Mine's a Stella

The only surprising thing about the points which former MI5 chief Stella Rimington raised in her recent interview, in which she complained about the surveillance culture and the fact that we are living in a virtual police state fuelled by anti-libertarian legislation forced through on the pretext that it will somehow make us safer from terrorism, is that it was Stella Rimington who said it.

Other than that, it falls into the category of "an announcement from the Ministry of the Bleedin' Obvious". There can now only be a few remote indigenous people in the Kalahari who haven’t realised the underlying truth of what she said yet.

And the most chilling thing about it, was that the government didn’t really try and put up any counter argument. I mean, here you have the former head of MI5 – of all people – saying that this has all gone too far, and the government response is “Yeah, so what? What are you going to do about it?”