For 1984, read 2014

IN my item about cats on Monday I recklessly described myself as "a tabby owner." What I meant, of course, is that I am a member of his domestic staff.

A TARDIS moment. A neighbour is discovering one of the strangest facts of modern life. The rubbish skip that looks absolutely enormous on the lorry becomes tiny the moment it is placed on your drive.

DURING the year 1984 there was much relief, and some self-congratulation, that the terrible vision of totalitarian rule portrayed by George Orwell in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four had not come to pass. Thirty years later, here it comes. Read on . . . .

GOOGLE has already been asked to remove unflattering references to citizens. This was precisely the job done by Orwell's hero Winston Smith who worked as a clerk in the Ministry of Truth, rewriting documents to suit the prevailing order and deleting all references to "unpersons." A few weeks ago we learned that British law is now being changed so that jurors who are discovered researching the background of a defendant online can be jailed. And now comes yet another 1984-style measure to give the law real teeth. Under a proposed "take down" clause, it is seriously suggested that editors could be ordered to remove all online references to anyone appearing in court. This is madness. It is a case of the entire digital world being turned on its head for the benefit of a legal profession which would be happier living in the age of quill pens. Some lawyers seem to think that the most precious part of a criminal trial is their sacred right to bamboozle a jury into believing that a serial offender with a string of violent and sexual offences is actually a paragon of virtue.

The digital age has given us a modern version of God's book of judgment in which every offence is logged. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam tells us: "The Moving Finger writes and, having writ / Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit / Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line / Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it." In other words, once it's on the record, it's there for ever. The world has moved on. The legal profession should move with it.

IF the "take down" rules are approved, how long before the sheer scale of Winston Smith-style censorship to remove "undesirable" items from the internet makes it unworkable? A casual glance at Google yesterday reveals 35,700 references to David Cameron being a toff, 225,000 to Fred West and his murders, 545,000 to Romanian gangs and 1.54 million references to Ed Miliband stabbing his brother David in the back (in the political sense). Looks like a busy day at the office, Winston.

ON THE 70th anniversary of the battle of Monte Cassino, the BBC solemnly informed us that the ancient monastery had been "held by the Nazis." This will come as a surprise to veterans who seem to recall that it was held, and held with great courage and tenacity, by the Germans.

MEANWHILE, the annual WW2 commemoration in the Yorkshire town of Haworth produces its traditional crop of complaints about those who turned up in German uniforms. But why single out the Germans? Isn't there something rather silly and offensive about anyone dressing up in uniforms they are not entitled to wear? In this hallowed centenary year the last thing we need is fat, middle-aged men pretending to be Tommies. At the going-down of the sun, we despair of them.