The Greatest Generation.

Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four Manuscript.

The Greatest Generation is a phrase coined by Tom Brokaw for his book and television series of the same name.

He was referring, of course, to his fellow Americans who came over and fought in the second world war with the allies in Europe.

The fact that they didn't arrive till 1942 when the war had been going for two and a half years is another story; Roosevelt wanted in and Congress wouldn't let it happen. So when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor it was a good day for the allies.

It's the same with Obama – he said he would close the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp as soon as he was elected but found that the President, even though he is given the ridiculous title as the leader of the free world, is not as powerful as he thought.

The Americans think he is all power, has been lying about health care and everything else but they are wrong and what they will do is vote another idiot in next time.

But it doesn't matter whether the President is an idiot or not he doesn't run the show; he is not a dictator.

Everybody knows that Obama doesn't really believe, or didn't when he was 'good old Barry', in what he is forced to do and sign, and when he is finished and writes about it maybe we will know more; or maybe not.

I watched him making a speech today in Belfast, giving encouragement and praising the Good Friday Peace Agreement and getting ready to join his fellow leaders at the G8 summit and I wondered whether the CIA will be doing what The Guardian, in today's issue, alleges they did when the G8 (or whatever they were then) met in Britain in 2009 when phones were monitored and fake Internet cafes set up in London to gather information from the allies.

Did he, when he was standing in local elections in Chicago before he was a Congressman, or when he made the great speech to the Democratic Convention in 2004, know that one day he would condone drones, or that he would re-craft and extend Bush's secret state?

Bush?

It wasn't Bush's secret state – he was only the patsy so you see what I mean when I laugh at the term 'leader of the free world.'

But The Greatest Generation, even though they are well thought of in America, were not a patch on the greatest generation in Britain.

Now I am not and have never been patriotic about Great Britain, in fact I'm not patriotic at all about anything - not even about Ireland - but the generation that went to war for Britain in the late thirties and forties have a lot to be proud of.

For a start they voted out the government that got them into the war in the first place.

In the eighties the voters in Britain re-elected a government who did the same thing. The previous Labour Government saw a war looming in The Falklands and avoided it but the Conservatives didn't see it coming – look it up if you don't believe me!

The generation of the forties wouldn't have re-elected them after their failure to prevent war!

After they voted the Labour Party in, in 1945, Labour formed the National Health Service according to the recommendation of the Beveridge Report and the service started in 1948 and then – oh yes – there was a General Election in 1951 which returned the Conservatives to power again and they started their general interference with the NHS which they have intermittently carried on with ever since.

Incidentally the Labour Party in the 1951 General Election received more votes than the Conservatives but, because of the boundaries, they were not elected. The Conservatives were in power till 1964 and didn't exactly nurse the fledgling service at the time when it needed it most – now they are at it again and this generation are letting them get away with it.

There is a danger that other idiots are on the horizon here in line for election to high office and people here – those who voted Boris Johnson as Mayor of London for instance – will vote for them again.

There are people here who voted Labour all their lives and who abandoned them at the last election and voted for the Liberal Democrats. Some of it was tactical voting (don't ask) and some of it was because of Labour's involvement in the war in Iraq.

I ask one question: if you abandon the only party that's electable that you agree with how can you change anything?

Here we have another 'incidentally': Tony Blair, by backing Bush, gave him and his cronies such as Wolfowitch, Cheney, Rumsfeld etc credence for invading Iraq.

Would they have gone in alone??

In 1948, when the NHS started in England, George Orwell started to write his novel 1984; he called it 1984 by reversing 48 to 84 even though it wasn't published till 1949. 

 

Big brother is watching you!

In that novel he invented a character called Big Brother who was the supreme leader of a fictitious country and the phrase big brother is watching you has been used ever since.

I have never read the novel or seen the film; I don't like dystopian novels or stories and I think a BBC production of 1984, possibly in the 50s, put me off. But one of the things I did wonder was how the authorities got so much information.

Orwell got the idea to write the novel from advertising hoardings according to Anthony Burgess and when you think about it, without being too technical, he got a lot right. I mean with the latest revelations about the American secret service surveillance getting their information from . . . . from where?

Here's the kicker!

They're getting it from today's generation who write all their secrets and happenings on the social media web sites like Facebook, My Space and the rest on the Internet.

It doesn't matter how you set your security settings on Facebook they are available. You can't even terminate your Facebook account. You can try and it will disappear but a few clicks will bring it back on; with all the old friends and embarrassing photographs which made you close it down in the first place.

I think the inventor of the Internet, Tim Berners-Lee, would be spinning in his grave if he was dead!

Would the greatest generation on either side of the Atlantic give so much information away?

I know there have to be secrets and the Secret Services but are they going too far?

Do you know how much your local supermarket knows about you through the loyalty cards and do you know what they do with the information; one day you will go to the doctor and he will tell you how much you drink!

A lot of people reading this, who use Facebook and reveal their secrets, will not know who Edward Snowden is, what Prism NSA surveillance does and even what I am getting at.

By the way, I use a spell-check and checking the spelling on this post I got a few alternatives words to use for some of the names:

Wolfowitch - Witchdoctor

Rumsfeld - Doldrums

Cheney - Chechen