CCTV on almost every corner, cameras that record car number-plates and electronic payment and communication systems that record information stored in vast databases.
Together with all this, we face the prospect of a cashless, chequeless society, in which the mobile phone alone will be used as the mechanism of payment for goods.This will mean our every purchase will be monitored. And what will be done to address the serious concerns of the older person and the vulnerable?
And please don’t forget the ID Information revealed by whistle blower Edward Snowden about the PRISM spy programme, which used data from giant internet companies, such as Google and Facebook. This programme apparently carried out mass surveillance of people outside the US and we now have further evidence about the warrantless spying on civilians by the US government and others.
We are so near the big brother state. And our Government is still in denial and is now even considering plans which would lose the UK public £7 billion in flogging off our publicly-owned bank, RBS, on the cheap. We paid to bail it out back in 2007. But surely should now be deciding how to make best use of this huge public asset and a serious option should be to keep this Bank and take over or keep all the other banks under democratic control.
Many of us are getting angry and for starters, perhaps we should recognise that surveillance of the Government and Banks is becoming a real demand, as they both got us into this mess; with a little help from a system in chaos.
These are even more sinister and symbolic developments. Welcome to our so called democratic and free new world.
Ivor Timson 