Eric the snoopocrat slayer

The cornerstone of the NuLabour regime's comprehensive assault on British civil liberties was the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000), which was sold as offering greater protection from Big Brother by regulating the use of surveillance by the police and security services.

In fact, by extending the justification from the limiting scope of national security to the broad remit of protecting public health and the "economic well-being" of Britain, it became a charter for the mean-spirited little shits who form the backbone of any leftist party: the curtain-twitchers who seek compensation for the inadequacy of their own lives by interfering with the lives of others and who gravitate to local politics.

Fresh from abolishing the squalid monster that the Audit Commission had become, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Eric "the Man" Pickles' next target is the power to snoop that should never have been given to such people. The Coalition's Programme for Government states:

We will ban the use of powers in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) by councils, unless they are signed off by a magistrate and required for stopping serious crime.

I am more than a little worried that "stopping serious crime" leaves the back door open for snoopocrats who can count on like-minded magistrates, but I am timidly confident that Pickles is shrewd enough to close it.

Let all who value civil liberties pray daily that - contrary to appearances - he is watching his cholesterol, because he appears to be the only member of this government who realizes how easy it is to demolish the rancid edifice built by Blair and Brown and their utterly contemptible followers.