Orwell Prize Longlist Announcement today - no prizes for guessing who won't be on it

Dear all,

Thank you for your entry to the 2012 Orwell Prize. We received a record number of submissions; 264 books, 140 journalists and 226 bloggers submitted work. Our judges have been busy reading since the New Year and they’re finally nearing a decision.

The longlists will be announced next Wednesday 28th March at midday. At this time you shall receive an email notifying you of our decision.

The entrants make the Prize what it is and we do hope that you will continue to enact Orwell’s vision of turning ‘political writing into an art’.

If you should have any questions you can contact me on katriona.lewis@mediastandardstrust.org. I have taken over administration from Gavin Freeguard and look forward to getting to know you all.

Good luck and best wishes,

Katriona Lewis | Administrator, The Orwell Prize
0207 229 5722 | katriona.lewis@mediastandardstrust.org | 5/7 Vernon Yard | Portobello Road | London W11 2DX

'What I have most wanted to do... is to make political writing into an art' | George Orwellwww.theorwellprize.co.uk | twitter.com/TheOrwellPrize

Last year it was a rather more public event as can be seen at http://theorwellprize.co.uk/events/orwell-prize-longlist-2011-announcement-and-debate/ compared to this secret event that no one is invited to this year as can be seen at
http://theorwellprize.co.uk/events/orwell-prize-longlist-2012-announcement/

Third video from the top 9:48 at 6:34, David Allen Green says

"Yes, there is a perception that the Orwell Prize has a leftist approach ...."

then lots of canting prating shit about Orwell wanting to "correct injustice" (but only as defined by leftists like him).   Graeme Archer the civilly partnered homosexual who writes for Conservative Home (that nest of so-called Conservatives who wish to conserve the liberal status quo and whose leader supports "gay marriage", no less) won.  Dan Hannan who is not quite gay enough because he has a wife and children did not.

Last year they at least went through the motions of appearing to be impartial by having, I was going to say, two judges who were not Labour Party supporters.

I then checked http://theorwellprize.co.uk/the-orwell-prize/how-to-enter/entries-2011/blog-prize-2011/ and it came back to me that one of them was David Allen Green who actually admitted in his speech that the Orwell Prize was Left Liberal.  The other was Gaby Hinsliff, former political editor of The Guardian on Sunday.

Well, I guess they were never going to like my stuff.

Radical Right bloggers are automatically and easily excluded, because if you have not heard of some unknown blogger you are not going to ring and ask indignantly "Why hasn't Claire Khaw made the longlist?"

This  year, however, you can.

Notice that all the winners of the blogging prizes have been Left Liberal.   Last year's winner was Graeme Archer who writes for Conservative Home admittedly, but then he is known to be gay and in a civil  partnership.

If the only way of winning the prize if you are associated with the Conservative Party is to be gay then I will say I am a lesbian.  I have been hinting as much on Twitter and Facebook.  I am sure I said a few suggestive things to Suzanne Moore who is one of the judges this year when we were still Facebook friends, before she unfriended me.

I seem to remember offering to go round to hers to kiss better some marks on her neck that looked like love bites when she was asking her Facebook friends to look at those marks.

Later, I noticed that Nyta Mann (who works for the BBC) who was also her Facebook friend and formerly my friend were bad mouthing me.   Nyta Mann might recollect a few failed attempts on my part to seduce her.   So there.   I am not just making up my sexual orientation to win the Orwell Prize.

http://twitter.com/#!/nytamann

http://www.facebook.com/nytam

I also allowed the lesbian journalist Julie Bindel to kiss me once or twice and responded appropriately ie by kissing her back.

http://www.facebook.com/julie.bindel

http://twitter.com/#!/bindelj

Last year Suzanne Moore blocked me from following her on Twitter and started a campaign to tell others to do the same.

The other judge this year is Hopi Sen, who once worked for the  Labour Party.

No prizes for guessing who is NOT getting on the longlist again this year, even if my stuff is the most cutting-edge and radical form of political blogging, that demonstrates the art of my political writing.

