Sun, 13 Aug 2006

Unimaginable scale

From the Times:

Paul Stephenson, Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said: ‘We are confident that we have disrupted a plan by terrorists to cause untold death and destruction and commit mass murder. This was intended to be mass murder on an unimaginable scale.’

John Reid, the Home Secretary, said that ‘loss of life would have been on an unprecedented scale’.

What are they trying to achieve with this unprecedented scale terminology? Isn't one supposed to be a professional presenting dispassionate facts and risk assessment, and the other a politician offering a measured reaction with a way forward? Instead all we get is propaganda.

Go read or re-read Orwell's short essay Politics and the English Language. This should be compulsory reading for anyone writing in English.

You may also be interested in an analysis of why the Metropolitan Police arresting innocents may be motivated by a propaganda strategy. If so, read A pawn in their propaganda machine.

(This w/e, I made some minor updates to the pages Is the UK a police state? and A pawn in their propaganda machine.)

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