Imagine a world where the police hire 16-year-olds, where two spilled crisps will cost you £80, where you are run over by a police car and then charged with damaging it, or where a baby is refused a passport because it is photographed "topless".
Journalist Alan Pearce has gathered an enormous stockpile of both ridiculous and sinister regulations enforced by a growing army of community officers, council wardens, car park officials and many more in his new book "Whose side are they on?", which hits the bookshops on 3rd November.
The book contains a collection of unbelievable yet real events that have happened to ordinary people in Britain when officials whip out their rule books, like the case of Gareth Corkhill from Whitehaven who made national headlines when officers in body armour apprehended him at his home. He now has a criminal record which bars him from ever visiting countries like the US and Canada. He must disclose his shady past whenever he applies for a job or a mortgage. His DNA will be kept on file long after he is dead. His crime? - he left the lid of his wheelie-bin open four inches.
Images of new conservatories and garages taken from space are being used to push up council taxes and other property levies. The images are entered on a database containing the details of every house in Britain to help tax inspectors jack up charges. Even minor improvements invisible from the road will be captured by aerial photographs and satellite images.
Anyone wishing to leave the country will have to give the government 24 hours notice or face fines of up to £5,000 under the e-Borders scheme that comes fully into effect in 2010. The UK Border Agency wants passengers to supply credit-card details, email addresses, holiday contact numbers and detailed travel itinerary as well as listing all previous missed flights. People leaving Britain will be forced to hand over 53 separate pieces of information when they pay for their tickets. Details will be shared between police, HM Revenue and Customs, and domestic and foreign security services. Those failing to complete all the questions or anyone deemed "suspicious" will be prevented from leaving.
Our children are demonised and isolated from society. We moan that they "hang about" the streets and then make it impossible for adults to supervise their hobbies and sports activities without undergoing official criminal checks. After more than a decade of Nu Labour more teenagers are leaving school without even the most basic qualifications.
We treat our returning soldiers worse than the Victorians did, to the point where they must rely on charity for their welfare rather than receive sufficient help from a grateful State. Iraq and Afghanistan veterans now form the largest single group by profession in our overcrowded prisons.
And yet we tolerate politicians on the take and don't bat an eyelid when they champion ID cards and then draw additional pay from companies bidding for the contract. So secure are our politicians that they think nothing of threatening to sue those that attempt to impose on them the same rules that apply to ordinary people, and boldly announce their intentions of refusing to pay back their ill-gotten gains.
Pearce suggests that we have joined the ranks of the world's repressive régimes with our control orders, house arrest, detention without trial, secret evidence and secret trials - not just for terrorists, but for ordinary men and women including, in the case of the deeply sinister and secretive "Courts of Protection", old people suffering from Alzheimer's.
And, to quote many old films about another well-known dictatorship, "resistance is useless" - no longer can we protest or take to task members of the ruling class at Westminster or in the local town hall. Not only do protest activities have to have police permission, these days you are likely to find the police themselves organising your march for you. And other means of protest are swiftly being denied us: 68-year-old Keith Sharp of Dawlish was handed a fixed penalty notice for putting 4,000 leaflets through neighbours' doors complaining about the £80,000 surveillance system in his neighbourhood. Police issued Mr.Sharp with the £80 fine as they said his leaflets caused "harassment, alarm and distress within the community". He's emigrating to Argentina - if he can get out of the country, of course. We used to be proud of the soubriquet "Fortress Britain"!
On the streets, half the time you can't find a policeman when you need one, and the other half of the time you'll wish you hadn't. They're just as likely to arrest the victim as the criminal (in fact, they prefer it - it's a damn sight easier). West Yorkshire police shot a man on a bus twice with electronic stun guns because he "refused to obey instructions". In fact he was in a diabetic coma. In Llandudno police did the same thing to an 89-year-old man they found wandering the streets in a confused state. He'd walked out of a residential care home.
Regular readers of this website might be forgiven for thinking that the GOS has said all this many times in the past. It's true - he has. But the great value of Pearce's well-written book lies in its thoroughness: he has gathered together and documented many hundreds of abuses under one cover, and arranged them to make it plain that these are not just isolated and serendipitous instances of power-mad little jobsworths exceeding their briefs, but a concerted and deliberate plan to produce a very different society, a Nu-Labour Utopia where nanny knows what's good for us all and wears size ten boots to make sure we are suitably grateful and compliant.
And Pearce also delves into far murkier waters. The long section "Resistance is futile" at the end of the book is very sinister indeed, and details the methods the authorities use and intend to keep using to keep us all in our place. You can get a more complete feel for "Whose side are they on?" by visiting the book's excellent website. Don't neglect the "more" buttons - there's loads of good stuff there.
Rule One of warfare is, we are told, to know your enemy. In that case, "Whose side are they on?" has to be essential reading for anyone who is not prepared to sit quietly in front of the telly, clapping feebly with the beat and dribbling while the christian-name "celebrities" cavort across the dance floor.
This is important stuff. Buy it.
The book costs £9.99 but readers of Grumpy Old Sod can buy it post free by quoting 'Whose side are they on?' by phone 01903 828503, fax 01903 828623 or email mailorders@lbsltd.co.uk.
Alternatively it's available for only £6.99 plus p&p from Amazon
. It's even cheaper at Pick-a-Book and if you order other stuff worth £15 they'll pay the postage.
You might also investigate Alan Pearce's satirical novel "The Google Questions", currently available to download as a free eBook from his website.
either on this site or on the World Wide Web.
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