Many of us in Britain still flatter ourselves that we live in a free country. Although the UK isn’t quite a police state (not yet anyway), neither is it a country in which the individual can any longer speak without glancing over his or her shoulder. The old compact of a liberal society was simple – the state punished genuine criminality, while opinion was left to the rough justice of argument, satire and public disagreement.
That compact has now been comprehensively torn up. Across Britain, speech that would once have been answered by rebuttal or humour is now treated as a matter for police, regulators and secretive Whitehall machinery. A report published this week by civil liberties and privacy campaigning organisation Big Brother Watch states that more than 62,000 people in the United Kingdom were arrested for communications offences over a five year period, with at least 18,500 charged and 12,292 convicted. These numbers should alarm anyone who still believes the citizen is master and the state is servant....<<<Read More>>>...
