Gavin’s Gaily Gigest

The new edition of Politalks, your weekly satirical news roundup, is here. This week we discuss Labour’s treatment of Nineteen Eighty Four and Margaret Thatcher’s non-death:

Feel free to share and share alike, and for those who are interested, here’s the transcript:

Nineteen Eighty Four tells the story of Winston Smith, a man trapped in a totalitarian superstate whose citizens are frightened into obedience and subjection by constant war. It might be said too much, but it doesn’t make it any less true: modern Britain is beginning to resemble the Airstrip One of Oceania, and New Labour’s crusade to turn the works of George Orwell’s seminal masterpiece into a government training manual took two great leaps forward this week.

First we had the Metropolitan Police’s new ad campaign, “Trust Your Instincts”, which might as well have been called “Trust No One”, as Mulder and Scumbag sought to convince us that every other human being on this island is nothing but a jihad-declaring, baby-raping terrorist with more weapons of mass destruction than sense stashed in his ricin-laced underwear. One particularly panic-inducing radio advert began:

“How do you tell the difference between someone just videoing a crowded place and someone who’s checking it out for a terrorist attack. How can you tell if someone’s buying unusual quantities of stuff for a good reason or if they’re planning to make a bomb.”

How do you tell the difference between a Brazilian electrician and a Muslim fundamentalist?

“The answer is you don’t have to”

We’ll just shoot them in the head seven times anyway and claim they were carrying a bomb.

Later in the week Jacqui Smith revealed that from later this year ID cards will be compulsory for some foreign nationals, airport workers and from 2010 students will probably need them in order to get student loans. So begins the rollout of the largest electronic tagging operation ever undertaken. In order to tailor government services to individual needs, Christian cards will carry a cross, Jewish cards a Star of David and Muslim ID cards a Yellow Crescent. Separate identification suites will operate for the different faiths and those found without the requisite level of Britishness may be forced to work in labour camps in order to prove their commitment to the State.

And for those of you who couldn’t see that joke coming, wake up and sniff the bullshit – there is no need for the Government to hold any information on you purely for its own ends. The only reason they would do so is if they had a plan as to how to utilise it, say through discriminatory police investigations powered by a database that knows everything about you, including the fact you splurge your load over pictures of Ann Widdecombe. The Labour Government have shown themselves to be the most serious threat to British liberty since the Second World War and if you buy into the argument that it is the “terrorists” that are forcing their hand into these repressive measures I’ve got several bags of magic beans you might be interested in.

And finally… Construction work started and promptly halted this week on a new nightclub in Finchley Cemetery, North London, following news that Margaret Thatcher was admitted to hospital, but then refused to die. When the Iron Lady does depart, the new venue will be able to accommodate one thousand revellers, who will each take turns dancing on her grave.