The sacking of his uncle, Jang Song Thaek, by North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, should act as a warning to all those members of authoritarian governments who fail to toe the party line.
Jang is said to have “distorted and undermined” party policy and “dreamed different dreams”.
According to the Daily Mail’s website, he has already been airbrushed out of official photographs and films, and the paper claims to have discovered evidence that this process was underway, even before his downfall became official.
Nearer to home we have the example of Greenwich Borough Council in London where there was a fallout between the Leader Chris Roberts and cabinet member John Fahy.
The local paper claims to have an intercepted voicemail message from Roberts to Fahy in which he says:
“I’m not having you playing these games. I will remove your portfolio, you will have no portfolio, and you can be doing nothing.
But we are not deferring decisions. Get that through your f****** thick skull, John.”
Greenwich is one of the many councils (Carmarthenshire CC is another) that run their own newspapers and when a picture appeared in the council’s propaganda rag of the opening of new sports facilities by Cllr Fahy, someone had carefully removed him from the scene.
Well, most of him anyway.
While dictatorship has certain advantages, competence is not among them.
Click on pic for full story.
At the recent PCC Cabinet meeting, where my Notice of Motion calling for the release of information on the Pembroke Dock grants was “debated”, Old Grumpy noticed that the only cabinet member who even hinted that there might be something in my claims was Cllr David Simpson.
Cllr Simpson told the meeting that, on several occasions, he had raised his concerns about this issue with Cllr David Pugh and gave the general impression that he was not altogether happy with the responses he had received.
By the time it came to the vote, Cllr Simpson had regained his senses.
Good job, too – we don’t want to see this sort of thing in the local press, even if it is Christmas.
On the question of censorship, it has been drawn to my attention that the Western Telegraph has disabled its comments facility on the story about the spat between the Leader and myself at last Monday’s cabinet meeting.
I wonder who, or what, would want to do a thing like that.
Conspiracy theorists will note that the IPPG holds its secret pre-meeting, meeting tomorrow (Tuesday), and will see this comments’ blackout as the work of the party’s high-ups who wouldn’t want their loyal supporters to be swayed by the blizzard of adverse comments on the Leader’s conduct.
Really, how can rational people entertain such silly notions?
Fortunately, that other website is still accepting comments and a long poem on the subject has appeared during the course of the day
Eat your heart out, Tennyson!
Cyber whizz-kid that he is, Jacob has also managed to locate the WT’s missing comments in Google cache.
You can run, but you can’t hide!