Orwell's Britain

"The scale of the data-gathering on British citizens amounts to an experiment never before tried in a Western democracy. Last November the pressure group Privacy International produced a study comparing state surveillance in 36 nations. Britain came joint third with Russia, behind China and Malaysia. We scored particularly highly for the number of CCTV cameras: there are now four million of them operated either by the state or by private interests.

The obvious question looms: if surveillance really works, surely Britain ought to be the safest country in the developed world. Yet the last International Crime Victims Survey, which consisted of interviews with 34,000 people in 17 countries in 2000, found that 3.6 per cent of Britons reported being victims of crime in the previous 12 months, second only to Australia. Since then, the number of CCTV cameras has continued to rise, as has violent crime and robbery: the very sort of crimes that tend to take place on streets watched over by CCTV."

Telegraph UK

we in Australia and New Zealand need to take note of what's happening in Britain--because we're far from immune to the same kind of Big Brother tactics by governments here.
New Zealand is already ruled by a pack of socialists, communists and authoritarian greenies and Australia is only ever an election away from the same.
And the lesson is obvious--unless each and every encroachment on our liberties is fought against--whatever assurances proponents of the encroachment may offer--then we'll go down the same road, inch by inch, year by year. Freedom will become the freedom to do whatever isn't expressly prohibited by our political overlords.
Which is slavery.
UPDATE:
"Schoolchildren to be fingerprinted in Big Brother-style shake-up
Up to 5.9million children face having their fingerprints taken by schools in another move towards a 'Big Brother' society.

Pupils will have to hand over their biometric details simply to borrow library books or gain access to school dinners.
A million children's fingerprints are believed to have been taken already, some without parental approval and even by 'con tricks' such as pretend spy games."

Daily Mail UK

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