Happy New Year: welcome to 1984!

‘1984’ was arguably one of the most controversial novels of the 20^th Century, and I have a clear recollection of the chilling BBC TV production starring Peter Cushing nearly 60 years ago.

 

We regarded it as dystopian fiction; it could never really happen.

 

But it could and it has. Let’s get started.

 

Perpetual war.

The background is perpetual war between Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia.

 

Well, you might say, that has never happened.

 

But it has, except that it is a perpetual economic war between the Anglosphere, the EU, and the BRICS. The most hopeful outcome, which I share, is that there will be no losers.

 

Big Brother.

He is certainly watching you, and me and everyone in the UK. We are told that there are more surveillance cameras per capita in the UK than any nation on earth; this includes the most repressive regimes. Kitten Heels May has recently been knocked back in her efforts to legislate for the authorities to be able to monitor every single electronic message that we send – e-mails, phone calls, social media, the full Monty. She lost this time round, but she will be back. And, of course, we have Leveson pontificating about legal sanctions on blogs, tweets and any other form of electronic publication.

 

Thought crime.

We have Blair to thank for introducing this in his public order legislation, whereby you can be convicted of a hate crime simply because the person on the receiving end thinks that it was such. There is much more within the 3,600 new laws introduced during the Blair regime (amongst them, it is now an imprisonable offence to allow an unlicensed concert to take place in a church hall. You can go to prison if your child fails to attend school, or if you smoke in a public place, or if you fail to obtain a passport for your pet donkey or if you are a child caught in possession of a firework at any time other than on or around November 5 or New Year's Day).

Newspeak.

We have this in spades; it’s called political correctness. We can now be convicted for what we say, as well as for what we do. Mere vulgar abuse, a British characteristic, is a crime, as is asking a cop if his horse is gay. In addition you can be arrested for taking photographs, like the man who was nicked for snapping a police car driving the wrong way down a one-way street.

 

The cult of personality.

Contemporary politics is driven by it, not by policies or principles. The whole of the media and the entertainment industry is besotted with it. We have people pulling down enormous money for being ‘personalities, ‘celebrities’ and nothing more.

 

Double-think.

This is holding two mutually contradictory beliefs at the same time. It is an essential qualification for politicians, for the BBC and for much of the media.

 

Orwellian.

This has entered our language and means official deception, secret surveillance and manipulation of the past. Need I say more?

 

Is there any good news? Up to a point; the recent UN conference on communications broke up without agreement after the Russians, Chinese, and several Middle East states attempted to get resolutions enabling government to control and censor internet and social media content, and were smartly told to get lost.

 

But they’ll be back.

 

Happy New Year!