Let the hive mind of Engadget get that for you.
"I'm in the market for a new phone and money isn't a limitation. I'm also not partial to any particular US carrier, but here are some of the features I'd like to have: WiFi, GPS, good coverage in lots of places, push Gmail (a must!), physical keyboard (a must!), a touchscreen, decent battery life and a relatively slim body. And please, nothing that has a fruit logo on it. No offense to the fruit fans, though. Thanks!"
If you recall the picture painted is that of a socialist state that seizes power by nationalising everything and then concentrating the control of this universal wealth in the hands of a small few (Orwell calls it "collective oligarchy").
The UK is, at the moment witnessing life under a controlling, yes, but most defiantly perfect centre government. The trend is to slowly privatise our most precious national assets, such as our schools and the NHS, not nationalise them. The labour government is mildly socialist in ideals but conservative in action, hence the creation of a perceived nanny state through legislation etc but a conservative lean in terms of economics.
My current point: that George Orwell wrote a book about the dangers of state surveillance of the individual before the word CCTV had been invented, and he certainly wasn't writing a book about the current situation within the UK, no matter how people wish to believe it the ideas behind the current CCTV "epidemic" are most defiantly benign.
My original point:
people in the UK are generally ambivalent to CCTV, many probably aren't even aware of the huge numbers of cameras watching them, and many others probably feel safer walking home knowing that if anything happens, there will be filmed evidence. The UK population is far less wary of the intentions of the state, a nationalisation of health care and until relatively recently the railways, as well as the existence of an extensive social care system could be posited as evidence of this.
Engadget is not representative of the general UK population because most of its readers are reasonably educated a tech savvy and are aware of what could occur
The US fosters, in my humble opinion, a frontier attitude that they are free agents and the state should have as little as possible to do with individual lives, at least when it comes to things like CCTV etc.
@Papa24: your statistics (if true) are a little unfair as much of the worlds population live in extra urban areas, many without basic clean water, let alone the electricity needed to power CCTV cameras. Figures as the percentage of Urban population in MEDC's (or whatever "1st World" countries are called these days) would probably be more representative, although i expect that the UK still has more than its fair share of CCTV cameras/coverage etc.
@alex: have you even read "Nineteen Eighty-Four"? because if you have i think you have missed the point of the book. It is not predictive, it is a story.