Posted on 08/21/2012 11:31:07 PM PDT by Olog-hai
When the George Orwell Memorial Trust proposed a statue of the writer for outside the BBC’s new headquarters it expected an enthusiastic response.
However, not everyone appeared enamored of the plan.
According to Baroness Bakewell, who is backing the campaign, Mark Thompson, the Corporation’s outgoing director general, said the statue could not be erected on BBC premises because Orwell was “too Left-wing”. …
Orwell worked for the BBC’s Eastern Service from 1941 to 1943, producing broadcasts to India designed to counter Nazi propaganda. … His experience at the BBC became unlikely source material for Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell is said to have based Room 101 on a conference room at Broadcasting House where he attended staff meetings. …
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
The BBC is filled with piggies who walk upright while sneering down their snouts at those who pay their way.
speaking of piggies I wonder if Biden was making reference to Animal Farm when he called GOP piggies - the irony
It is one of the few of Orwell’s writings that I have not read. I read most of his stuff in a spurt but by the time I had waded through 1984, Animal Farm, Keep the Apsidistra Flying, Burmese Days, The Clergyman’s Daughter and then The Road to Wigan Pier I couldn’t bear to read on. That was over 20 years ago but I will take up the challenge and read Down and Out in Paris and London on your recommendation.
Mel
and by stuff I meant books - I don’t even want to contemplate the rest of his writings, poems, articles.
I wouldn’t describe him as an anarchist. He definitely believed in state institutions, including the monarchy, albeit in the purely practical sense that it generally prevented charismatic demagogues like Hitler and Stalin from building a personality cult inspiring personal loyalty to them and seizing power.
Nah, Orwell was definitely left-wing, just not in the controlling, totalitarian sense. He described himself as a ‘democratic socialist’ in times before the British welfare state came into being when Britain’s poor really did have an absolute dog’s life.
Whether he would describe himself as left wing and a socialist in today’s Britain with its over-generous welfare state and its arrogant non-working underclass is open to debate...
Well, he fought with the POUM in the Spanish Civil War as part of the international brigades. I’m sure he rated the monarchy above Hitler and Stalin, but then what happens when Hitler and Stalin were beaten and gone?
Darn right - spot on Oz. If we could only get rid of these stupid left-wing/right-wing labels (now totally obsolete) and get the real political divisions instead...
I don’t think every one who fought for the POUM was a true anarchist. If you were pro-liberty and anti-communist as well as anti-fascist but really wanted to stop Franco, the POUM was probably the faction to join.
Finally got around to reading ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’. It is a wonderful read and well worth your recommendation. The pace seems to skip along and unlike (Road to Wigan Pier) it does not get bogged down in facts or pity. I to like his simple fixes at the end and rather than proposing to give people money or better treatment his main push was to provide men with meaningful work.
Mel
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