Something going down

What's happening to the press? Philip Pullman's article on civil liberties in the Times has disappeared into the ether, as apparently has one in the Daily Mail reporting that the BBC's Robert Peston was acting as a government stooge who was being fed stories by Downing Street that might distract attention from the size of the bale-out. The Mail story is still extant. The Pullman article though now seems to have disappeared from the Google cache too.

Here it is, just in case:

Are such things done on Albion’s shore?

The image of this nation that haunts me most powerfully is that of the sleeping giant Albion in William Blake’s prophetic books. Sleep, profound and inveterate slumber: that is the condition of Britain today.

We do not know what is happening to us. In the world outside, great events take place, great figures move and act, great matters unfold, and this nation of Albion murmurs and stirs while malevolent voices whisper in the darkness - the voices of the new laws that are silently strangling the old freedoms the nation still dreams it enjoys.

We are so fast asleep that we don’t know who we are any more. Are we English? Scottish? Welsh? British? More than one of them? One but not another? Are we a Christian nation - after all we have an Established Church - or are we something post-Christian? Are we a secular state? Are we a multifaith state? Are we anything we can all agree on and feel proud of?

The new laws whisper:

You don’t know who you are

You’re mistaken about yourself

We know better than you do what you consist of, what labels apply to you, which facts about you are important and which are worthless

We do not believe you can be trusted to know these things, so we shall know them for you

And if we take against you, we shall remove from your possession the only proof we shall allow to be recognised

The sleeping nation dreams it has the freedom to speak its mind. It fantasises about making tyrants cringe with the bluff bold vigour of its ancient right to express its opinions in the street. This is what the new laws say about that:

Expressing an opinion is a dangerous activity

Whatever your opinions are, we don’t want to hear them

So if you threaten us or our friends with your opinions we shall treat you like the rabble you are

And we do not want to hear you arguing about it

So hold your tongue and forget about protesting

What we want from you is acquiescence

The nation dreams it is a democratic state where the laws were made by freely elected representatives who were answerable to the people. It used to be such a nation once, it dreams, so it must be that nation still. It is a sweet dream.

You are not to be trusted with laws

So we shall put ourselves out of your reach

We shall put ourselves beyond your amendment or abolition

You do not need to argue about any changes we make, or to debate them, or to send your representatives to vote against them

You do not need to hold us to account

You think you will get what you want from an inquiry?

Who do you think you are?

What sort of fools do you think we are?

The nation’s dreams are troubled, sometimes; dim rumours reach our sleeping ears, rumours that all is not well in the administration of justice; but an ancient spell murmurs through our somnolence, and we remember that the courts are bound to seek the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and we turn over and sleep soundly again.

And the new laws whisper:

We do not want to hear you talking about truth

Truth is a friend of yours, not a friend of ours

We have a better friend called hearsay, who is a witness we can always rely on

We do not want to hear you talking about innocence

Innocent means guilty of things not yet done

We do not want to hear you talking about the right to silence

You need to be told what silence means: it means guilt

We do not want to hear you talking about justice

Justice is whatever we want to do to you

And nothing else

Are we conscious of being watched, as we sleep? Are we aware of an ever-open eye at the corner of every street, of a watching presence in the very keyboards we type our messages on? The new laws don’t mind if we are. They don’t think we care about it.

We want to watch you day and night

We think you are abject enough to feel safe when we watch you

We can see you have lost all sense of what is proper to a free people

We can see you have abandoned modesty

Some of our friends have seen to that

They have arranged for you to find modesty contemptible

In a thousand ways they have led you to think that whoever does not want to be watched must have something shameful to hide

We want you to feel that solitude is frightening and unnatural

We want you to feel that being watched is the natural state of things

One of the pleasant fantasies that consoles us in our sleep is that we are a sovereign nation, and safe within our borders. This is what the new laws say about that:

We know who our friends are

And when our friends want to have words with one of you

We shall make it easy for them to take you away to a country where you will learn that you have more fingernails than you need

It will be no use bleating that you know of no offence you have committed under British law

It is for us to know what your offence is

Angering our friends is an offence

It is inconceivable to me that a waking nation in the full consciousness of its freedom would have allowed its government to pass such laws as the Protection from Harassment Act (1997), the Crime and Disorder Act (1998), the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000), the Terrorism Act (2000), the Criminal Justice and Police Act (2001), the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act (2001), the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Extension Act (2002), the Criminal Justice Act (2003), the Extradition Act (2003), the Anti-Social Behaviour Act (2003), the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act (2004), the Civil Contingencies Act (2004), the Prevention of Terrorism Act (2005), the Inquiries Act (2005), the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (2005), not to mention a host of pending legislation such as the Identity Cards Bill, the Coroners and Justice Bill, and the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill.

