Hello everyone, this is Diane Rathmussen, Makati with UK
column. I'm really happy to be talking
today with author Rosemary Jenkinson.
I met her a few weeks ago at this conference called the
Academy sponsored by Ideas Mattered, which was a fabulous
conference. And actually Rosemary talked
with one of my favorite sessions at the conference.
So I thought I would bring her on to UK column to have a a
discussion with her today. So thanks for joining us today.
Rosemary, Would you like to maybe tell us a little bit about
yourself and and how did you end up at this conference?
Yeah, great to meet you again, Diane, so soon after the
conference. Yes, I ended up there because,
well, I'm a writer and I had originally been picked up by the
Battle of Ideas and I did a couple of sessions with them
about writing and the the publishing industry.
So that's really they asked me because the conference was about
language specifically, and my latest novel Memorizers is about
language. So that's really why I was a
perfect fit to speak at the conference, because it's my
obsession, language and the minutiae of it.
Yeah, I mine too as well. One thing that I don't talk
about frequently, at least publicly anymore because it was
so long ago, is that my my first degree was in Spanish.
And one of the things that I learned by learning Spanish,
which I started learning in high school and obviously kept going
and never stopped by studying Spanish language and literature.
It actually improved my English skills and I actually for a
while thought about doing a linguistics degree, which I
started studying early on as well.
And various things led me to down different paths obviously.
So language is one of my first loves as well.
So this is a great thing to be discussing with you and, and
obviously the conference as well for thinking about what, what
language means. And one of the things that I, I
want to bring in early into this conversation, because it's
something that we both have in common, is that language has
both got us into a lot of trouble.
You could say that, Diane, but we.
Love it it's, you know, sometimes our loves aren't the
best things for us, right when it comes to consequences.
So do you would you mind sharing your story?
I know it's difficult, but I, I think it's for those of us who
have been through these experiences.
I think it's good to get this out there as much as possible
for people to understand what actually happened to it.
Yeah, uh, I had written an article about Troubles writing
and Troubles writers, uh, for a very small, well, so a small
Northern Irish publication, but it's a very esteemed one called
Fortnite. And umm, so I wrote this and
what happened was there was a lot of social media kickback
about it. You know, that I had kind of,
umm, been rude about Troubles writing and that it was very,
very important. Whereas I, my view was that I
want to, to discuss or I want Northern Irish literature to be
much more than about the Troubles.
Anyway, So what happened as a consequence of the social media
kickback? I received an e-mail from, from
my then publisher and that was Dura Press in Ireland.
And they wrote that they did. They had supported my right to
free speech. But the fact was that they
thought that it was not going to help them sell any books.
And they said we are rescinding our offer to publish you.
And I had I was due to have a a novel published with them.
So that was it gone on on the basis, I mean, ridiculously on
one tiny article that there was only, you know, it was only a
few writers who kicked back against me anyway.
It wasn't like a sort of mass, mass sort of, umm, attack on all
sides. So it was a very small thing in
which to get my work cancelled. And now, you know, so it
affected me very deeply. I was so shocked because they
told me they loved my novel and it was like, how can you love
something and then just turn your back on that for for
something which which wasn't even a terrible, terrible thing
to say. It wasn't.
It was a perfectly reasonable thing to say.
It just kind of slightly ruffled some feathers.
And all writers in history, the great ones, I think, have
sometimes ruffled some feathers. Oh yeah, absolutely.
I would like to put myself in that category, yeah.
You know Diane, you know how? I do.
And you know, it's interesting. I wasn't counseled by a
publisher, at least not yet. But I was published widely,
obviously as a full professor in my field.
And once the I'll call it the witch hunt started coming after
me for me speaking out sort of in favor of things that I
believed in as a professional librarian and a librarian
academic for over 20 years. When I started to not toe the
line when it came to things like gender ideology.
And when it came to things like, you know, what it was that I
believed we should be holding on to, which is, you know,
professional standards. And they started to cancel me.
I, I know personally like because it, it changed the
entire course of my life, which I'm now thankful that I have
this wonderful platform with UK column.
But I just want to say for those of us who have been through
this, it's a very painful process and you've ended up
losing a lot. But you also, I guess if you
want to put a positive spin on it, you also learn and grow from
it as well. Absolutely, we wouldn't have met
each other had this not happened.
And and this is the things you meet the better people who stand
up for your rights to talk Diane.
So I I'm sure you've met so many great people because of this.
Yeah, oh, absolutely. People I never would have met
before and, and, and frankly, nobody from my former life even
talks to me anymore. And for my former professional
life, so. But I now have a whole new
network of people and it keeps growing and it's, and it's and
it's great. So it's interesting to hear
about the publisher deciding to cancel you because it was
actually something when I was looking for a publisher because
I'm, I currently have a contract to write a book on.
I'm basically driven by what happened to me around ideology
driving libraries and how that is impacting our access to
knowledge and information and the destruction that is
happening within libraries because because of this
ideology, what they're and you should be concerned about this
as well as an author, obviously, that what they're doing is
removing things in grown up libraries and adult libraries
and university libraries where they think it's not inclusive,
you know, using that sort of coded language, right?
Because we know that in this case it's an inversion, that
inclusion is actually exclusion. And this case, we're excluding
people that are, you know, from the history of this country and
your country and everything else, because we're, we're
trying to be inclusive to the history and, and think of people
from other countries, which I have no problem with adding and,
and expanding collections as much as possible, but don't
destroy the, the, the origins of this country that built this
great university system here that we have in the UK.
But that's one of the things I'm speaking out about.
And, and people maybe are not aware that this is happening.
