Nought to do with BBC bias…..just some good clean fun at the pro-EU Mr Parris’ expense.
Matthew Parris, a sort of Mandelson lite, was sent in by No10 to do their dirty work and pen a poison letter about Brexit leader Boris….or as Rod Liddle calls it...an eloquent hissy fit …..I suppose we should listen to Parris as he is obviously a genius who at the tender age of 10 was able to grasp the real meaning of Orwell’s Animal Farm, a meaning that he was sure Orwell himself didn’t understand…..
I pulled George Orwell’s Animal Farm from a bookshelf and, -believing it to be a simple tale about animals, read it — all of it — in a day, with no notion that it was an allegory. Orwell’s beautiful, clear English prose drew me in.
And I knew from the start that the animals’ revolution could never work out, that their takeover of the farm must fail.
Orwell’s parable was deep: it pointed to problems with socialism in principle, not just to problems with some of its practitioners. I’m not sure he understood that.
At ten, I did. I grasped the true moral of this book better than its author.
Having said that isn’t that so BBC? You don’t really understand what you really think about immigration, or Islam, or Europe…you’re all a bit dim, uneducated and ignorant, and not a little bit bigoted….what you need is a little help from the BBC, or Matthew Parris, to enlighten you and you will then see the truth and welcome immigrants, especially Muslim ones, with open arms across the non-existent borders of the European State as you realise how wonderful and life enhancing they are.
Understanding the moral of a work better than the person who created it is an impressive feat. Especially the ‘true’ one.
I loved English at school, not least because of a teacher who used the ‘free choice’ of topic to introduce us to Science Fiction.
Sadly others were more addicted to the mandatory syllabus tomes, and would bore silly chewing over what was an ok read to find stuff they claimed was there that suited.
How we wished the author would appear and say “Actually, it seemed a good yarn, and I was mainly looking to cover the rent…”.
Parris is the perfect exemplar of the BBC’s pet Asatories. This guy was an obscure backbencher during the train wreck Major years, but he’s now carved out a second career saying exactly what the Guardian says, except starting every sentence with the words ‘As a Tory myself….’.
The guy is a huge nothingburger. There’s the snobbery and the obsession with da buttsecs, but what else? Nada. You could pick fifty names out of the phone book and at least five would be able to give a better description of what conservatives believe, but the BBC prefers to keep wheeling out smug, whiny, passive aggressive jerks offs like this guy as somehow representative of conservatism, even though there is literally no evidence he represents any demographic outside north London.
He could hardly be a backbencher under Major as he resigned as an MP in ’86. Does nobody check facts? Totally undermines comments if a key fact is completely inaccurate.
This may explain why the BBC has all but erased any comment on its ‘reporting’, as many tended to point out BBC ‘key facts’ to be completely inaccurate.
This leaves only the BBC complaints system, which does not check facts but operates mainly on the basis of ‘belief’ of a BBC employee that their employer and colleagues can only get things about right.
There is also BBC DPA, overseeing BBC FOI. It has been recently noted their response times have stretched from a mandatory period of days to years, which is odd as invariably when they do reply they simply default to saying they don’t have to.
Luckily for the BBC MPs don’t check these facts either or, if they do, choose to ignore them.
Even colleagues of the late Lord McAlpine.
Parris is a nondescript bag-carrier for a brand of fey conservatism that was binned with Biffen in 87 or so.
Biffen in fact was by FAR the greater intellectual…for Parris to “know Orwells work” better than the author himself is ridiculous.
Orwell had experienced and lived through what he was writing about-been to Catalonia and Burma ,nearly died and fought in such places;and he`d known the BBC from the inside and was prepared to “improve transparency” in both the BBC and the Liberal Groupthink that fuelled its idiocies, dangers and rank hypocrisies.
Parris seems not to deign to give us those insights that he boasts of knowing-the ones that Orwell himself had no care for-but , being clever and one of the beautiful people-the Bodley Head Vanity Press types will let him write his pointless autobiographies and serialise them in the Telegraph or other liberal slurry pipe for political privileges( Johnson, Blunkett likewise-Ed Davey FFS!)
No- Parris got voted in in Derbyshire somewhere-went nowhere but to Tyneside to make an arse of himself re living on the dole for a week (he failed-and how!)-and on telly too.
Booted out soon after, got a free pass into journalist commentary like a Portillo etc.
But Parris is no Portillo, let alone a Walden…just a silver nibsmith who the popinjays admire-colonial boy made good, big words for the weekend-but in matters where he dared to get off his bonsai border hedges-big issues like Europe, Christianity, the Euro and immigration-he calls it wrong every time…and his sparkling wit(no, me neither) is snuffed quicker that the chintzy, tinsely spider that he is…a quick spray and no sparklee!
All this sneering irrelevance and failure of course is why the BBC and the liberal left pay his snuff …at least Enoch`s maxim that “all political lives end in failure” applies to only the best like him…Parris` started in it and has never left the faliure rail-not once-and we pay to watch it run into its bluffers and blubberwrecks like Heseltine, Clarke, Campbell and Hattersley.
