This (slightly belated) Orwell goes to Home Secretary Charles Clarke for his cunning deployment of cultural relativism as an argument in favour of deporting people to governments known to use torture. He said that criticism of his policy was tantamount to “latter-day imperialism” in an interview with the Financial Times, which gets him an Orwell nomination. TYR’s Orwell Awards, to be held at the end of this year, aim to reward the political abuse of the English language. We welcome nominations from the public, which can go either in the comments or to a.harrowell AT gmail.com.
This week’s nomination is indebted to Tom Griffin of The Green Ribbon.
There is also an honourable mention to the Local Government Association, for whoever it was told the press that local authorities were concerned that they were being “forced” to grant extended drinking hours because of “a lack of objections from the public and police”. Errr….look, the idea is that you’re only meant to ban longer drinking hours if people – or the police – object to them. Got that? Mind you, that passes more into the realm of “That’s Just Completely Fucking Stupid” than the Orwells.