Yay Derek - mind you, I think the government and corporations could be forgiven for thinking that no one really gives a toss for civil liberties in the UK anymore. Frankly, it's mainly the old-guard aristos & posh liberals on the one hand and the ultra-left on the other opposing the bill (and the ID card thing) - and the liberals and cons are more bothered about the Latin in the 1215 constitution than curbing corporate incursions into civil society and human rights. Everyone else (including most of the liberal-left) appears to think there's some kind of Gandalf-magic protecting the freedom-loving nature of the good citizens of Hobbiton-in-Albion. Cos we all know that Asia and Africa have natures prone to chaos ;-) but a police state could never happen here. Folk assure me that we British are always interning someone or other but it never touches "us" (who?). Oppression is no more than mildly reprehensible as long as it doesn't look like affecting one directly and personally? "Anglo-Saxon" socio-economic model eh?! Ha! Saxons and Angles, as I recall, ruled by council and topped their own leaders if they got too authoritarian. ;-) Paula Derek McMillan wrote:

The phrase "Big Brother" has been hijacked as a title for an increasingly tacky piece of exploitation TV but the original meaning of the term is still alive.

The music corporations are boasting about finding a teenage girl who has been downloading music so that the corporations can now prosecute her mother. The media report with a straight face the idea that downloading will ruin the business. (Just as video recorders ruined the business or taping music off the wireless ruined the business presumably.) There has not been a peep of protest about the invasion of the teenager's privacy by the corporations. It is OK for the corporations to know the contents of everyone's computer "for their own good" so to speak.

At least they have dropped the laughable - "if you download a tune you are funding terrorism" line which was greeted with sceptical derision whenever they broadcast it.

On the TV there are a series of public service adverts threatening people without licences for watching TV and threatening people who work while signing for benefit. In both the message is the same "we know all about you, we are coming to get you." This is New Labour's image of a caring society.

The BBC dismisses anyone who opposes these measures as "civil libertarians" to create the impression that ordinary people are uninterested in liberty or privacy and such interests are just the province of some special interest group of "civil libertarians".

The corporations openly boast about their infringements of our liberty and the government joins in the chorus.