The Big Brother world of UK 2008

Many years ago, when the Soviet Union still loomed like a malignant mushroom over much of Eastern Europe, my wife and I went on holiday to the Black Sea coast of Rumania. Still in the grips of the Ceaucescu family, Rumania in those far off days was a model of Soviet idiocy. It had no unemployment because anybody caught walking the streets during the day was simply rounded up, thrown into a lorry and taken to the nearest road works or collective farm.
There was, officially, no poverty or hunger. This was due less to the triumph of socialism over starvation than the fact that all of the peasants who worked the collective farms also grew their own fruit and vegetables on private 1/2 acre plots. It was the bounty from these plots - which contrasted strongly with the arid inefficiency of the huge collectives - that not only fed them but also provided some of the small extras that made life bearable.
Locals sold plums, berries and vegetables at the side of the road, at small street markets and direct from their small holdings. If they could sell to a tourist, so much the better because they could exchange the hard currency they received for up to four times the official exchange rate and that would enable them to buy proper leather shoes rather than the plastic creations that were the regulation issue to the state shoe shops. With a bit of luck, the money might also stretch to a pair of tights for their wife or daughter.
There was no homelessness because, everywhere one looked, blocks of identical, slab-sided apartments were being thrown up. Apart from their monotonous ugliness - imagine Sixties Council architecture and then brutalise it even more - what was most striking about these flats was the fact that, at one end of each storey, there was one unit that was considerably larger than all of the others. I asked our Yugoslavian tour guide if these apartments were for larger families. He laughed at the idea that any such level of human consideration had gone into their construction.
The answer was much more prosaic - and infinitely more sinister.
Our guide explained that the larger flats were for the Government informers who were installed on each floor of each block. Their job - i.e. that of the whole family - was to keep tabs on their neighbours and report any infractions, such as complaints about food shortages, to the authorities so that the miscreants coud be dealt with in the appropriate way. Sanctions included being re-housed in inferior accommodation, the loss of job or travel privileges or, in severe cases, breaking the family up and sending its members to different re-education camps scattered about the Rumanian countryside.
At first I thought it was odd that the government seemed happy for everyone to know precisely who and where the spies were in each block of flats. It was only once I thought about George Orwell's 1984 that I appreciated the sophistication of the methods that the Rumanians - in common with other Socialist Republics - employed to terrorise their citizenry into meek compliance. It was the very visibility of the spies that lent real menace to the arrangement. The knowledge that whatever you did or even thought was being monitored and reported back. I can remember the shudder which greeted this dawning of understanding. It was Big Brother made flesh.
I experienced a similar feeling of revulsion the other day when I read about an ordinary family in Poole, surely the epitomy of Middle England, who had been systematically stalked, shadowed and reported on for three weeks because some busybody in the local council thought they migh be trying to pull a fast one when it came to schooling for one of their children.
I tried to picture some minor council clerk, who years ago would have settled quite happily for totting up how many childen were eligible for free milk, spending his days in some sub-James Bond role, shadowing the family as they moved through their sinister world: from school to Tesco, to work, back to school, to piano lessons after tea, back home and finally to pick up the oldest child from pony riding lessons.
How did this fantasist feel, writing things like, "female subject and three children enter dwelling,. Lights on"? How did his, presumably, intelligent manager keep a straight face when he signed his expenses? The whole scenario sounds so farcical that the temptation is to laugh it off as yet another example of institutionalised stupidity.
But, that would be a mistake. This is much more sinister than that. It is evidence of a fundamental shift in our society. Once we were served by Public Servants whose role, at a local level, was to maintain the roads, dispose of our rubbish and ensure that the streets were kept clean and reasonably well lit. It was never a part of their remit to spy on us, whether in person or via an array of cameras and other electronic gadgets.
Now, the relationship is much more that of the Governed and the Governors. In this new arrangement, it is the State, in all its forms, that regards itself as the font of all our needs. It is the State that decrees not only what those needs might be but who will or will not be entitled to them. And it is the State that demands to kknow everything about us the better - according to its propaganda machine - to protect us from the 0.00001% of the population that wants to blow the rest of us up; or, at the very least , steal our identities and rip off the benefits system.
In the early days of this administration, the Press ran regular stories about our being the most surveilled country in the world. Government ministers poo-pooed the idea while secrectly, I suspect, waiting for the backlash that was certain to come from an enraged and outraged populace demanding an end to the surveillance society. It didn't happen. The famous British hatred of Government interference turned out to be a myth. Cruelty TV shows such as Big Brother, helped to feed our newly-found appetite for nosey-parkering and, no doubt, encouraged the state to extend its own use of electronic surveillance whether through CCTV cameras on every street corner or Gatsos on every dual cariageway and motorway.
Now, the government - whether local or National - makes no attempt to deny that it wants to tag and track the population at large. The idea of a national ID Card hasn't gone away, simply been put on the back-burner until the army of beaurocrats and expensive consultants enlisted to run the project can come up with a system that might actually work. Just today, another little story crept into the broadsheets about the DOT inviting tenders for the development of a vehicle tracking system that would log every car journey made within the UK. The offical line is that, at this stage, it's just an exercise to find out what sort of tracking equipment is currently available. However, there was nothing vehement or even defensive about the disclaimer.
Just like the Rumanians all those years ago, this government has discovered the virtue of letting us all know that Big Brother really is watching us.