Both these responses avoid the thorny metaphysics of exactly who determines what is wrong, and why. Being gay? Jewish? Black? a smoker? A muslim? Not washing my hands properly? Arguing with a traffic warden? Overfilling my rubbish bin by 3 inches? Disagreeing with government policy?

A useful (and true) platitude is that a law that cannot be enforced is a bad law. I would add to this that a law which cannot be enforced without recruiting additional unaccountable uniformed militia issuing fixed penalties, is evidence of a society that confuses what is wrong, with what should be illegal. The dangerous converse is that what is not illegal, therefore becomes ‘right’. Morality is dead – we now have a law for the smallest misdemeanour, and mass surveillance is the only effective method of enforcement.

I don’t know where this will end, but history suggests it will end, badly.

That’s right!, wasswermatter wiv you then? Can’t read Latin?

It’s the leitmotif ( there we go again!) behind democracy, it’s the yeast in the bread that makes it work, it’s the kernel in the nut that makes it grow, it’s why the folks in the Oval Office, Number 10, the other heaven-born individuals who orchestrate and administer Democracy (better?) like the process so much. It’s why they want so much, so very very much, for us all to have it. Paradoxically, most of us would probably associate it with the worst excesses of Kim-il Sung, Mao or Stalin. It just means “Because I say so”

You’ll have noticed certainly that there seems to be something wrong with Democracy these days, bit difficult to put your finger on, but,well, it just doesn’t seem very democratic does it? You get a million people saying “not in our name” you don’t (you bastard!) and they might have just as well have stayed in the pub. You get 500,000 out on the same streets saying, in effect, “you get on with your own lives in London, Brum. Liverpool, you keep sniffing substances, shooting each other, whatever, we’ll keep murdering foxes, whatever, we’ve all got more important things to think about” Could have saved their bus fares couldn’t they?

The reason why Mr Blair and his mastiff couldn’t be arsed to get up and look through the windows at the turbulent throng outside was because they had “Democracy” on their side. They could quite properly point out that, with a million folk on the streets, 59 million were not, your tired feet were, sadly, statistically insignificant.

That is why, and how, the various special interest groups, now wiley, savvy, and as expert at spin as the political parties themselves are able to ensure that the squeaky axle is the one that gets oiled first. That’s why, as your granny lies up to her pension annuity in her own poo in some benighted NHS hospital ( and, scary this one, Maidstone was 20th, yes, 20th, in the C-difficile sweepstake) your Govt is spending a Khalif’s ransom on windmills, micro generators that run on rabbit droppings, rambling and unsubstantial studies conducted at any “university” with the misfortune to be located in an economically deprived area. It’s why silver-haired harpies will come flying at you as you motor through Little Sodding in-the-Wen at three mph over the limit, brandishing a speed gun thoughtfully donated by the Local Constabulary, itself “downsized” to half its proper complement. It’s why, should you have the misfortune to purchase a slightly “off” parsnip in your local Tesco’s, you will be encouraged by a battery of State appointed drones to sue the socks off them rather than going and demanding another one. It’s why you will feel guilty as hell at saying what you really think of the lazy, dysfunctional, offensive and unpleasant “person of colour” sitting behind the grille because you know damned well you will set in train events far more likely to be unpleasant for you than her (or him, no discrimination in this rant)

And, most important of all, it’s the reason why, if you find yourself, inspissate with Bentwhistles best Somerset Sheepbleat Cider and desperate to share it with that section of hawthorn hedge in some deserted stretch of the A38, you should wear a large fedora hat, or a voluminous scarf, because you will be on camera!

We have 5.5 million surveillance cameras in Britain, nobody has a clue as to what happens to the recordings they take, most of them never go near a Policeman. They are in our midst because they are supported, encouraged, by pressure groups. Most of these are not sinister, they are simply misguided, and they play unwittingly right into the hands of Government.

They do so because they adhere to the line so assiduously evinced by Governments. It comes in thousands of versions but they are all basically the same “If you haven’t done anything wrong then you’ve nothing to worry about”

At first site this seems pretty un-controversial. It ignores a very basic truth; Right and Wrong IS NOT to be equated with lawful and unlawful!! Surprised? Why? Lawful and unlawful is simply what is compliant, or uncompliant, with legislation passed by said Government. I’ve already persuaded you, I hope, that Government is unduly, very unduly, influenced by these “wheel squeakers”, and it’s Government, and Government alone, which decides “lawful and unlawful”. It’s not illegal yet to vote anything other than Labour, but it could be. Stroke of the pen, nothing more. Any individual that could have us in a war in Iraq without asking Parliament, his confessor, his Mum or his Nottingham Springer spaniel wouldn’t find it too hard I promise you. Then it would be “unlawful” and you’d be the proper object of concern for the little Nikon stuck up that hideously ugly (and, trust me, almost indestructible) pole in your shopping centre.

It doesn’t matter that the mathematical justification for all this “democracy” bullshit is tenuous in the extreme. 58 million did indeed sit on their arses, but 200 million Americans enthusiatically supported it, and 1 billion Chinese didn’t. Pretty good argument for allowing the Chinese to dictate our Foreign policy ( and the Americans!). The BBC has a duty to represent ALL of its license payers in the programming it produces and contracts: Drop me a line when next you see a little documentary extolling the virtues of incest, paedophilia, or that clever thing you can do with the gnu, the sellotape and the salad cream!. See what I mean.

You live in a society where, at 18, you cannot buy scissors, lighter fluid, a nail file, but you can get your hands on an SA-80 rifle (tough luck!) and go and shoot people with it, (they don’t even have to be other soldiers!). You cannot, legally, take photos of the conditions in your local hospital and put them in your local newspaper, but you can, without fear of prosecution, run that same hospital and get paid off with a handsome fee. It will surely be no surprise, given that calories are now officially the devil’s spawn, to be arrested, or at least DNA’d for “carrying on one’s person a jelly-baby or other noxious or fattening substance.” Watch this space if you think I’m wrong.

Those same Romans who were so keen on “Ipse dixit” had another favourite phrase when “democratic principles” seemed to be getting a little out of hand. It was known as the “argumentum ad baculum”. The argument of the club. I’ve got mine upstairs somewhere, think I’ll nip out and find a surveillance camera or two.