One of the greatest things about Britain was that unlike in most of the world, when a policeman asked you what you were doing you were entitled to tell him it was none of his business.  Unless he had good grounds to suspect you of being up to no good you had no obligation to tell him anything.  That British sense of the state’s agents being subordinate to free individuals  under the rule of law has gone. The state’s assumption is that we are all suspects of some kind.

Guido always nursed a suspicion that ID cards were as much about financial control as anything else.  ID cards may have gone off the agenda but now the Tories reportedly plan to have a financial Big Brother sitting in your bank account, automatically deducting taxes as funds arrive from your employer.  They are selling it as a way to reduce the red tape burden on small businesses…

If HMRC has an electronic trojan in your bank account it will move on from deducting from your salary to taking a cut of your eBay sales and tracking all your financial transactions.  Do you want the government controlling your bank account?  That is the ultimate goal of tax collectors the world over since before even the Doomsday Book…