The excellent Richard Littlejohn has the misfortune to write for the Daily Mail, but that doesn't stop him from being a trenchant voice for common-sense in a world full of dreck. He has been rather preoccupied with "proof of identity" - and when you read his conclusions, you'll understand why …
What was I saying about proof of identity being this year's elf 'n'safety? Seems I didn't know the half of it. Since Tuesday, I've been deluged with further examples of idiocy from all over Britain. I could have filled this column with them today.
For instance, at the Dagenham branch of Morrisons, Tessa Sparrow's 24-year-old daughter was prevented from buying a can of furniture polish because she couldn't prove she was over 18. They said she might be a solvent abuser.
Charming. Do they think every fresh-faced young woman who tries to buy a can of Mr Sheen is a gluesniffer?
Janet Lankester went to renew her driving licence at her local Post Office. They refused to accept her state pension certificate as proof of identity because they said she didn't look old enough, and demanded her passport. Since she doesn't travel abroad, Janet has no need for a passport. She'd applied for a new EU-style photo driving licence only because her old paper licence - while still perfectly valid - was rejected whenever she attempted any financial transaction, no matter how trivial.
Apparently, this is down to new money-laundering regulations - just in case a white Englishwoman of pensionable age turns out be an Al Qaeda banker, or Bernie Madoff decides to hide the $50billion he stole from investors in an account in one of our few remaining sub post offices.
Elsewhere, at the Lichfield branch of Marks & Sparks, 30-year-old Oliver Butler was told that unless he could produce his passport, he couldn't buy two bottles of mulled wine. They wouldn't accept his paper driving licence either. Rightly, he points out that you don't see many under-age bingedrinkers swigging M&S mulled wine by the neck down your local shopping precinct. Alcopops and extra-strength cider are more their preferred beverage. Oliver tells me that it was the first time in 12 years he'd been asked for ID. You'd better get used to it, old son. It probably won't be the last.
The crackdown on alcohol sales now extends even to people who can prove they are over 18, if they happen to be accompanied by a minor. Christine Middleton, from Edinburgh, was out shopping for Hogmanay with her daughter at her local Co-op; usual stuff - chicken, turkey, sprouts, two bottles of wine (one red, one pink champagne). When the champagne went through the barcode scanner, an alarm went off.
The checkout girl asked Christine's daughter how old she was. After discovering she was 17, she confiscated the two bottles. Christine ('48, but I look good for my age') pointed out that the wine was for her, not her daughter, and sent for the manager. Still no joy. The manager said that her daughter could, in fact, be a local hoodie who had persuaded Christine to buy booze on her behalf. Like Oliver Butler and his mulled wine, Christine remarked that 'pink champagne and a cheeky wee Rioja' weren't exactly your average hoodie's gargle of choice. But the manager still wouldn't serve her and, with an impatient queue getting restless behind her, she was forced to withdraw, empty-handed.
At first glance, this all seems laughable, to be filed under You Couldn't Make It Up - especially after reports that grown men and women are being refused whisky-infused cheddar cheese and knitting needles without proof of identity. The idea that supermarkets are accusing law-abiding adults of being glue-sniffers and purveyors of illicit hooch to under-age hooligans is not only risible but deeply offensive.
It would be easy to put all this down to the good old British jobsworth mentality and the ridiculous modern 'if it saves one life' excuse for lowest-common-denominator law enforcement. But scratch the surface and there's something far more sinister going on - on a couple of levels.
First, proof of identity is not just the new elf'n'safety. It has been seized upon gleefully by the 'consumer protection' nazis. The pounds and ounces police who hounded greengrocer Steve Thoburn to his death for not using metric measures have discovered a new weapon for throwing their weight about.
Town Halls increasingly are mounting covert operations against supermarkets and corner shops, sending undercover agents to buy everything from booze and cigarettes to glue and steak knives. In some cases, these are underage children who look over 18. In others, they are fresh-out-of-college, 21-year-old Guardianista recruits who could pass for 16 in a good light.
If a checkout assistant doesn't ask for proof of identity, the heavy mob moves in and prosecutes. It's not enough that someone actually is under-age. Suspicion is enough. If they don't demand ID, supermarkets face fines of thousands of pounds and the assistant can get a criminal record. Little wonder they decide it's not worth the risk.
Dig deeper and you discover the dead hand of the Government's determination to force through its unpopular, unworkable and hideously expensive ID cards scheme, to extend the surveillance state and expand the punishment culture. Word has clearly gone out to councils and government departments to make people's lives as difficult as possible without photo ID.
Why else would a state-run post office refuse to accept a state-issued pension book as proof of identity for a state-issued driving licence? Putting pressure on supermarkets to inconvenience customers in the most ridiculous of circumstances is part of the plot.
The Government figures that eventually we'll become so frustrated that we'll gratefully accept a 'one-stop' state identity card.
