All's Well That Orwell

A slight variation on my oft-overused pun...

Anyway, this is how I like my irony:

According to the latest studies, Britain has a staggering 4.2million CCTV [closed circuit TV] cameras - one for every 14 people in the country - and 20 per cent of cameras globally. It has been calculated that each person is caught on camera an average of 300 times daily.

Use of spy cameras in modern-day Britain is now a chilling mirror image of Orwell's fictional world, created in the post-war Forties in a fourth-floor flat overlooking Canonbury Square in Islington, North London.

On the wall outside his former residence - flat number 27B - where Orwell lived until his death in 1950, an historical plaque commemorates the anti-authoritarian author. And within 200 yards of the flat, there are 32 CCTV cameras, scanning every move.

I guess I shall have to comb my hair and shave when I go to London next week.