The Daily Mail's memory hole and David Rose's Arctic ice

Those who have read Orwell’s “1984″ will remember the ‘memory hole’ down which Winston Smith would lose historical evidence that was inconvenient to the current official narrative.

Spot the differences in this modern example:

- and 20 days later…

Perhaps the rewriting of history was in response to this video (htp: Paddington), from which the first image above was taken (at 24 seconds in):

As it happens, I am a Daily Mail reader (or skimmer), and this paper makes many people gibber (see this site); but as I said to someone who posted the latter link to his Facebook page,

“The Mail is hated by groupthinking Lefties, esp. R4 comedians who expect sycophantic laughs for their own prejudices instead of wit. It’s successful because it cast its net wide – look at the funnies page (always the soul of a newspaper) to see how disparate and mutually antipathetic its subsets of readers. I read it to get the gist of the national agenda, not to share its point of view – when it has one, instead of blowing hot and cold, which is what it usually does.”

Clearly even David Rose has recognised that he had blown too cool on this occasion – though retrospectively rewriting the original piece instead of issuing a correction illustrates the exuberant self-granted journalistic license that made me for a time suspect that he was really Johann Hari come in from the cold.

And now my infallible, solid-gold tip for the winner of the 3.05 pm at Ascot this afternoon: #16 – Vincentti – odds forecast 33/1. Fill yer boots! (Important note: prediction may be ‘updated’ tomorrow).

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