So what I would like to maybe hear from you about a bit is,
you know, how well, first of all, I'm, I'm sure you have
feelings about that and opinions on that.
And, and I think what we need to do is maybe start to look at
this problem together for those of us who are writers and who
want to respect our right to free speech and, and to share
our ideas. I mean what's your thought on
this as a a well known published author that I highly respect?
But well, clearly any, any removal of books because of
content, I'm completely against, you know, from libraries.
Libraries are the place of that. We trust that we can get fined
on everything and every kind of taboo must be covered in
libraries. Umm, so I, I have no
restrictions on literary fiction or anything or even.
Yeah, or fact. There should be no restrictions
as far as I'm concerned. Umm, so I am.
Yeah. I'm an absolutist with you
there, Diane. And I think, yeah, the whole
thing about yeah, nowadays we're just so there's so many taboos
that we're not allowed to talk about and it's ridiculous.
And the whole thing about even trigger, even books that are lie
are allowed to be published, have to have warnings.
Now the trigger warnings and it, it's an insane.
Where does it end? Everything is potentially
offensive to one person. I there's just no end to it.
And that's why we have to stop it.
Yeah, and I, I, I just, I'll hold your book up here.
It's just so that people can, Oh yeah, recover.
I, I will make sure that there is a link to it in the write up
for the interview so people can, can, can buy it.
And I believe this is one of the, the funniest things I saw
when I started to read your book was that it starts with a
government warning, interestingly, and I'll just
read it out because I think it deserves it.
But the following book comes with a Class A mental health
warning. It may propagate deleterious
desires for individualism within the reader.
Can't have that anymore. It may lead to disaffection
within society. Whosoever circulates this book
with a view to undermining government authority will be
subject to state sanctions. Very scary, Rosemary.
It's, it's actually what's happening.
So it's a total reflection of society right now.
And those whole trigger warning. So that was my fictional trigger
warning, really, and warning against being in a library and
everything. I mean, libraries in my book is,
as you know, have all been burnt down.
And so, you know, this is where we're heading.
And that's the danger. The dictator in my book says
unity through language. So they're trying to control
everything. And yeah, clearly books are the
most dangerous things for dictatorships.
Oh yeah. Well, and, and the, the, the
hypocrisy that's that I've been talking about in my reporting
and talks I've been doing around the country myself, is that the
other side of it that's happening is, and you know, I
know that you are, this is a dystopian novel.
And I, I've, I've interested myself in dystopian fiction and,
and films and, and books as well.
The other side of it though, which is I always refer back to
the scene from Brave New World where, you know, this director
talked to the children about the unbelievable fact that children
in, in the have maybe wouldn't even have relations until they
were older than 20 years old and thought it was unbelievable.
And we see this now that the specialization of children for
something that I cover is that what's happening is that the
libraries are using this argument against censorship to
put sexual content in front of children, which I've been
covering extensively. But when it comes to people who
are, say, over 18 over whatever, in my opinion, they can read
anything they want to. Like, I have no restrictions
there. But they're inverting that once
again to say, well, it's censorship if we don't put sex
manuals in front of children. And this is the thing that I've
been speaking about, which will also be in my book.
So I think that what we're seeing is an inversion of
language. And we're also seeing what
whatever is behind this. And I think there's a lot behind
this, a lot of big agenda items behind this.
But we're seeing that twisting, twisting it around and, and
putting children in danger and exposing to things that they
shouldn't be seeing. So we're seeing this very
strange twisting around. It's really affecting a lot of
things right now. I'm not.
I'm not sure if you're aware that this has been happening.
I, I never thought of it in terms of that inverse.
And it's like a reverse infantilization of adults.
And in a way it's to control us, as you say, in order that they
can push that agenda on the children.
So if we are controlled, therefore they can give whatever
ideology they want to children or sexualization because we're
so controlled ourselves. So I guess, I guess that's
what's happening. Yeah.
And, and, and what I've heard is because I'm, I'm working
actively with some, some parent groups and so on that are
concerned about what's being placed in front of their
children. That in some cases when they go
to the school or to the library and complain about what's being
put into the curriculum or being put into the library, is that
the parents themselves get cancelled by the school or by
staff at the school for speaking out for their children.
Oh, yeah. OK, so the authoritarianism is,
is totally, yeah, rife in schools now.
That's. I didn't know that.
Yeah, and and you know what's what's going on with our our
lovely Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary who was
mandating a national curriculum. And we, we already, we've seen
this going on for some time now for the past few years of not
only libraries, but in education.
So saying that children have to learn that because according to
the UN and the World Health Organization and the WEF that
we've been uncovering and some of our authors that are writing
for at the UK column is that because of things like the UN
Convention of the Rights of the Children.
And because, and they're, they're basically saying, well,
we're doing this because of the fact that, you know, children
are sexual beings from birth and therefore we, we can put
anything in front of them at any age.
And we should be because they're Born This Way.
So again, but then adults can't read what they want because they
need a trigger warning to read a, a novel because it might hurt
their feelings. So it's, it's complete.
Everything is completely twisted around.
Yeah, that's ironical completely.
And yeah, as you say, yeah, it seems completely twisted.
And yeah, I didn't actually know that that children are regarded
sexual beings from age zero. I think we develop our sort of
sexuality and there is sexual feelings in us all, but that
develops and is often taught. I mean that's the whole thing.
I mean, I think sex is so much taught and and that's what the
dangerous thing is, I think. Yeah, absolutely.
And so, but if we're teaching children, you know, because some
of these things are being put into primary schools, which
means, you know, that and and, and also in the into picture
books that are for children who aren't even in school yet.
