April fools or spooks?

Isn’t it both bad taste and bad judgement for government to play April fools jokes?  Or for media to devise such jokes that purport to be serious reports of government?  Yet the BBC is reporting what must surely be an April Fools story about plans for Orwellian surveillence.

I used to think The Liar’s hostility to freedom of thought and speech was a historic anomaly: surely the parties of the smaller state / big society and the traditional champions of civil liberties would halt the advance of fascism.  But it seems not: first we have book burning on the coalition’s watch and nothing happens, then in a chilling rejection of free speech, someone gets locked up for being an arse on twitter (in sharp contrast to those who don’t get locked up for actual violent attacks).

As a software developer I have spent many years working on the dream of liberating us all from shackles of geography.  If the spirit of Blair still rules us and has extinguished that of Voltaire, maybe it’s time I shifted my attention in another direction.