4 ms·

Ah the irony of this happening in George Orwell's own country. I think Orwell intended it as an extreme dystopian vision meant to serve as a cautionary tale fo

Ah the irony of this happening in George Orwell's own country. I think Orwell intended it as an extreme dystopian vision meant to serve as a cautionary tale for future generations. Instead it seems that our leaders are using it as a blue print for a technological panopticon that could way beyond what even Orwell imagined.

contingencies 11y ago
Yes. Fun fact: Orwell lived in a cheap hostel in Whitechapel known as Tower House, Stalin was another occupant. At the time it was next to a Jewish synagogue, these days that's closed down and it's behind London's largest mosque, next to a very well regarded (by Londoners) Indian restaurant. Later the building was abandoned and gained a reputation for drugs and violence... people used to throw themselves off the upper storeys to effect a quick suicide. Later on it was fixed but by a Cypriate real estate investor and carved up in to cheap units. I had a go at living there, and successfully sublet a room to a guy on the interest rate committee of the Bank of England. Hosting this social mobility in a hundred years ... not bad for a building on a backstreet!
- EthanHeilman 11y ago
  More details on the Stalin, Orwell, Whitechapel connection. Jack London visited it as well. Stalin "fetched up in London in 1907, living in a Jubilee Street tenement flat – the future home of Golda Berk."[0]. "Tower House was immortalised in 1933, when George Orwell, in Down and Out in Paris and London, praised it as the 'best of all common lodging houses with excellent bathrooms'."[1] "Jack London, the author of Call of the Wild and White Fang was first in the line of anarchists, authors and lost souls to shelter here. He christened it The Great Monster Doss House in his seminal work of living among the East End poor, People of the Abyss, in 1902."[1] [0]: http://eastlondonhistory.com/2011/06/16/stalin-in-londons-east-end/ http://eastlondonhistory.com/2011/06/16/stalin-in-londons-ea... [1]: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2004/oct/24/housingpolicy.books http://www.theguardian.com/society/2004/oct/24/housingpolicy...
gress 11y ago
I'm not sure that Orwell had much faith that he was writing an extreme cautionary tale, rather that he was just exposing what he saw as real forces acting in politics.

contingencies 11y ago

Yes. Fun fact: Orwell lived in a cheap hostel in Whitechapel known as Tower House, Stalin was another occupant. At the time it was next to a Jewish synagogue, these days that's closed down and it's behind London's largest mosque, next to a very well regarded (by Londoners) Indian restaurant. Later the building was abandoned and gained a reputation for drugs and violence... people used to throw themselves off the upper storeys to effect a quick suicide. Later on it was fixed but by a Cypriate real estate investor and carved up in to cheap units. I had a go at living there, and successfully sublet a room to a guy on the interest rate committee of the Bank of England. Hosting this social mobility in a hundred years ... not bad for a building on a backstreet!

EthanHeilman 11y ago
More details on the Stalin, Orwell, Whitechapel connection. Jack London visited it as well. Stalin "fetched up in London in 1907, living in a Jubilee Street tenement flat – the future home of Golda Berk."[0]. "Tower House was immortalised in 1933, when George Orwell, in Down and Out in Paris and London, praised it as the 'best of all common lodging houses with excellent bathrooms'."[1] "Jack London, the author of Call of the Wild and White Fang was first in the line of anarchists, authors and lost souls to shelter here. He christened it The Great Monster Doss House in his seminal work of living among the East End poor, People of the Abyss, in 1902."[1] [0]: http://eastlondonhistory.com/2011/06/16/stalin-in-londons-east-end/ http://eastlondonhistory.com/2011/06/16/stalin-in-londons-ea... [1]: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2004/oct/24/housingpolicy.books http://www.theguardian.com/society/2004/oct/24/housingpolicy...

gress 11y ago

I'm not sure that Orwell had much faith that he was writing an extreme cautionary tale, rather that he was just exposing what he saw as real forces acting in politics.