Can't say I blame them. The time is long since past to be making plans and garnering resources to pack up and ship out of what may well become the next great prison-state.
My own visit to England a few weeks ago brought it home with a bang. Even a train journey into a medium sized British city showed a land blighted with CCTV and excess security checks. ANPR cameras all over the place around the major urban centres, the insidious Average Speed Cameras. Rarely did I see a proper policeman on foot patrol. Just the blank, anonymous, unremitting glassy stare of wall to wall surveillance. Even if the images are little better than useless at catching the real bad guys.
Another sinister pointer is when the powers that be think they can interfere in the appointments of a minor political party, you know the system is going to hell.
The whole of the UK is encrusted with rules upon rules, layers upon layers of suspicion that made me feel grubby after only a few minutes. It also left me with the distinct urge to scrub my skin clean from the inside every time I got back to our hotel room. A kind of patina has covered the land of my birth. A scummy layer that pollutes everything it touches. Those within it's cloying embrace will not notice because the changes have been so gradual, but changes there have been, and not for the better. Even old friends seemed tarnished by living there. Such is the New Labour legacy, and the Coalition appear to be continuing down the same sorry street.
It's the same shit, different day. No wonder some of the strongest voices are falling silent.
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