Orwell and Language

"The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose...the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse."
George Orwell expressed these thoughts sixty years ago in "Politics and the English Language." To what extent do his words apply today? Also, in trying to avoid your own essays reading like his "prefabricated henhouse," how helpful do you find the questions he poses and the rules for writing he suggests in his essay?
ProfC