So a lot of this around the LGBT agenda being placed in front of
children in picture books. So there's books like granddad's
prides, a lot of famous books I've talked about books where
you can even change your species if you want to.
You know that there's, you can now, now that you can, there's a
book called the the boy who wanted to be a deer, the picture
book, you can get it for free on Amazon.
And, and it says the boy decided that he would be so much happier
if he were a deer. And so his family let him change
his species. And now he has antlers and he's
so happy and his family loves him.
So this is how we see the pushing agenda even to, you
know, 2 year olds and. Yeah, yeah.
It's the whole concept of physical change, yeah, that we
can physically be anything we that we want, which is quite a
sort of quite a leap of imagination.
Yeah, but now it's it's in, it's on paper and words.
So, you know it's OK, but then when we see the trigger warnings
that are out there for the rest of the world, for those of us
who should be old enough to make decisions for ourselves about
what we read. It's almost like Diana.
It's almost like a a kind of magical realism for children,
you know, in a way that, yeah, you are magic, you can change.
So it's really strange. It's very strange.
Yeah. Yeah.
But. So, So what let you down?
This, this path of becoming a writer, What, what, what was it
that decided to that that made you to speak to decide?
I'm getting writes dystopian satirical novels, like how did
you get to the point before the cancellation, like when you were
writing and into sort of more proper formats that were
approved by the authoritarians? I like that, yeah.
I don't think my works ever really been entirely approved,
but yes, it was tolerated. And also, yeah, they, they
appreciate skill in writing, I think.
But I suppose my ideas have always been shaped by the world
around me and the politics that are happening.
And umm, yeah. I'd always wanted to write about
a dystopian world like 1984 because I did believe that we
were kind of moving towards that.
But. But originally I got into
writing, obviously for love of language, just simply that as we
were talking about, I mean, there's nothing more beautiful
than being able to express what you feel.
And that kind of satisfaction and, yeah, thrill of being able
to express yourself on page is, is a beautiful thing.
Yeah. It's it's I think it's difficult
to it considering, you know, as the the summary in your back to
the book says, the West current involved in free speech and that
your truth is the wrong kind of truth, right.
And that we see this in 1984. We see this in a lot of a lot of
different the Dopian story storylines and novels where
libraries appear frequently, and this is actually something I'm
starting to do some research on because it's something I've been
recently aware of the more I think about it.
There's a dystopian film called Rollerball.
Have you heard of this one from? It's it's.
It's, it's from the 70s, I believe, and I won't get into
this, the plot of the film, but basically the, the main
character at some point has reason to go visit a library and
it's all been digitized and somehow something happened.
There was a glitch and the 13th century had been deleted.
So, so that's the reality of digitization.
And I, I was recently, just a few days ago at a freedom
festival and I was asked to speak on the importance of
physical versus print of sorry, physical versus digital
material. And this is one of the reasons
why the physical is so important.
That's why it's so great to have your book here physically,
because I know that it won't go away, right?
That they won't go in and change it because that's something else
that's been happening with all of the digital content that's
out in the world. Publishers, vendors can go in
and either remove content they can change.
They can change it if somebody complaints about it.
We saw that with Roald Dahl, who the language in Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory was changed because it was I think there was
a boy that the word was fat describing the fat kid, as you
know, And then we can't say that anymore.
So changing language of existing novels.
But if it's physically in print, nobody can take it away the way
they can digitally. And we we're seeing this
constantly with web pages disappearing.
And and so it's really important to preserve everything that you
can. You put people can see behind
me. This is only a small part of my
book collection. I have three more shelves in
another room. So but whatever I have hopefully
will survive. Whatever text it has on it,
because they, I think it's just so important for us to have lots
of copies everywhere because that's the only way that we can
preserve knowledge. And, and I think that's
particularly true with things that for whatever reason, at
some point in the future become problematic.
I think that's the word they use for.
So are, are, are you the same? Do you?
Do you have this love of print that you just want to curl up
with a cup of tea and A and a couch?
Completely, Diane, yeah, I, I, I am for you can't see any
bookcases. So they're all actually
downstairs. They have like a huge one right
across the living room and everything.
So. But yeah, of course, the the
most important because you can easily dip into it.
It's so much easier than looking up things digitally.
It's you can refer between books.
Everything is cross reference. I mean, the thing about also the
memorizers really is about that she really goes on a mission to
find a physical book. And this is really.
That's why I'm kind of yeah. Because I.
Know now that if you notice in the novel, there's digital
archives that keep being changed.
So all this information is constantly being changed, but
the one thing that can tell the truth about the past, it's about
the Northern Ireland peace process specifically.
She goes in to look for this book and finds, finds books on
this. So, yeah.
So that's how important it is. It is.
You cannot change what has been published already.
Yeah. Yeah.
And that was actually something that I, I learned in when I did
my PhD, which was on photojournalism, looking at the
how at this time, you know, this was 20 years ago, but they were,
that was only worth trying to convert to digital photography.
And so the news photographers that I, that I interviewed were
struggling with as well. Because when something is, you
know, sitting in a shoe box in your, in your home, like they
had, you know, all of these photos that especially the
freelancers that had shoe boxes or the ones that work for major
newspapers that had large photo libraries where everything is on
the shelves. And then you know that if even
if you need to go back to get something historically, because
something in the news happens, you can go and find it and it's
on the shelf where it's in the shoe box and, and recirculate it
if you need to. But what happens with the
digital photograph is that they're harder to find, right?
So if you don't have the appropriate words, the language
once again to search for those photographs that are associated
with it so that, you know, you covered this rally on this day
and and these people were present.
And then if you need to bring that book back later, you know,
how do you do that? If the words haven't been
assigned to the photos, there's no way to find them again.
