Orwellian ideas

The harangue, by columnist Brian Monteith (“SNP turns to Orwell for inspiration”, Perspective, 31 August), commences what might be an attempt to woo Scotland’s electorate away from the SNP before next spring’s Holyrood election.

His efforts to equate the Scottish Government, ie the SNP, with reference to George Orwell’s novel, 1984, are based on a bias to believe that everything the present Holyrood administration has done is bad.

I suspect there will be something in one or other of Orwell’s books to equate with such a bias being the mainspring of opinion that musters evidence encased in preconceived opinion.

Brian Monteith is trying to tell the umpteen supporters and approvers of the present Scottish Government that they are wrong in their support and approval, that they are failing to see what he sees, ie all the failings.

These failings that he suggests could of course be what he fails to see are his own preconceptions, but that might be an Orwellian way of looking at things that his haranguing isn’t going to recognise in its mission of dismissal.

Maybe he misses a big point in that the SNP has never divided Scotland against its wishes but has rather united Scotland against its estrangement.

The sense of stopping the process of alienation and instead beginning the process of self-belief is what Brian Monteith either isn’t seeing or prefers to see as something else.

Maybe he should do some mirror thinking with Mr Orwell in mind given that is the author he obviously chooses to ghost-write his preconceptions.

Ian Johnstone

Forman Drive

Peterhead