1984 as a manual for government.

Most of the time, a mobile phone (cellphone) is just a nuisance. Especially if someone else knows your number. Sometimes it's vital, such as when you're working somewhere remote at night and if you fell down a hole, nobody would find you for months. Hasn't happened, but it might.

So, as much as I dislike mobile phones, I carry one. It's not a fancy one. I don't want a camera in my phone because phone cameras are, let's face it, rubbish. I don't want a MP3 player in there. I carry one so I can phone or text when it's vital I do so. Nothing more. I'm sure the Apple iPhone is a wonderful thing but I don't want one.

I have a friend who has this phone--he says it's a phone--which looks for all the world like a miniature computer. It works like one too. It browses the Internet in full colour and he can even type on it. The one thing he can't do is answer it when it rings. By the time he's scrolled through the options and put it in 'phone' mode, his caller has given up. He had to buy another, simple phone for calls and now he carries both.

So I have a cheap one. It makes phone calls. It can do texts. It can do other things but that's because those other things are now standard. It does something called 'bluetooth' which doesn't look like something I want a phone to do so I turned it off. It has a camera, which I used once and was disgusted at the result. It's on a pay-as-you-go tarriff, I bought it with cash and my name is not associated with it at all.

That is changing.

Our Government decided that every phone call must be logged, along with every Email and every web page we visit. They claim 'terrorism' as the reason, but the terrorists have been silent for years. The real reason is control.

Someone must have realised that these cheap phones, bought with cash and with no contract attached, cannot be associated with any individual. Their huge database of logged calls will be even more useless if they can't pin a call to an individual. So we will have to register, or the phone will die.

This is supposed to deter criminals. I don't see how it will do that since the criminal only has to steal a phone and their activities will be blamed on the poor sap who is registered to that phone. The only reason to do this is population control. Keeping people scared of government is the Stalin way of doing things. Now it's happening here.

I used to laugh at management. I used to joke that they used Scott Adams' 'Dilbert' books as manuals.

Now it seems our government is using George Orwell's '1984' as their manual.

That's not nearly as funny. It's not funny at all.