Useless Surveillance Generation EU Bilge

* Perhaps we should should all chip in some extra cash for MI5 so they can recruit more people to follow up all that data the've been collecting. The fact that they had been watching a couple of the July 7 bombers for a number of years but couldn't afford any spooks to stop them (or be bothered to notify the local police) says a lot about the people running our surveillance society.

Imagine the even vaster amounts of data now being collected and which will be collected if the National Identity Register and ID card set up come on stream. Pointless, expensive and unjustified. You can bet they won't catch any terrorists or criminals as a result but there will be a lot of ordinary innocent people harassed, bullied and wrongly convicted.

* In Euro Fantasy Land Mary Dejevsky reckons her generation has failed to 'promote a vision of Europe'. What a surprise. As I've said before, the EU doesn't really like too much publicity, because if people started to find out the truth the whole project would begin to unravel.

The EU is a new form of organisation, in which a little sovereignty is sacrificed, by consent, to the greater good. We Europeans can live, work and travel with a freedom not experienced except by the rich in the days of the Grand Tour. Most internal EU borders have melted away, while a common sense of security has given each individual nation the security to be itself.

Oh, the wonders of the EU. How could we survive without it?