The problem is that photography and language are like any other
medium. There are are different
languages and there's translation that needs to occur,
right? So the language has to be
precise that it can be found again.
But then again, we all use different words to describe
things that are not words, if that makes any sense.
Yeah. We do, we do.
And, and quotes can be misquoted over the years and everything.
And, and the thing that mean just the basic thing about
digital is it can be deleted. Whereas books can exist in
libraries for centuries. And that's a completely
different reality. Really.
Yeah. Yeah, it is.
And with the, the library books, you know, even if you have,
let's say you have a, a book like a printed book, but it gets
converted digitally, or if it's what we call born digital, which
is published digitally, you can still search the word.
So if you know a few words that are in the book and you can
search the text and things like, you know, the mainstream search
engines like Google are pretty good at searching text and they
can match word for word. But how do you match word for
image, right? You can't search an image the
same way you can use a word to search.
And so then you get into a whole different issue of textual
language versus visual language, which is also something that's
really fascinating to me. Like, you know, if you look at
the cover of your book, this tells a whole story in itself.
Just looking at the photo. The the was this a painting?
Was this a photograph? What was what was that?
And then also the back cover as well, which is also very
interesting. So what?
What stories were you trying to tell with those visuals?
Yeah, it was interesting because it was an AI image and obviously
I was looking. There was a futuristic novel and
it was something that I put in to ChatGPT and this was, and a
friend did the one in the back cover.
But The thing is about that, yeah, it was.
I had the idea that the whole image of the novel was, was that
kind of man without fused with a woman.
I mean that the the character is really very much, she lives in a
very masculine world in a way that that there is war all the
time and she's out at the front line with soldiers.
So it's she lives in that and also she meets the soldiers.
So it's very much the fusion of their relationship, but also
it's the image of the grand commander.
And the grand commander wants to be all things to all people so
that there is no need to ever replace them.
So they want to convey, even though he's a man, he's a man in
his 50s, he wants to convey this image of two sexes and youth and
vitality. And so that was really an idea
of that. But it's up on the like the Big
Brother in 1984. It's up on the exactly.
Yeah, exactly. But I was thinking myself.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it is interesting to me
because, you know, it's kind of like, you know, to me, this
looks like female on one side, male on the other side, right.
And, and, and so that's telling, you know, there's sort of all
the blending of identities and this is kind of what we're
seeing now as well. And, and I don't even know if
you intended this, but that's what I got out of part of this.
It's sort of the, the, the lack of individualism, right?
So we're all sort of blending together.
We're all supposed to be kind of the, the theme entity that
believes the same things and thinks the same things that we
can't think for ourselves. And maybe I'm reading far too
much. That's what I got out of it,
actually. Right.
You know, I guess we all see different things when we read
that. I guess that's kind of part of,
of experiencing in any particularly good, well written
literary piece of work is that we all see different things in
it. But that's what I thought was
kind of this, the way the individualism sort of leaves the
room, right. And, and now we're just kind of
doing what we're told. And that's kind of how we're
expected to live right now. And that goes into the the
cancellations and the freedom of speech is that you're not,
you're not acting with the, the oneness that they're expecting
us to act with. And yeah, and I, you know, I, I
don't know how we kept, this is not something that we've
discussed previously, but I believe this is something that
happened in 2020 when they all locked us up.
And I think this was part of the plan at, in 2020, you know, sort
of this technocracy took over. If you think about it, we, we
lost our ability to communicate. We lost our ability to just go
for coffee. We lost our ability.
Everything was supposed to be done, you know, in the on the
screen if you did anything. And, and that cut off our
ability to communicate, our ability to share ideas, to even
see our families, all those things.
And, and I think, I don't think we've quite recovered from that.
And it was really been when I started to see this, this whole
thing sort of taking over this oneness of, well, we no longer
exist as individual stay at home, do as you're told, do
everything online, which wouldn't have been possible 20
years before that. So you didn't have the
infrastructure in place that I think this has all been part of
it. And people seem to have lost
their ability in some cases or feel they no longer have the
ability to, to speak up. And I, and I really think in the
last five years this has been something that has happened, is
that we are now just supposed to stay quiet.
And I don't know if that was your experience of the 2020 era,
but that's one of the things that I saw happening.
Definitely, that's what I was saying that I think it is.
I call it the langdemic instead of the pandemic because our
language was policed from much more than ever before.
At that point. They realized the authoritarian
governments realized that they could completely control us and
that we wouldn't come out of our houses.
Uh, so is it? It was a shocking reality to
realize how quiescent and submissive we are to the state.
And that is still following now. Yeah, our language was
controlled from then. So I feel I I do feel that.
And I also feel that the digital, exactly as you say,
that was the point that they realized that they could really
control us digitally. Yeah.
Yeah, and, and, and the language, you know, like there
was a meme I shared a few days ago on on Facebook with sort of
like they were talking to a group of Amish people in this
little cartoon. And it said, are you worried
about climate change? And they said no because we
don't have TV. Yeah, they're.
One of the fews. Few aren't controlled.
Yeah, they're not. Told that they're supposed to be
controlled, but you know, it's, it is interesting though,
because the language was one of the things that I noticed in
2020 was, you know, the if you think about the term social
distancing, the the word social does not imply we have to stay
away from each other because we might kill each other with a
so-called deadly virus, right? It's social.
It's we're not supposed to socialize.
And so that that message was everywhere.
I read a lot about the I forget where this comes from.
You might know, using things in groups of three.
