A disturbing piece of news was announced on Radio Four last night. Apparently there is a pilot scheme in Middlesbrough which entails CCTV masts being fitted with speakers so that those who commit minor offences in view of the cameras can be audibly chastised. The theory goes that the embarassment this causes will ensure that the offenders immediately undo or cease whatever it is that they were doing that they shouldn't have been doing.

My concern is that we are moving from being covertly watched to overtly. Neither is appealing at all but if people are being eased into something that might otherwise have caused outrage then there is something seriously wrong in all of this. If people know that they're being watched and don't complain about it - or, worse still, allow it to be the main deterrent from any wrong doing - then they are becoming more docile and subservient than before. This sort of treatment of citizens would surely never have been tolerated if it was all proposed/introduced in one go.

Those who consider George Orwel to be something of a prophet will no doubt also realise the sneaky way in which the media (the for-profit media which relies on the government's say-so to be allowed to print) can twist things to the needs of the incumbent political party. They may also notice a greater emphasis on highly unimaginative and thus extremely formulaic forms of popular entertainment. There is now a huge amount of money being spent on playing the Lottery which now comes in a vast multitude of different games instead of the one ticket which I vaguely recall around the time of its beginning.

Then we have the issue of contrabands: given the resources at the command of the UK government (and the US too for that matter) is it not ever so slightly possible that they could quite easily stop the production and trade in illegal substances entirely if they so desired? Look to the major coaca farms of Columbia and the part that US and UK governments have played in the histroy of such countries. When one isn't actively assisting the other in destroying or "restructuring" a foreign economy they are (far too often) tacitly consenting to the actions of the other. In Orwel's Nineteen Eighty-Four, young prole youngsters would buy what they believe to be illegal or illicit material but it has actually been made en masse for just such a target audience so as to make them believe that they can still undercut the system at their will and so forth. The same sort of theory applies to the issue of people using so-called illegal substances. They may be officially declared illegal of publicly renounced etc., but this does not negate the fact of what is going on in the seams where large amounts of money trade hands between political elites, powerful figures in organised crime syndicates and many famous entertainers and the PR agents and other spin-doctors who make up the suitably dubbed "commentariat".

On census forms and databases of tax agencies and banks, we are constantly treated (for all intents and purposes) as mere numbers. We are, to the ruling classes, nothing more than a large collection of data. The only time we are greeted with so much as a smil is when an election looms - and such proceedings are the most easiest manipulated of all in a "democracy".

But to hear such things said too zealously or all at once sounds far-fetched, melodramatic, paranoid and the rest. The problem is that people react slowly whilst changes take place quickly. These changes have been allowed to pick up pace due to the availability of new technology and a larger target audience made available to those in charge. Whilst technology is widely available - the money for it is not. Whilst we still have the internet - so do they. Whilst we are still able to react - they are too (and they have the psychologically primed soldiers and police and rent-a-cops ready to carry out their orders without question).

I have plenty of my own ideas about what's to be done, but these alone can't fix everything and it's not my place to instruct anyone else beyond their interest in my opinions. So I ask all who read this: what is to be done......?

Blue skies! Swoop (A)