Of course, as this column has long argued, ID cards won't stop terrorism, illegal immigration or organised crime. But next time someone like Janet Lankester goes to the Post Office to collect her pension, you can guarantee she'll be turned away if she has left her ID card behind the jar on the mantelpiece. Eventually you'll be fined for not carrying your card at all times and failing to produce it on demand to any police officer or government official will result in immediate arrest.
Britain has become a country where you won't even be able to buy a can of furniture polish without the state's permission and without the state knowing exactly where you bought it, when you bought it and how you paid for it.
Little by little, slice by slice, this is how freedom dies.
Meanwhile another Daily Mail writer - one who isn't important enough to have a name but who has his head screwed on all the same - highlights another misuse of documents by the government.
There is almost always a popular argument for totalitarian measures, which is why freedom is increasingly hard to defend in our democracy. Usually the pretext for new draconian laws is terrorism, crime or child abuse.
The latest excuse for infringing liberty is the plight of children whose absentee fathers do not pay maintenance.
It is typical of this Government that its solution is to apply what is in effect State blackmail, to try to force them to hand over the money. Those who do not do as they are told will have their driving licences or their passports revoked by officials.
What is wrong with this? First, the chaotic, unjust and misgoverned Child Support system is the direct result of the political decision in the Sixties to introduce what was in effect easy 'no-fault' divorce. This was accompanied by a series of legal judgments which discriminated against divorced husbands, over custody of the children and division of marital property.
It meant that in the explosion of divorce that followed, innocent parties were often milked dry, and then commanded to hand over large chunks of their income to the person who had wronged them.
Second, passports are not issued to us on condition that we do exactly what we are told by the State. We pay large fees for them so that we can travel abroad.
Bailed defendants awaiting trial might reasonably be required by a court to surrender their passports. Otherwise, the government of a free country has no business trying to take them away.
A driving licence is proof that we have passed the driving test. It can be removed if we drive so badly or irresponsibly that we are considered unfit. But to take it away for completely unconnected reasons is the act of a despot.
It is also the act of an idiot in this case, for so many jobs require driving licences that many of the victims of this proposed penalty will lose their work, and so be even less able and willing to pay maintenance than they were before.
If such arbitrary powers are used against absentee fathers, how long before they are used against other people who have annoyed the authorities in some way?
The GOS says: Well said, that man. Or those two men, actually.
The anonymous reporter's last question is a salient one - "how long before they are used against other people who have annoyed the authorities in some way?"
The fact is that the government is already planning exactly that. One of the features of the ID scheme is that without producing an ID card you will be denied access to the National Health Service you have paid for all your working life. So if you're one of the many Grumpy Old Sods who have vowed never to carry an ID card, the government will punish you by turning you away from A&E or banning you from the local doctor's surgery.
Their thinking is typical of the left wing. It's been pointed out recently that many of the shining lights of Nu-Labour were once communists. It may be that we became distracted during the reign of King Bliar by the tremendous similarity between him and Margaret Thatcher, but now he's gone we should just remind ourselves that we are dealing here with old-fashioned socialists.
Oh, they play the game with fervour, they collect those consultancy fees and seats on the board, they get themselves elevated to the peerage and charge business £120,000 to force through changes in the law, they fiddle the books and falsify the expenses and snuffle in the trough like the pigs they are, but underneath it they're grimy, humourless little prigs, riddled with class envy, utterly convinced of the divine right of the state to control every facet of its citizens' lives - so long as it's them in charge, that is.
In the innocent days gone by, we thought that we had a right to certain things. We were citizens, and we had a right to an education, to health care, to be protected by the police. We had a right to a passport, because we were British citizens and the Queen required foreign officials to treat us with consideration and courtesy or she'd know the reason why.
But you have only to look back at communist USSR to see the direction we're headed in now. The difference is not that our schools are crap, though they are. It's not that the NHS is over-stretched and over-administered, although you can die unnoticed in the corridor these days and that's normal. It's not that the police are much too busy to protect your sorry arse, though what with filling in forms and prosecuting the victims of crime, they certainly are.
No, the real difference is that in the twenty-first century Soviet Socialist Republic of Britain, citizenship is not a right but a privilege. You don't have a right to health care and education; you just have to take whatever you're given, and what you're given is not what you've paid for but what they decide you deserve. You don't have a right to police protection, unless you're a criminal of course, in which case your 'Uman Rights will be jealously guarded.
And above all you don't have a right to a driving licence or a passport. These things are privileges, and privileges can be withdrawn.
Karl Marx once said "From each according to his ability; to each according to his need", and that's a very fine-sounding and persuasive creed. Trouble is, who decides what your ability is, and who is it that determines what you need?
Whoever it is, in modern Britain you can bet your last cent it won't be you.
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