I think it was Doctor Vernon Coleman that wrote about this
originally, like the the hand space, space kinds of things
that they were repeating over and over again, everything in
trees that that somehow that is something that sticks in our
minds. So we think hands based and all
of those little, you know, save the NHS, protect all of these
things that were, I can't think of them now, but they were sort
of all over, not only on TV and on the Internet, but even if you
were allowed to go into a grocery store and you would see
them all over Tesco and wherever you manage to get out to at the
time. And so that language was really
important, as well as the behavioral psychology that Brian
Garish at UK column was one of the ones who uncovered this idea
of behavior modification through increasing the fear, increasing
the threat, the personal threat that was meant to be perceived
by the public to control us, to make us stay home and and do
these things. But that's all that all comes
down to language, doesn't it? Yeah, and.
I didn't think of that thing about 3.
So everything is 3, stop the boats, adult female, human,
everything is. And I didn't actually think of
that before. And I totally agree that there
was. I remember I went about the
climate of fear. I went to the shop and I was in
the shop. There's nobody else there.
The radio was on. It was like, get home now the
radio presenter was saying, and I thought it was in the War of
the Worlds. And and this was, it was like
fiction. It wasn't a real world at all.
To be, to be under that threat that I was a dangerous person,
you know, suddenly by being out there.
And it was like, I'm just doing my shopping.
Yeah, I'm the ultimate criminal here.
Well, and then, you know, thinking about the language of
even the the thimbles, right. So when we think about symbols
as language, that all of the arrows, the one way arrows on
the floors, remember those where you know you can.
Get the. Feet, the stand here, the circle
around it. You know, that's all.
That's still all the symbols, but it's still language of like,
stand here, walk this way, don't go that way down the ketchup
aisle. You know what it is.
And so somehow this was supposed to save us, right?
You know, even even the language of, of wearing a mask, right, is
still, it's a symbol of fear, right?
So even the, the symbol of, you know, first of all, you're
removing your individuality by hiding your face.
But also if you can't. So we've lost our individuality.
We're also looking at each other, thinking, oh, it's really
terrifying to breathe. Can't even breathe anymore
safely because we're going to die of a virus, right?
That all of these things all tied together.
It was really funny. I owned one cloth mask that I
only wore when I was really forced to.
Eventually I got one of those lanyards that were like, said
you had an exemption and I would wear those just so people would
leave me alone. But I had one cloth mask which
had its own bit of language on it which it said enjoy the
silence. Great.
I love some of those sort of like, yeah, thematic masks and
looking like the Joker mask and things like that.
There was a lot of comedy actually with that.
Yeah. But.
But it was still, I mean, it's still completely, I suppose
people personalize and individualize their masks, but
it's still, it's still completely dehumanizing no
matter what you do. Yeah, yeah, it was a crazy time.
And umm, also I, I want to say that out of that time, I think
that wars began. Certainly Putin saw that.
Probably there wasn't as much attention on him.
Everyone had gone inwards. There was no out of work, you
know, because every country was the same.
There was much happening. This was a global pandemic.
Nothing was happening that we were looking at Russia and the
build up. He managed to make the build up
on the border without a lot of international attention.
Of course, that was 2022, but there was still the hangover
from the pandemic that we had become more insular.
I feel so, umm, so that I, I think, yeah, so I think
everything, yeah, things could happen wouldn't have happened
normally but for the pandemic. Politically, it wouldn't have
happened, right. And.
And, and things needed to be in place before that could happen.
So we can see that this was planned, that we had the
delivery services and the, you know, order your food, order
your Amazon stuff, whatever, whatever you want to buy.
But if you think about it, even prior, even in 2010, we we
didn't have that level of technology for any of this to be
able to happen to, to tell everyone to do absolutely
everything sitting at home on their laptop.
It just, it just would not have been possible.
But funnily enough, the people who did have to go out to work
so that the Amazon drivers or the the Tesco workers or whoever
was that, you know, and part of the food supply chain for, for
whatever reason, appeared not to have dropped dead.
And so, yeah, that was a sign. Yeah.
So I feel like it was, in a way, an attack on the middle class.
So those of us who do have jobs, we can work at a computer may or
may not need to go to an office once we have the technology to
be able to communicate remotely with each other, as we're doing
right now, unfortunately. But, you know, this would not
have been possible for people. So when I talked to
tradespeople, for example, that we're still out, you know,
fixing people's electricity or making sure the plumbing works,
a lot of them that I've talked to did not buy into it because
they were still out there in the world, right.
So they, they maybe did not have the ability, well, couldn't do
their job if they stayed at home until they were considered key
or essential workers. But they were they were they
also just anecdotally, I don't have any statistics for this
appear to be 1 to refuse the vaccinations because they were
out saying, well, nothing's happened to me for the past year
I've got, but now I'm fine. Why should I put something into
my body? And a lot of them actually were
that I've talked to anyway were once he refused to get the
vaccination, whereas the middle class who were sitting at home
getting afraid to leave the house for getting these messages
that we're talking about. What's the language saying, oh,
I better get vaccinated or I'm going to die.
You know, even though they were, you know, we were still locked
up for a while after after the the vaccination program was in
place, which should have told somebody something, but it
didn't for some people. So I think it's that those media
messages are are so influential in people's decisions, obviously
to do whatever they think they're supposed to do to save
their grannies or whatever they thought it was going to do for
them. Yeah.
And I, I yeah, I think it was a middle class, as you say, the
working class were out serving, really serving the middle
classes in that kind of way. Ridiculous.
But they were having. I was jealous because as a
writer, yeah, I couldn't get out at all.
All the theaters were close. It was a disaster for anybody
who is sort of in that artistic world worlds.
So yeah, yeah. The things that the.
