One Thousand Shades of Grey

The UK is allegedly the most recorded populous on the face of the planet with the average Londoner being caught on CCTV three hundred times a day, and apparently one CCTV camera for every 12 people in Britain. The Guardian recently reported that thousands of CCTV cameras across Britain have now been converted to read number plates using auto number plate recognition technology and that nationally roadside cameras are now reading fifty million number plates a day, and that the details of these “recorded” journeys will be kept on record for five years. The scary thing about surveillance techniques applied, apparently put in place to protect us from crime is that they are frequently and systematically being used to control minute aspects of communal living, with councils using CCTV and other surveillance apparatus to record and fine litterbugs , parking offences, bin men, shopkeepers and in Derby even noisy children this is all perfectly legal under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers...

Last week the Sun ran an article on the recent tragic killing of 16-year-old Mohammed Al Majed, a Qatari foreign language student in Hastings. I don’t usually bother to read the Sun as I prefer to source a cheaper and softer quality of toilet paper, however they made the effort to write a full page article slagging off my town so it was inevitably bought to my attention. I just wanted to congratulate Anila Baig on some truly top quality journalism! I mean why bother to get on a train from London just to hang around outside a games arcade an interview a couple of local chav’s who predictably spout the kind of xenophobic rubbish you would expect from people whose main occupation of their time is loitering around the arcades. In fact I guess you used that location because you knew that was exactly the kind of response that you would get, it is clear from your article that you have made every effort to paint Hastings in the worst light possible, as a decaying seaside resort with no pros...