Enigma Variations

Surveillance Society

April 4th, 2008

We’ve now got CCTV cameras in Dalry Road, on tall heavy poles. More surveillance. It’s getting to the point you’ll need to live in St Kilda to avoid the damn things. Did we vote for them? Did we agree to them? No we didn’t. The British people regularly support politicians who promise to increase the number of police on the beat, yet other than football matches and at railway stations I can’t remember when I last saw a policeman on the street. No, instead of more police we just get more cameras, more attempts to foist ID cards on us (and make us pay for the privilege!), and ever more hysterical terror stories to try to justify them. Is it any surprise that people are leaving Britain in droves, sick to death of a state that appears to want total control over their lives?

I’ve always loved Scotland, but if I’d known the direction the UK was heading when I was 20 I’d probably have emigrated. The personal freedoms my father and grandfathers fought world wars for are vanishing rapidly. I can only hope that Scotland finally gets independence and moves in a different direction to England.

In the middle ages it was the church that sought to control the people by keeping them illiterate and putting the fear of god into them. Now we’re tagged, satellite tracked and videoed. If you use a loyalty card your spending patterns are compiled, your mobile phone calls are recorded and your movements followed. Now the police are pushing for everyone’s DNA to be permanently stored. Maybe the politicians have responded negatively to that one, or maybe it was a stalking horse; a device to see what reaction there’d be so they could see how much they could get away with while appearing to be the guardians of our freedoms. Were this proposal to go through we’d all be suspects.

Funny how if you go out with a camera and take pictures in the street you’re “acting suspiciously”, and god help you if you’re anywhere near a school when you’re doing it. Yet “the authorities” seem to think they can take whatever pictures they like. Meanwhile we are encouraged to report “suspicious behaviour” that is so vague that everyone could be included – apparently if you have more than one mobile phone it’s a sign you may be a terrorist!? Remember the poor guy who was shot by an armed response unit while walking home with a table leg in a plastic bag because someone thought his Scottish accent was Irish and the table leg was a shotgun. That’s what happens when fear takes hold and everyone turns informer.

People used to come to this country to escape exactly this sort of repressive society! Britain was seen as a bastion of freedom. It’s time we made it plain that we want to get back to that situation.

Entry Filed under: Social/Political