The Future .............................tx samizdata

This is the future:
I pulled up at the checkpoint on the outskirts of town, waved down by the ever present uniforms.
"License, ID and travel permit please sir." said the traffic warden after I'd wound down my window, his conspicuously armed friend wandering around my car and peering in the windows. "Travelling alone are we sir?"
"Yes, as it says on my permit." I Reply. Travelling in general is frowned upon these days, but travelling alone in a car built to hold five is looked upon with the same disdain as injecting heroin in public.
"Says here you're going to pick up you wife from hospital sir. Sick was she?" sneers the officer, his friend now using a mirror on a stick to check under the car.
I open my mouth, my reply forming itself before my brain can intervene. This, with hindsight, is where it all went wrong, a life destroyed because of a careless word. It was almost worth it to see the look on the officious little pric*s face, I don't think anyone has talked like that to him in a very long time. "Very, not that its any of your business. Can I go?" was my response to his disdain and what I got in return was "If you'd like to step out of the car sir, there are a couple of things we have to check."
That was 2 years ago, as far as I know my wife is still waiting to be picked up...
Fin
Thats where we're going, no travel without premission (unless of course you walk everywhere), every movement monitored, regulated and controlled. Usually by disgusting little bureaucrats who get their kick from making people miserable, and can manipulate the system to such a degree that revenge may mean being banged up for a totally fictitious crime. All perfectly legal of course because the system has been 'abused'.
Its not those at the top who we have to worry most about when our country completes its transition to a totalitarian regime, its the little men with their clipboards and forms and rules. They're the ones who can work magic with a monolithic bureacracy, and bend it to their will. All the poor sods who don't really want to be paper pushers, form fillers, or grey men who don't go out much and have a cat. They resent their jobs and take it out on whoever they come into contact with. We've all met them, we all know who they are. Imagine them with a gun and the ability to make you disappear for anything from a few days to a few years
This is where Cameron, Blair, et al, are taking us. Prompted by those empty cans who rattle at every Daily Mail headline, Guardian environmental crisis, and every shot from the air pistol of government scaremongering. It is not going to stop, there is nothing you can do to oppose it, the system will not allow it. I'm really shocked that everyone seems so surprised by the behaviour of politicians these days. Petition the Queen to dissolve parliament and start again from scratch. She can still do that can't she?