I felt a real lump in my throat when I heard the news I don`t know if its the man, although I have loved his writing.I think it might be a feeling that a link to something better than we have has been broken. Ignoring B ruin`s meretricious garbage I like Norman Tebbit`s tribute
Lord Tebbit, the former Conservative Party chairman, said: “Bill was a link with a British past which for all its faults encompassed a society overwhelmingly and immensely superior to that of today. It was for that society that Bill Deedes always spoke.
I commented:
The perspective was long, but the focus stayed sharp….For example ..“What makes me thoroughly uneasy about David Blunkett's decision to make incitement to religious hatred an offence is that it overturns a long-established principle, firmly upheld by a Labour government 35 years ago………..”This is the value of experience and memory in the year zero world of New Labour , for whom he had an unwavering distaste.
I wish he was here to mock the preposterous imposture of “New Brown”. He consistently argued that the Brown v Blair pantomime was for public consumption and that this entity was more left and more singular than it appeared .I think he knew his time was short. There was a passage describing the ‘roses’ this year with an almost elegiac serenity but England was not a view of Roses to him .England was found in the integrity of the political process His distaste for New Labour ,therefore ,was commensurately strong albeit ironically expressed ....
He could still draw blood in his nineties , astonishingly comfortable in the contemporary world his columns should not be dismissed as charming for all their good nature.
Others have mentioned the affection he inspired but the respect he is due for his writing and political thinking is what will remain an inspiration to me and others. Had the nauseating unctuous fraud Brown actually either read or been enlightened by his work ( as he claims )he would walk out of No. 10 tear off his clothes and never be seen again.
Thanks for the company Bill.
4 comments:
a link to something better has been broken (newmania)
My guess is that, now Deedes is our foreign correspondent in the stars, n, he's still sending copy down the ether telling us that this link is, in truth, unbreakable.
Deedes was a big ripple in the truth and freedom pond, but there are now countless ripples on that pond right across the internet.
And we're gradually forming into one mightly wave which is shaking B ruin and the other lager louts (politicians) destroying our country to their core.
So, watch out, B ruin and nulab, because we, the silent majority have found our voice now, we really do have our 15 minutes of fame and we are using it far better than you nulab toe rags ever used your 10 squandering, infamous decades.
Auntie Flo'
Flo you should have a soap box and get out ther . Worked for Major who got 14,000,000 votes more thnan anyone else ever ....
'His columns should not be dismissed as charming for all their good nature..." Good nature is the key, N.
The most cruelly-worded, cold-blooded, data -backed denunciation, using every needlesharp descriptive usage in the book (you more than most will recognize that sense of a job well done as 'publish' is pressed), is delivered with so much more ooomph when delivered with good nature, (despite the rage and contempt experienced while concocting the venom-tipped arrows).
Poking at them with a specially sharpened Mr Pointy while displaying full good humouryness gets a much higher rage quotient.
despite the rage and contempt experienced while concocting the venom-tipped arrows).
You will not be suprised HG that I sometimes take a great deal of time perfecting the disdainful offhandednes of an insult written( I hope ) as if with scarcely a thought..( I am a bad person)
Did you know that Jane Austen wrote and rewrote her mature works ten and twenty times over years .There perfection is still magical and for a long time it appeared she had almost droppped from heaven so singular was her achievement.
It was an essay by QD Leavis and I think of it as the best peice of critical writing I have ever read.
The English notion of style has always required the appearance of ease and very often required great efforts to perfect
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