Friday 23 February 2007

Fewtril #174

The good citizen of the bureaucratic state is one who has nothing beyond scrutiny, an open book whose pages can be turned and read at will by its bookkeepers. The perfect citizen would be one whose pages were also written, printed, and bound by that state, the only task of whose bookkeepers would then be to see whether anything unauthorised had been scribbled in the margins.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

In which case, of course, the book would be removed from the public shelves and kept under lock and key by the Head Librarian!

High Power Rocketry said...

: )

D. C. Warmington said...

A splendid fewtril, if I may say so, Mr D. Did an image of Winston Smith come to mind while you were composing it?

Deogolwulf said...

Quite, Mr Duff.

Thank you, Dr Johnson. I did not have the image of Winston Smith in mind, but now you come to mention it . . .