“Sad to hear of Sir Terry Pratchett’s death, his books fired the imagination of millions and he fearlessly campaigned for dementia awareness.” – David Cameron
“I’m angry about the government. They’re fecking useless. I know what Granny Weatherwax would say to David Cameron. She’d push him to one side and say, ‘I can’t be having with you.’ His sort don’t do anything but suck up to the lawyers. Why isn’t someone hanged?” – Terry Pratchett
FUCK OFF CAMERON HE HATED EVERYTHING YOU STAND FOR
so david cameron is not allowed to be sad when another human being dies?
I’ve got a few other reactions like these, and I wanted to clarify:
No, it’s not about David Cameron not being allowed to be sad over Pratchett’s death (although personally I find it hard to believe that anyone can simultaneously enjoy Discworld and have the political views the tories do, but, who knows). If he’d kept it to that first bit of the sentence, I’d be fine with it. It’s not about that.
It’s Cameron making a public announcement that erases A) the fact that Pratchett’s tireless and fearless campaigning wasn’t just about dementia awareness, it was also explicitly about the right to euthanasia (something Cameron is against) and B) that Pratchett was first and foremost a social satirist rather than a fantasy writer. Pratchett was very strongly left-wing, something that grew clearer and clearer as the Discworld series progressed, to the point that some readers started complaining that the books had become too politically-charged, too social-justice focused, too heavy-handed in its messages. Pratchett was angry, and his anger bleeds through in every single page he’s written. You cannot read Pratchett and ignore the political side of his stories. And of you’re still not convinced: outside of his writing, Pratchett didn’t exactly make a secret of his anger and disdain for David Cameron and the current government.
So, basically? Cameron defanged him. What Cameron (or rather, Cameron’s PR team) did was take a good look at Terry Pratchett’s life and then take the bits that they considered palatable: he wrote imaginative fantasy, and he campaigned for dementia awareness. And all the rest, the bits that go squarely against everything Cameron stands for, well, they can just keep silent about that, can’t they? And that’s what made me allcaps in fury, because those bits – the political views and especially the euthanasia – were important to him. Pretending they didn’t exist seems to me like a horrible insult to someone who can no longer defend himself against it. That’s the issue here. I don’t give a fuck about what Cameron does or does not feel; I do give a fuck about Terry Pratchett’s legacy to the world, and anyone people to warp that legacy to serve their own interests.
Tag: terry pratchett
“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
‘Men at Arms’ Terry Pratchett
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Terry Pratchett explains how the world works simply, humorously and truthfully. This is how poverty and wealth work. It’s far more expensive to be poor than to be rich.
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(via april-polyverse)
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