[DemolitionRed]

1984 was a novel, not a manual…Britain owns and runs quarter of the worlds CCCT cameras, the largest of any country. That’s 4.2 million cameras which makes it one camera for every 14 people. Britain is obsessed with security and we are all paranoid about our safety.

I was walking through the City of London with a barrister last year when we came across a very distraught elderly lady who was being held by 2 security guards. It turned out that she’d been waiting for her daughter outside some offices and had put her cigarette out on the pavement. The man behind the camera who’d been watching her signalled for security officers to attend. Neither my colleague nor myself are smokers and neither of us approve of people stubbing their fags out in the road but this was complete overkill. The barrister intervened and read these guys the riot act and the old lady who was shaking and crying could only repeat, “Please forgive me, I’m not a criminal”. This is authoritarian Britain today. The more I sea and learn, the less I want to live here.