“Imagine telling somebody twenty years ago” that by 2008, it would be illegal to smoke in a pub or bus shelter or your own vehicle, and also illegal not to have a “no smoking” sign in your car, or in your home if you work there, or that there would be £80 fines for dropping cigarette butts, or that the words “tequila slammer” would be illegal or the government would mandate what angle a drinker’s head in an advertisement may be tipped at, or that it would be illegal to criticise religions or homosexuality, or rewire your own house, or that having sex after a few drinks would be classed as rape or that the State would be confiscating children for being overweight. Imagine telling them the government would be contemplating ration cards for fuel and even foods, that every citizen would be required to carry an ID card filled with private information which could be withdrawn at the state’s whim.

Imagine that private property and private contracts were no longer private, the right to a jury trial had been abolished, as had the double-jeopardy rule, and you could be locked up with no justification, just on the state’s say-so, and released weeks later without compensation, your career destroyed. Imagine the police had imposed curfew in some areas of the country, and designated others “dispersal zones” where they could break up any gathering of three persons or more. Imagine the state spied on you using anti-terrorism legislation to make sure that you didn’t put the “wrong” things in your bin, or that you didn’t send your child to the “wrong” school. Imagine it was illegal to look at photos of consenting people doing legal things. Imagine it was illegal to protest outside parliament without a licence, and you could be arrested for reading the names of war dead. Imagine that a politician could be placed under house arrest for embarrassing the government, and that people could be extradited for things which are not crimes in this country.

“They’d have thought you a paranoid loon.”