Inconceivable.

And those laws say:

Sleep, you stinking cowards

Sweating as you dream of rights and freedoms

Freedom is too hard for you

We shall decide what freedom is

Sleep, you vermin

Sleep, you scum

Comments

[Steve2]

I 'm no expert on global economics but Peston has always seemed to me one of the most preening of windbags in a subject that seems ripe for empty windbags, so I was amused when I read the latest issue of Private Eye, it has a piece title "Pestons Prophecies" which among other thngs reminds us how glowingly he spoke of Goodwin and RBS 18 months ago.

For example, Peston said :

"RBS's redoubtable chief executive, Sir Fred Goodwin, would rather stick pins in his eyes than overpay."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2007/10/03/index.html

[Hugh]

Searched the mail site and this is the first result for robert peston.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1156848/Is-BBC-reporter-Robert-Peston-government-stooge.html

So it's still there.

[Bishop Hill]

Hugh

Yes, I know, I fixed the article accordingly about 2 minutes after posting it. Are you reading this on RSS? the text is all crossed out.

[Charles]

Amusingly, the Pullman article still appears in the Times Online search results, although the link is dead: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sitesearch.do?x=25&y=4&query=Philip+Pullman&turnOffGoogleAds=false&submitStatus=searchFormSubmitted&mode=simple&sectionId=674

[Hugh]

No Bishop not on rss. keep up the brilliant work you do. I've set your website as my homepage after all.

[Frank O'Dwyer]

I doubt there is anything sinister behind its disappearance - but that is fabulous and powerful writing from Pullman.

[Bishop Hill]

It's a great piece, isn't it. I'm assuming it's just a cock-up, but you never know. I think I must be getting paranoid in my old age.

[Alex Cull]

I agree with Frank, this is stirring stuff indeed. Mind you, this is the same Philip Pullman who in 2006 wanted 99% of all air travel to be abolished in order to fight global warming, so I'm assuming that he wouldn't want to uphold the freedom to board a plane. Also I'd be interested to know about his opinion of David Miliband's Carbon Tax Card idea. Would he consider it a necessary evil or a stealth identity card?

[Steve2]

I agree with Alex Cull, this piece by Pullman may stand on its own as a very empassioned speach for freedom, but having looked around for what happened to it in the Times, I see he has also written about liberty in the Guardian where he says that a 'virtuous' nation


"...would stand up to economic interests when others were more important, and yes there are interests that are more important than short-term economic benefits, such a nation, for example, would rule out new coal fired power stations full stop."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/feb/28/civil-liberties-philip-pullman

He may have genuine passion, but I not sure if he understands that his passion doesnt equate to objective truth, especially if he doesnt seem to see a contradiction in what he says. His rational seems a bit scary.

[Rich]

Works for me: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article5811412.ece

[stephen Fox]

I think Pullman is a vacuous populist, who says what he thinks will sound good.

The structure of this article is very reminiscent of the polemic by Caryl Churchill against Israel, and is unfalsifiable in the same way.

If Pullman believes in a cradle to grave safety net, carbon taxes and the most rigorous gun control law in the world and I suspect he does (as Steve2 indicates above), then he is voting for people to be treated like children. All the rest of the state apparatus follows from that. If he presented difficult dilemmas, I could respect his position, but he goes for the easy crack every time.

[Ayrdale]

There are some very interesting things going on in the AGW field recently, particularly at Prometheus (dialogue with al Gore's office) and at WUWT, acknowledgement from NOAA that natural climatic variations may be responsible for recent global cooling...
Very aware too sir, that Britain's civil liberty status is dire, and that there are only so many blogging hours in the day...

http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/al-gore-responds-5018

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29469287/wid/18298287/