Big brother

1984 used to be a cultural touchstone; everyone understood that Big Brother was a menacing, omniscient figure, and was used in references to excessive government data-collecting about individuals. These days, of course, there is the Other Big Brother. In recent coverage of the planned biochip identity cards, this has led to some unintentional comedy: when I saw a headline "Big Brother fears over biochip plans", my first assumption was that Stu, Michelle and the other housemates had been having an argument about whether they were a good thing, and expressing concerns about the erosion of personal liberty. It took a few seconds of disbelief before I realised that this has nothing to do with reality TV.