George Michael in Hampstead - or was it George Orwell?

A newspaper advertising board outside the Hampstead Heath Street news agent reads:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

- George Michael

What an easy mistake to make as both George Michael and George Orwell share the same first name. Although the ageing pop star George Michael, better remembered by his exploits in men's public conveniences and drug busts than his schmaltzy music, has nothing more in common with George Orwell except that first name and that both Michael and Orwell are pseudonyms.  George Michael was born Georgious Kyriacos Panayiotou and the author of one of the finest post World War II novels, "Nineteen Eighty-Four", was written by Eric Arthur Blair, aka George Orwell.

I doubt if George Orwell is still on the required reading syllabus in Britain's state schools. I recently asked a group of final year undergraduate students in one of London's largest universities if they knew who George Orwell was.  Not a single hand went up. Only one had heard of the book "Nineteen Eighty-Four, and he was Danish; my British students looked at me if I was a man from the moon.  Cripes! - as Boris Johnson would say!

But let's think about this.  George Orwell, despite his leftist leanings, would not be on the current government's top ten list of must reads. Consider the powerfully disturbing slogan of Oceania's party and its Thought Police:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Isn't this where we have come to?  On the same suburban Hampstead street I spotted a small smart-car with what looked like a periscope sticking up from its roof.  The car had DVLA decals stuck onto its sides, Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency.  Inside this modern day telemonitor were a driver and an operator who was scanning the license plates of cars parked on the street with his periscope to catch anybody who may have not paid his vehicle tax.  I did not hang around to find out if they were writing on the spot fines, it would have been too depressing to see.  I though I knew the answer anyway.

I don't know about you but I find it almost impossible to keep track of every single command and rule that our Big Brother decrees. I admit to forgetting renew my vehicle tax once.  Luckily I was not spotted by the man with the periscope, but my details were registered at the local post office by being a month late when I realized my mistake and hightailed to pay my tax.

The UK has become a control society where freedom is indeed slavery and ignorance is strength. We have the highest penetration of public CCTV cameras in Europe if not the world outside North Korea, although the police has admitted that CCTVs have not helped cut down crime; we have to use language, Orwell's "Newspeak", that the government decrees is politically correct; a plethora of new health and safety regulations assault us in our places of work and other public places, they even infringe our freedoms in our homes; rubbish has to be sorted into so many different bins that one needs a flow chart to remember what rubbish goes where, and if you get it wrong you get fined; one is not allowed to use red ink when correcting university students' term papers so as not to cause them emotional distress; the list is endless...The government would probably like to install the Orwellian telemonitor in our homes if it could.

When will this end? Are we sleepwalking towards tyranny?  I just want get on with my life, be the best I can be, do the best I can to my family and my community. Only I should decide what that best is as long as it does not injure others or infringe their rights and freedoms. Whatever happened to the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness?