At last..the juggernaut of state control is halted!

I am delighted to report that a request from one of Britain's top police officers to have everyone recorded on a DNA database has been ruled out as 'impractical' by the Government. Furthermore there is a challenge pending in the European Court of Human Rights to the existing legislation which allows police to keep DNA on the register even when an arrested person has been subsequently released without charge - and I sincerely hope the appeal to the European Court succeeds.



Oh I know there will be whines going up from the police that murderers might not be caught or that policing would be easier if they had a comprehensive data base on all of us. Oh I'm sure it would - but I'm willing to trade that for the right to live within my country untouched by the forces of the establishment unless and until I have done something to warrant their attention

The United Kingdom is already becoming one of the most surveilled and spied upon societies in Europe. We are becoming draconian in our approach to criminality. Terrorist suspects are held without trial here longer than in most other European democracies. We have an inordinate number off CCTV cameras spying on our every movement . We have road traffic cameras. We have phone tapping on an ever increasing scale.

The frightening thing, to me, is how easy it is to slide into authoritarianism. How easy it is for government and police to glibly argue that all surveillance and monitoring 'is in the public interest'. But primarily it's in their interest.

I didn't ask to be born in the United Kingdom. It just happened that way. I'm reasonably happy about it as long as I am left alone to pursue my own life as I see fit, within obvious legal constraints. I do NOT want to be ID carded, photographed, monitored, swabbed, kept on a database for anyone to look up my details, for financial institutions and possible employers to access. I don't want to be a cypher on some civil servant's report. I want a sense of freedom , of privacy, of independence. I don't want to live in George Orwell's Big Brother society where someone is watching my every move and capturing my every personal detail - just because it makes the job of the authorities easier.

Screw 'em! I' m not living my life for their benefit. And I'm certainly not going to be oppressed by the heavy hand of authoritarianism without putting up a fight. Life's too short!