Here are my ten entries for this year’s Orwell Blog Prize:

14/01/2009      https://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/art740

17/03/2009      https://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/art859     

03/05/2009      https://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/art928     

17/06/2009      https://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/anonymous-bloggers-at-work-     

26/06/2009      https://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/a-musty-needy-eu-speech           

04/08/2009      https://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/NRWKVL599211           

21/09/2009      https://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/russia-s-foreign-policy-psycholgy-contd-   

30/10/2009      https://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/even-yet-more-further-labour-kaminski-nonsense

15/11/2009      https://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/european-foreign-policy-v-the-iron-laws-of-physics

20/12/2009      https://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/copenhagen-climate-summit-um-not-un

These are a decent sample of my output this year, some more analytical than others. I have tried to put together a list of postings which are well written, sharp, have something a bit unexpected to say and in general reflect my humble hopes to emulate the finest Orwell writing tradition.

If anyone out there remembers any other posting from 2009 which was especially striking and engaging, please let me know asap. I still have a week or so to change my entries if I want to do so. But I get only ten shots…

Talking of George Orwell, I was looking at the last passages in Animal Farm today. 

Look at this towering, slyly nuanced speech by the Farmer as he and the Evil Pigs cut the Final Deal, the other animals peering glumly through the window at the merry party inside.

The deftness of touch and the implicit and explicit sense of them all knowingly wallowing in their greedy ruthless cynicism might be describing, say, the way the Blair/Brown elite dined with the EU elite and explained to loud guffaws how they had denied the UK the promised vote on the Lisbon Treaty referendum:

Mr. Pilkington, of Foxwood, had stood up, his mug in his hand. In a moment, he said, he would ask the present company to drink a toast. But before doing so, there were a few words that he felt it incumbent upon him to say.

It was a source of great satisfaction to him, he said – and, he was sure, to all others present – to feel that a long period of mistrust and misunderstanding had now come to an end.

There had been a time – not that he, or any of the present company, had shared such sentiments – but there had been a time when the respected proprietors of Animal Farm had been regarded, he would not say with hostility, but perhaps with a certain measure of misgiving, by their human neighbours.

Unfortunate incidents had occurred, mistaken ideas had been current. It had been felt that the existence of a farm owned and operated by pigs was somehow abnormal and was liable to have an unsettling effect in the neighbourhood.

Too many farmers had assumed, without due enquiry, that on such a farm a spirit of licence and indiscipline would prevail. They had been nervous about the effects upon their own animals, or even upon their human employees. But all such doubts were now dispelled.

Today he and his friends had visited Animal Farm and inspected every inch of it with their own eyes, and what did they find? Not only the most up-to-date methods, but a discipline and an orderliness which should be an example to all farmers everywhere.

He believed that he was right in saying that the lower animals on Animal Farm did more work and received less food than any animals in the county.

Indeed, he and his fellow-visitors today had observed many features which they intended to introduce on their own farms immediately… 

Always good to see a story with a Happy Ending.