The posing of some global menace to curtail civil rights and justify repressive laws is the oldest game in the book. And no government plays the game better than New Labour. Already the English are the most-watched people in the world with 4 million CCTV cameras...one for every fourteen people...perched like steel crows above roads, towns and city centres.

By the end of the year all our car journeys will be monitored using a network of speed cameras and automatic number plate recognition technology. Processing capacity will be fifty million plates a day and even though the system was devised to catch drivers without tax and insurance all car movements will be stored for six years. No doubt it has been designed to read Chinese number plates so we can develop an export capability.

When the police started filming demonstrations ten years ago it caused outrage. Now it is routine...and nobody bats an eyelid. We don’t even wave and shout ‘Hello Mum!’ any more. Children stopped by the police can have their DNA taken and retained for life without being charged or cautioned.

When the National Identity Card Scheme is made law their parents will join them...after paying £300 each for compulsory cards that store biometric data and contain radio frequency chips to eventually enable authorities to scan crowds of demonstrators for names and addresses. It does not take a tyrannical government to deprive us of freedom.

The current demand is for anybody taken into custody to be charged. But this is being rendered meaningless by catch-all formulations that allow everybody to be charged with something. When the 82 years old Walter Wolfgang shouted ‘Nonsense!’ during a Labour Party Conference he was arrested and held under anti-terrorism legislation. Had he shouted it twice he could have been charged under the Protection from Harassment Act...designed to target stalkers.

The Stalker Legislation was used to arrest an animal rights protestor who sent two polite emails to a drug company executive; to prosecute two peace campaigners at Yorkshire’s Menwith Hill military intelligence base for causing harassment, alarm or distress to American servicemen with their ‘George W. Bush? Oh dear!’ placard; and to convict six Lancaster University students for aggravated trespass when they handed out leaflets to staff attending a seminar organised by Shell, GSK, BAE and DuPont on how to commercialise university research.

Under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 all criminal offences...no matter how minor...are arrestable. And residents now face fines of up to £100 for a range of misdemeanours including discarding cigarettes on the streets, tapping ash from the end of a cigarette....there was a case in the newspapers today...putting rubbish bins out on the wrong day and failing to stifle car alarms.

But Section 132 is probably the best of the bunch. While the Incitement to Religious Hatred clause was taking all the flak, Section 132 banning all spontaneous protests in any area designated by government slipped silently through under the radar.

Ironically when the police tried Section 132 on Peace Campaigner Brian Haw...living on a traffic island outside the Houses of Parliament for the past five years...it failed because his protest had preceded the new law...although it eventually went through on appeal.

The House of Lords probably felt sorry for his four eviction attempts, three broken noses...dished out by an English woman, a US Marine from the US Embassy and an Israeli Stupidity Operative...two arrests and one divorce and decided he deserved to join the partridge in her pear tree.