Zamyatin, Kafka and Orwell - this place would have them scratching their heads!

In Yevgeny Zamyatin’s dystopian novel ‘WE’ the sinister role is played by ‘the Bureau of Guardians’ a kind of Secret Police but not in the sense we view them as ‘WE’ is set far in the future.

In the Isle of Man you wonder if we haven’t reached our dystopian future already when you read how Isle of Man Newspapers is being denied access to banal information on how the government news machine works.

We don’t have secret police of course the worst we can get are Gary and the crew and they are more likely to ply you with tea rather than give you the Room 101 treatment - so I suppose the role of the Bureau Of Guardians in our society may be filled by the government press machine. I mean it wants to ‘Guard’ the secrets of COMIN (Council of Ministers) - just imagine that, having to spin the banalities spewed out by the likes of Howard and Alf into something coherent and intelligible.

In Zamyatin's ‘WE’ the world was a place of uniformity and harmony where nothing is allowed to upset the idyll. In our society Butt, Darbyshire and a few other mavericks down on Peel Road seem to want to shatter this idyll - enemies of the people indeed!

The great irony is they want information from a government media machine which is suppose to SUPPLY IT and this apparently ensures they get ‘the Trevor Cowin treatment’ - only in campaigner Trevor Cowins case he’s been promised an answer to his question though he must be ‘patient’. In Isle of Man Newspapers case they have been told they are not getting one.

I often think if people like Zamyatin, Kafka or Orwell were around today even they would have difficulty getting their heads around just what the bureaucracy driving the Isle of Man is. It's not totalitarian its ‘post totalitarian’ its a world where litter projects and dog dirt are elevated to issues of immense importance whilst the real issues of the day are filed in a sealed box marked not to be opened until the year 2218.

Just who are the people of the government media circus? How do they fill their days? Do they really believe some of the items they produce or is it just me that finds them scarcely credible?

Personally I think they are ‘the Board of Guardians’ and they are doing a great job because everything is tranquil everything is harmonious and even as we hear children are hungry and people worry about the next fuel bill everyone is very pleasant about it all.

Dystopian about sums it up - that's the reality away from the doublespeak!

Image: Yevgeny Zamyatin he died in poverty - it could be an ironic paradox

Bernard Moffatt