Orwell’s parable was deep: it pointed to problems with socialism in principle, not just to problems with some of its practitioners. I’m not sure he understood that.
At ten, I did. I grasped the true moral of this book better than its author.
No, he couldn’t have written that? Surely not. Perhaps he alluded about what he (Parris) felt when he was 10 years old.
We wait with baited breath for more enlightenment
Parris on Solzhynetsin.
We could learn so much more what a socialist Gulag (is there any other kind), does to the soul of an individual.
Great post ChrisH.
Usual lack of research. Parris resigned form parliament in 1986 to take on Brian Walden’s Sunday slot at LWT. He never lost his very safe seat.
Yes he did fail at living on the dole for a week (after scoffing that it was more than enough as an MP) and was so shocked that he gave up on Thatcher.
Surprised you`d research it-it`s really immaterial whether he lost his seat or not in the 86/7 era.
If it was a safe seat, then are we expected to rate him for that or not?
Louise Mensch at least had written stuff before she got into Parliament , only to bale out soon after.
How on earth did you think he GOT his LWT job?…on merit?
After all. Walden had been a great success…and I don`t recall ONE Parris interview at that time-do you?
Don`t have the 1987 Election Files to hand here-assumed he`d lost his seat, but my points all still stand.
“He gave up on Thatcher” did he, after one week making a fool of himself on Tyneside?
Not going to research it, life`s too short-but when a weekend scribbler presumes to be a better interpreter of Orwell that the author?…well, it`s on an arc of self-aggrandising irrelevance that means he`s been wrong about every big issue he`d surely have expected to call correctly.
Just a token gay gargoyle for the liberal pedalo…but I`ll not check on it…
Correct LDV, well almost, the comment about giving up on Mrs Thatcher is debatable.He’ gave up’ on Thatcher because he disliked the Poll Tax as well as believing that Mrs Thatcher did not do enough for Gay Rights. He never totally gave up on her BTW, just disagreed on some issues.
Parris has always been a dripping wet Tory, as a result of this the bBBC seem to like him. Someone who can always be relied upon to put the dagger into his own political party.
Ta NCBBC.
Your point about Solzhenitsyn hits home too.
Still spitting feathers about the long-held scorn for Thatchers being a suburban arriviste who knew nothing.
Charles Moores last book mentions fast friends and those she stuck up for
Solzhynetsin of course, but Sharansky, Sakharov/ Bonner Bukovsky, Gordievsky too..among many others in Russia at that time who needed her.
John Paul 2, Reagan and Walesa….you know people who will live on in history as actually changing things
Bloom, Von Karajan, Scruron, Larkin, Amis(K), Annan, Blake and a few other brave souls who faced losing jobs, columns and friends over their support for(or even a refusal to insult) Mrs Thatcher.
And up against her-the WHOLE of the chattering classes in the arts, academe, media, theatre, pop culture-and much more than the bloody effete and corrupt lefty-liberal nexus.
I think of Costello, the Beat, Morrissey, Hucknall in my era…every Observer writer and Guardian hack, the South Bank mafia, Bennett, Miller, Warnock, Hare, Nunn, Potter-yes, and Miller again(detestable creep!).
Compare and contrast-Thatchers friend and allies were the best of it, solid thinkers and brave-and included real revolutionaries in the USSR that Brand and twats would never DARE go near for fear of having to explain or do anything.
These people changed lives and therefore history-and still affect my likes to go back and to learn.
Whereas Kinncoks cabal?…look at them all now…BDS types, falling foul of the new PC Police, waiting around to die-and all they could offer was mockery and a late jig over hearing about Mrs Thatchers death (Third anniversary coming up on Friday this week, BTW).
Lost losers all.
Thank the Lord for Mrs T I say!-faults and all.
ChrisH wrote: Thatchers friend and allies were the best of it, solid thinkers and brave-and included real revolutionaries in the USSR that Brand and twats would never DARE go near for fear of having to explain or do anything. These people changed lives and therefore history-and still affect my likes to go back and to learn.
They did, and for the better, not for just me, but billions of people locked up in the Gulags and concentration camps in communist/socialist countries.
chrisH, And she had a BSc in Chemistry from Oxford. One of the few Ministers with a science background. Compare that with Cameron. PPE , A-levels with knobs on !
Parris is a very touchy flower. One doesn’t have to swear to have one’s comments removed after retching at his simpering ‘more tea vicar?’ drivel in the Spectator
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Former Thatcher Advisor Blasts Obama Over EU Intervention: ‘Americans, Try And Explain To Your President We Are Fighting OUR War of Independence’
Speaking on the relationship between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, he ( John Redwood) said: “The United States should either stay neutral, or they should be on the right side. And on this occasion the right side, as Ronnie [Reagan] and Margret [Thatcher] would tell you if they were standing here today would be to be on the side of freedom, of independence, of our long tradition of self government and accountable government. We are having all over again to battle for that, just as Ronnie and Margaret had to battle in different ways in the era of their great common working.
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/04/06/former-thatcher-advisor-blasts-obama-over-eu-intervention/