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george orwell text reads 1984

When George Orwell wrote his classic novel, 1984 I would imagine he must have fervently hoped that it would put people off the terrifying future that he predicted. In fact, developments in recent years appear to demonstrate that large parts of the book have come true.

My epiphany moment  came with the news that the American security service the NSA has been bugging the mobile phones of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande, together with tens of millions of their citizens.  As the NSA only singled David Cameron out as not being bugged, the clear inference to be drawn is that all other leaders probably have been tapped too. If the leaders of the Western world are listening in to their allies, one must inevitably wonder what on earth they have been doing to their enemies.

Hot on the heels of the Edward Snowden leaks was the news last week that rather than the official Police figure of 1.8M CCTV cameras operating in the UK, the true figure is 5.9M, that’s a staggering one camera for every 11 people in the country.

These kinds of surveillance have become so common in daily life that it would be safest for us all work on the assumption that very little is private anymore and I include the internet in that comment.

The Internet is a wonderful development but if people choose to use it, it is at their peril with the prospect that not only will Internet Service Providers know everything about our banking details, social lives and quite possibly sexual proclivities but so does our government and, seemingly quite a few others both here and abroad.

The concept of Big Brother watching you has also become a source of a significant proportion of television output and where, in the past, this just related to highly paid professionals kicking footballs around, now it is people eating, drinking, chatting, giving birth, exposing their bizarre bodies and for viewers of Geordie Shore, having sex in front of the cameras.

yellow sign which reads cctv in opertion

A common site in the UK

And I’m not just talking about people who have consented to be filmed, it is impossible to drive down the street, take a walk in the park or visit the supermarket without being filmed or photographed multiple times.

If you are in the public eye, it is therefore necessary to be whiter than white, since some investigative journalist will not only be trawling through public information but also, as we have discovered repeatedly in recent years, your mobile phone records, Internet details etc. After all, that is why Andy Coulson, Rebekah Brooks and their friends are currently defending themselves in court. The odd thing is that much of society seems delighted to allow this kind of intrusion, publicising their foibles on Facebook or Twitter.

The parallels with the novel do not stop there. Language wise, there are obvious similarities, with text speak and Orwell’s Newspeak being close cousins. Going further, we have all become familiar with lying politicians and once again, their propaganda seems all too familiar to those who have been devotees of the novelist and his uncanny ability to second-guess what the unscrupulous will try next.

From a professional perspective, one organ of government that most definitely has the powers to find out far more about the British people than they would like is HM Revenue and Customs. While I have every confidence that every reader of this Blog is compiling his or her tax return accurately and fully, you might well have friends or relatives who should be wary if they knew the resources that are potentially available to the taxman. Now I accept that HMRC are still amateurs when compared to the NSA and probably haven’t yet stooped to bugging phones; however with the 2013 Justice and Security Act now on the books, they don’t have to go to court to get a phone tapping order, so you never know.

It is hard to know where this will all end but, but for the time being the prospect of our present political masters and their attack dogs, HMRC, recreating Room 101 where your worst fear comes true is on hold, at least for the moment.

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David Jones is the Senior Partner and Founder of Morgan Jones & Company. Born in Liverpool and an Accountancy graduate of the University of Wolverhampton, David spent twenty years working for the Customs & Excise in London then Shrewsbury before starting his own business. David’s depth of knowledge of the UK tax system and his ability to communicate this learning has seen Morgan Jones & Company grow into Shropshire’s most respected Accountancy Practice. Email David