Things that happened to the any, any, any creative spaces, you
know, the music concerts, book talks, you know, anything that
you, that you would want to do in, in the creative world.
It was all, it was all gone. I, you know, I was, I was living
in Edinburgh sort of towards the end of that time period and in
Glasgow. And so Denver Festival being
such a major event in the calendar for so many people, and
that just going away was quite devastating to the economy makes
us. Realize how much we're sort of
perilous and a luxury product in in the world, you know, under
those sort of circumstances. And yet I would also say I am
keeping going back to the Ukraine war because I think the
memorizers is based on that. The world in it is based on
that. But art is one of the most
important things for them to to uplift themselves from the war.
And The thing is, we completely forgot that or it was completely
removed from us. The art, the the that uplifting
thing. I mean, we were expected to
batter our cutlery against our pants for the NHL, make our own
music. You know, It's just so it was
just sort of like, yeah, again, like childish stuff, but it
wasn't art and everything. So, yeah, that's what shocked
me. I think that we were removed
from society. Yeah.
And it's still, I wouldn't say
has come back completely. And then I was quite
disappointed in the artists who started once they started to
open up for events again to say, well, you have to show proof of
vaccination to come in. And there were some that did
that. And these were the people that I
thought were the the pre spirited creative types that
which is let's, you know, just get together and make use of the
whole thing. You have to have your
vaccination cards get in. You have to, you know, not safe
otherwise. I was quite disappointed to see
some of that happening. We had a.
Big furor in Northern Ireland with Van Morrison going up
against the health minister. So he was like very dangerous,
very dangerous. He kept like parroting these
kind of words to ridicule them. But that was interesting because
he was under so much attack at the time.
And yet, yeah, I think, you know, that time is shown that,
you know, he was pointing out the government autocracy at the
time. So so.
Artist did. At least one artist spoke out,
but the majority of us didn't. I, I didn't either because I
probably didn't have that voice that he had Van Morrison.
But I think, yeah, I think it shows how conservative artists
are. And yeah.
That's interesting because I, I would have thought or before
this, I would have thought that they were, that a lot of them
would be quite the opposite, you know, But I, I was still in the
university system at the time and I just didn't say anything.
It was, it was very difficult for me to, to not say anything
because I was, I'd be on these, you know, these committee
meetings or whatever with my colleagues and they would be
sharing their vaccination stories and actually planning to
take off sick time because they knew that they would be sick
after they got the jab because they were, everyone was, you
know, sick. So they said, well, that it's
I'm going to give it a few days for it to work.
So I need to plan sick time, obviously working very well.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, yeah, there was flu. I definitely had a flu symptoms
after, but I don't think I needed a few days off.
This is kind of like, yeah, I know.
Everyone had their own expectations, different
reaction. Whatever.
But some people, if they heard other people were getting sick,
that even if they hadn't had it yet, they were planning days
off. Because I think partially
because university life was so demanding, it always is, but it
was really demanding after this all started because we were
doing everything online and in a very different way.
And, and so again, language became even more complicated
because instead of having a conversation with a student in
our office for a few minutes, we with all emails or it was all,
you know, very much more, but much more demanding of time.
And so if you have any reaction to anything, it, you would have
been completely worn out, exhausted from any effect that
it had on, on your immune system if, if you chose to take one.
So I personally didn't take them, but I was constantly
covering for people who did take them and were taking off time.
And then so added to my workload, which is already heavy
because I wasn't getting sick. And, and so it was, it was the a
very, very difficult time. And looking back, I'm, I'm just
kind of glad that I'm out of the system now because I think maybe
that was, that was a sign for me before, before I got thrown out,
that maybe I could not have been there.
Oh. It's interesting what you're
saying also about the whole your online experiences during that
time and how hard that was. I mean, this is something that
we should all be saying to tech companies.
Online is more time consuming. It's more exhausting for our
eyes, backs and bodies. You know, we don't want to be
controlled this way. I don't want this life.
I want to be in person doing things.
It's far better for connectivity and networking.
We were at the conference, as you said, and we made a
friendship. We would never been able to do
that otherwise. It's in person is the most
important thing in life and we need to be kicking back, all of
us united against these big corporations and saying no,
we're not living our lives like that.
Well, it's. But it's, again, they use the
language to to push this on us, right?
They say it's convenient, it's fast, it's unique, but they,
yeah, they. But again, it's the inversion,
right? They say it is, but we're all
frustrated and, you know, like, you know, I don't want, I don't
want to set up an account just to buy something, right.
Yeah, I. Know it takes ages to buy
something in an account. Yeah, and, and everything, even
booking flights and things Yeah. And oh, I can't remember what
what strange password I had for that.
My computer hasn't saved it. You know, all of this stuff,
it's just, it's just problematic and all I want to do is just go
down a shop and buy it in the same Rd.
I'm living in when I'm going out for my groceries there and.
I remember when I was doing all this teaching at home, you know,
because I was online with my students if, well, I, I'm
assuming they were there, a lot of them turned off their
cameras. So I didn't know if they were
there, if they just like logged in to say they were there and
went to sleep like I. They were.
Refusing to turn on the camera. So like frequently talking to,
you know, 30 blank screens. But then because I was at home
with my dogs and then so a delivery would come or the the
post would come and then the dogs would bark as they do.
And, and so if we got through a whole hour and the dogs didn't
bark, they would say your dogs OK, because we didn't hear from
them. Like, yeah, they're fine, just
didn't have any deliveries for that past hour.
They're that's how you know they're listening.
That's it. Yeah.
That's the only way. They're not interested in what
you're saying, but they they did.
Want to see the dog? So I always put dog photos in my
in my lecture slides just to like keep them away.
Oh dear. Yeah, yeah.
But. It, it is about that, it's about
when we're talking about communication that I really did
find that it became more complicated because there was
not only the recording, there was not only the, how do I
explain this, just kind of that different presence that you have
to have when you're online versus when you're in person.
There's just a different feel about it, right?
And then we started to find out that we had to create
transcription because if there were, you know, students that
had disabilities, where they, they had hearing difficulties
that we had to learn how to do transcription.
And it's, it's all very automated now because again,
this has all progressed so quickly in the past five years,
But in 2020, it wasn't that way. So we had to find different
alternatives to do all this. And people think, well, this,
this is not to do with my subject area.
You're making me do all these extra things that are not even
part of it. And the university at the time
was actually saying, well, if you don't have a laptop with a
camera, record your lectures on your phone.
Like how personal is that, right?
And, and, and students are paying fees of thousands of
pounds per year to have a lecture recorded on their
phones. So all of this language, again,
was meant to, I believe, suppress us, meant to suppress,
you know, everything that we were doing.
And the language was all central to all of it.
And, and I think that is still, well, sort of demonstrated in
your book. And I, I really hope that people
read it so because I don't want to give, I don't want to give it
away because then they nobody will buy the book.
But yeah, I really hope that people read it because it does
have some really important messages in it and it's very
entertaining as well. So we just have a few minutes
left. I don't know if you want to
maybe talk a little bit about your book, kind of do your own
promotion for it, or if if you want to leave it as a secret for
people or No, no I. Don't want to leave it as a
secret really it is about there's so many ideas in it and
it's impossible to cover it. But there is the whole idea, the
memorizers, even the title is about memory and how that is
removed, how it can be removed by authoritarian governments.
And of course, I have a physical de memorisation as well, which
is interesting in it. But I think also, I think the
world in it. I want to talk about the that
whole kind of thing. We were talking about messaging
and when I was in Ukraine, one of the things that when you're
on a train, you see you're given this thing about nuclear war and
what you do in it and how you undress and and get washed and
everything. And all of these things were
being pumped out and they terrified me, you know, So it's
quite amazing, you know, the control that can be the
terrifying. And then we knew that from
COVID. But this is even a more extreme
one that you're all yeah, OK, yeah, fevers or or viruses are
really bad, but this is like a nuclear war is now being.
So that's really also how I got the idea that there would be a
nuclear war in our I, I, I believe that's totally possible,
umm, because of escalation in the Ukraine war and between
America and things like that. So, but it's, it's that fear.
So I felt a lot of fear and the sound of sirens really frighten
me in Ukraine as well. That is a real if you, if you're
subject to that all the time, it is a hysteria that grows in you.
And, and I know it's to protect people, but it's still, you feel
controlled because, yeah, because these are signs that you
kind of automatically flinch at. You know, it's very upsetting to
your central nervous system to live in Ukraine right now.
And I think that was partly to relate it back to COVID.
That's what happened to us. Yeah.
We're kept. No wonder the new generation is
so anxiety Written. Written they are they.
Are Yeah, I, that reminds me of the early 90s when I was a
teenager and the the first Gulf War was going on and my mother
had CNN on all the time, right. And they were doing this
coverage of the invasion and, you know, when they were
supposedly covering the, you know, they, they have all the
air raid sirens going on all the time.
And I'll try to find this leak. If I remember it, I'll put this
in the write up for people to watch that it turned out that
some of that was fake, that they, they're showing the air
raid sirens and saying, oh, and then they then they would like
think the camera was off. And then they, they actually got
some of the footage of them showing them.
Oh, this is not they're, this is actually a background.
They're not really in Riyadh. They're not really getting blown
up, but they're using this to to create the fear.
And, you know, Brian Garish on on UK column has done an amazing
job of the past few years of explaining exactly what's going
on in Ukraine and how devastating it it truly is.
But then all of the propaganda surrounding it that we get over
here and it's create, you know, kind of what that's all creating
for everyone. And as well as the amount of
money that gone into it. Unfortunately, the lives have
been lost, lots of money has been wasted, lots of propaganda
to support all of this. So again, that goes back to
language, right? And and kind of how we're being
manipulated. Yeah, yeah, certainly.
I mean, yeah, that, yeah, it hasn't all the billions haven't
worked out, even though I, I believe we should support
Ukraine in this because Russia is a terrible part, but it
hasn't fully worked out. And The thing is that, yeah,
we're still in a terrible situation, situation with it.
Umm, and I, another thing I wanted to say about the whole
digital thing in Ukraine is that you have this, umm, you have an
app that shows you when, uh, Russia is launching aircraft
with missiles and but you don't. This is things that people
constantly look at because obviously they're frightened.
They want the information, they want to know if they should go
in shelters, But the trouble is that this is going on like 24
hour 7 this. And sometimes when the aircraft,
you don't know where they're going.
They could go to your city, they could go anywhere.
So you're on not, you're at an unnatural height of fear all the
time without knowing. No information can tell you
that. So the apps can be a kind of
productive into absolutely terrifying you, you know, So
sometimes I feel that technology can give you information, but it
can give you unnecessary overload that can totally wear
you dine. Yeah.
It's all the the phone notifications that come in
constantly, right? That you have to continuously
turn off on any app that you download where it's just the
constant reminders and trying to sell you things and all, all the
stuff that you have to sort of actively go in and turn off if
you don't want to be constantly interrupted by your phone.
Not sure if you've been aware of the recent, well, they did this
the first time a couple of years ago, the emergency sirens that
went on that, you know, if you go off at any time and if we
need to alert you to something, your phone is going to start
screaming at you in the middle of the night kind of thing.