So there you are, folks, there you are.

If you care for free speech and the integrity of the Orwell Prize, you now know who to ring to make your complaints.   The Orwell Prize is not owned by the Liberal Left.  If it is, it should not be.

Do not let them dominate the limits of political discourse, which are now very very narrow indeed.

Yesterday, a young white man was jailed for 56 days for sending offensive tweets about the black footballer Fabrice Muamba.   Has Muamba become God and has a law been passed forbidding blasphemy against our new British God Muamba?   If so, nobody told me or Liam Stacey.

I also want to say how sorry I am that Gavin Freeguard is no longer the administrator, but he has moved on to better things and is now political adviser to Harriet Harman.  Even when he must  have been privately appalled at my views, he was always  perfectly polite and charming to me.

You can read my submissions for this year's Orwell Prize for blogging at
http://thebattlefieldoflove.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/my-submission-for-2012-orwell-prize-for.html

In praise of the open-mindedness of my Muslim friends at East London Mosque

Some of you may know that I was Election Agent to Jeffrey Marshall who recently stood as BNP candidate for Bethnal Green & Bow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethnal_Green_and_Bow_%28UK_Parliament_constituency%29

As Election Agent, I attempted to get him some publicity and thought I would assist in giving the message of a more inclusive BNP by asking East London Mosque if my candidate could address them, after explaining the capacity in which I was acting.

This was politely declined.

Yesterday, I attended a talk about Palestine at the mosque.

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=123247067691570&index=1

I have also attended the New Muslim Circle at East London Mosque and have always enjoyed these sessions of discussing one's faith and one's morals intelligently with others in a spirit of female solidarity. (There is a New Muslim Circle for men too and this is held separately.)

After necessarily outing myself as a BNP member and Election Agent in order to make my request, it occurred to me that I would be henceforth persona non grata at East London Mosque.

As it happened a few of the sisters who also attended the talk recognised me and asked me if I was coming to the New Muslim Circle.

It seemed that the news of my membership may not have been generally known but I thought it would be as well to face the music and explain myself.

I was very touched and heartened that, as far as they were concerned, it wasn't a big deal and detected no change at all in their attitude towards me: which continued to be warm and friendly.

They even suffered to hear one of my suggestions for fund-raising in order to organise a weekend retreat for the women so that they may discuss matters such as parenting.

(The idea was to have a quiz on the Koran, in case anyone's interested.)

They received it politely and even with some hint of enthusiasm and interest. I really am incredibly moved by their lack of side on all this. It can be quite an emotional experience having one's faith in human nature unexpectedly restored from such an unexpected quarter.

This is a stark contrast to the Liberal Left who have defriended me on Facebook in droves and who now make a point of telling anyone of their number who had befriended me to defriend me.

Douglas Gloster-Pretsell of the Labour Party accepted my friendship and then upon being told I was BNP, defriended me and informed me that I was "repellent". I responded that he did not in fact really know that I was repellent until he was informed that I was.

After Suzanne Moore announced that she defriended me, after which Nyta Mann (formerly of The New Statesman and the BBC) and Nick Cohen of The Guardian popped up on her walls to denounce me.

Nyta Mann was someone I actually knew before Facebook had even been invented. Indeed, we met in a London hostel in our starter years in London. She even attended my wedding, though I now understand that such things count for very little with her.

Most of the Liberal Left are really at heart cowards and bullies.

An interesting revelation, is it not, that Muslims can be so liberal and the "Liberal" Left so frankly fascistic?

Perhaps rule under a Caliphate would be somewhat more liberal than rule by the Liberal Left?

Life certainly has many layers of irony.

When academics fear that being my Facebook friend is unacceptable and career suicide, then we have to question the quality of knowledge that these cowards purvey. I am referring to Dennis Hayes and Rania Hafez - academics supposedly concerned with academic freeedom but who are strangely reluctant to discuss the subject and who will defriend anyone who does so without their prior approval.