Fortress Britain and a gift to terrorists

Last updated at 00:56am on 15th November 2007
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As if it's not difficult enough to get through our airports already, foreign travel is about to get even more exasperating.
You'd think ministers might have hesitated, after the tens of billions they've blown on a succession of IT disasters, before signing yet another cripplingly expensive contract for a computer database to keep tabs on us all.
But no. Here's the Home Secretary, blithely signing away another £1.2billion of our money for a project that threatens to turn even a day-trip to Boulogne into a nightmare of electronic bureaucracy.
With utter contempt for privacy, she's demanding that travel companies should supply the Government with up to 53 - yes, 53 - pieces of personal information about each of their customers, from credit card details to contact numbers.
Meanwhile, travellers whose answers raise suspicion may have their tickets cancelled at the airport.
Leave aside the massive cost of the extra work, which will be added to ticket prices. Think of the foul-ups, the countless ruined holidays and business trips.
Worse still, imagine the use that illegal immigrants, criminals or even terrorists could make of this wealth of personal information if it fell into the wrong hands.
Isn't there an acute danger that the new system will help the very people it's supposed to frustrate - while frustrating everybody else?
It's not only foreign travellers whose lives will be turned upside-down by Gordon Brown's plans.
No, his anti-terror package will bring all the miseries of baggage checks and searches to 250 of our busiest stations.
It'll mean exclusion zones for motorists and queues at security gates in shopping centres, sports arenas and cinemas. Meanwhile forests of bollards and concrete will be springing up everywhere.
Isn't all this wildly over the top? Everybody accepts the terrorist threat will mean a degree of inconvenience. But there must surely be a strong suspicion that the Government is scaremongering simply to soften us up for yet more infringements of our liberties.
Why, only yesterday Security Minister Admiral Lord West was forced to perform a humiliating about-turn after airing his common-sense doubts about extending detention without trial beyond 28 days.
Then there will be the debate on Labour's beloved ID cards.
A generation from now, will anyone remember what freedom was?

Funny thing is they target everyone except the ones causing trouble because that would be "racist" and "politically incorrect."

Right on! Mealy mouthed, increases the problem every time. Tell it how it is and you start to correct things. I am sure, as soon as that happens, things get better.

I would not be surprised to hear "Welcome to City 17," if I ever visit Britain.

Big brother is at home in England.

Generally, we complain that 1984, George Orwell' s warning, has been surpassed here, and the Big Brother state is well advanced; we are the most spied upon people in the world. We also must be the most tolerant, calm, passive to a point people you could ever find. Our closest neighbours, the French, would just never wear it - up with the cobbles, and we have to take a leaf out of their book , and soon!

I think the French are getting it right more and more these days. They're just bad at fighting Germans, that's all!

Come on now. Do I really have to ask you not to disparage another country?

Woops! Sorry. But yeah I was really impressed with France the last time I visited which was the past summer.