And that's, that's just here. So I can't imagine that because
that that sort of the reaction that people get sort of that
that people feel like they can't constantly need to be checking
out. We get, we get in some cases
that have been researched, the dopamine reaction, for example,
by playing online games that people get this they they need
that dopamine fix because it makes them feel better.
And that's what gets people going back to playing online
games. I can't imagine what that would
feel like to constantly be checking an app to see when the
planes are coming. I I just, I can't imagine it as
well as the real life fear of the the threat that is actually
happening on the ground. And then you have the app and
you can check and see. We don't where's the plane now?
How how far am I away? That just sounds unbelievable to
me. Yeah.
It certainly is and and but the whole this yeah, apps are so
intrusive with store MO and did you have one at store MO and did
you have a one of the those beeps on your phone?
No, I had. Mine turned off.
All right, yes, Yeah, That was another sort of terrifying
moment because I didn't know actually what was happening.
So you're thinking, could this be a 3 minute warning for a
nuclear bomb? Yeah.
Exactly. So we.
Just have a few minutes left. I've really enjoyed this
conversation. I hope you have as well.
But yeah, I wanted to make sure, you know, is there anything
else? I always give my guest the
option to talk about anything else.
Is there anything else that we haven't covered?
So is there anything else that you'd like to share with the
audience? Well, yeah, I'm just going to
keep talking about the book, Diane, because absolutely it.
Is it's what I'm here for? I'm gonna, yeah, Promote it to
the hilt, of course. Yeah.
The fact is, yeah, it it it's a human story.
I mean, The thing is, you know, we know about dystopian fiction
can sometimes be a little bit over.
You're kind of thinking more about the technology and how in
the future, because drone warfare is a huge thing in the
memorizers, of course, because that's what we've, the
technology has changed for that. But I think the most important
thing is the human aspect. I mean, it's 1984.
It's Winston and Julia. It's the kind of thwarted love
affair that sounds like Romeo and Juliet to Winston and Julia.
But it is there is that kind of. To.
Humanize the future is a kind of really important thing and I
think it's this quest of of my central character Joe Elliot, a
journalist who wants to find out why she was on the front line,
why she was injured, all of these things that make us human
and our quests in life what of discovery.
And I think now I think particularly in this society
where things are crazy and I think we need to discover things
and and speak out about them. And that is really the impulse
inner, you know. And, and yeah, I said that came
from my own cancellation. We discussed that earlier.
And all of those things is about being able to freely speak out
and not repress your own thoughts in society and words.
And I think that is the most important thing.
So that that that was the main propulsion for the book is to
say I'm tired of being controlled.
I need to break free. Yeah.
And. And, and I think that this has
come out through our, our whole discussion because we've seen
how this is like permeated every aspect of life.
And, and I think that your book does such a great job of sort of
encapsulating all of that. I, I just, I really can't
recommended enough to our audience.
So I do hope everyone runs out and buys a coffee after they've
listened to this conversation because I, I think they think
that maybe people realize how much they're being controlled,
Even those of us who are kind of awake to it.
When you see it coming into every aspect of, of life in
2025, you and I have been exposed to it to the extreme and
to the fact that impacted our careers.
But just in everyday decisions that were being manipulated by,
by words and language. And, and I, and I hope that when
people read it, not if people read it, but when people read
it, that they will maybe start to consider as much as possible
to kind of just, I would encourage everyone to take a
step back and think about how this is just infiltrated every
aspect of our lives. And even if we don't, even if we
don't think we're affected, we still are.
So yeah, I, again, I want to encourage everyone to read it.
So again, I'll just hold it up one more time.
This is with my Jenkinson. Here's the back.
Yeah, Yeah. All about freedom.
About freedom, yeah. And liberty from, from what
we're going through right now, yeah.
Absolutely, and art is such a powerful way to express is the.
Best way to express it? There's no other there's no
other medium that could possibly express this because words
actually are the thing that control.
People think it's images, but actually the words are much
more, even though I think they are, because they can be
manipulated more. I mean, I suppose we have things
like AI that can manipulate images now and deep fix, but I
think words are the ones in which it it comes from us.
We control the words and that's what is so frightening if we
become controlled and we can't control those words.
So therefore word control is a lot more dangerous for us.
Yeah. So it's really about being
conscious about the words that you're using, but yet not being
obsessed about it because the words that you use can be used,
right. We take offence much more
everything today. So therefore the words are more
important than that we use. So I.
But but yet don't police yourself.
And it's that balance. So how do you do the words that
you aren't going to offend too much, but without policing
yourself? And that is there's so there's
so many balances going on that we're all checking and our
brain, even when we're having conversations, we're checking
that. I, I'm checking it with you.
Sometimes, you know, I can't help that because I'm so
conditioned now, right? Right.
No, yeah, no, that's a really good point.
And to end on, I think because, but let's just yeah, let's all
just take a moment, take a step back, think about are we being
controlled? Yes, we are and and and what
what can we do differently in this world about it?
Because I I always say that strength in numbers that the
more of us that realize. What's happening there are of us
that that make steps against that in whatever ways that we we
can in our own lives. And there are so many ways to do
it. And and so, Rosemary, I think I
want to thank you again for writing such a brilliant novel
and it's been a treat. It's been a treat to be on with
you and and have an open an open and free spirited discussion.
Well, you know, and I think that this all comes through in your
writing as well. And thank you to everyone who's
who's joined us today for this conversation.
Thank you, Rosemary, for your time.
Again, this is Zion Rasmussen Mcatty with UK column.
Thank you, everyone, and have a wonderful day.
Thank you.