chilling, isn't it?

Okay, so maybe I'm letting my thoughts run away with myself having been caught up in the plotline of a very good book. At best, though, this is completely petty politics. Belittling, tit-for-tat, "he said, she said" politics, which is not just providing a barrier to helping the country but is seriously damaging the political culture. But then, from small acorns...

*GB didn't yet suggest we have too many choppers, but watch this space.