UK's lost moral compass

As a society we have a choice: open or police state.

And I am talking about surveillance: CCTV, Internet, mobile phone… all of these are increasingly being used to survey people's place and actions. The actions may be criminal, but that is in the spectrum of society. Not all of society is good. And punishing the bad is not a way to reform society. Even prisons now focus on reform of the individual rather than punishment, the re-enforcement of moral values.

UK has more CCTV cameras than any other country in the world, they are used for viewing the most absurd activities: like emptying the wrong things into a wheely bin.

Internet surveillance is reaching increasingly across all of us, when we thought we had finally a tool to improve society's communication and understanding, the UK government want to treat it with special concern and monitor all communications. They surely are stupid, the internet is just like standing talking to a friend on a street corner - or is that illegal now too?

Mobile phones are widely used to track people, as long as you have your phone switched on it spends an amount of time polling for the nearest cell tower, so that it knows where you for are any incoming phone call. This information is all in a computer and accessing it provides a way to track you. Even shopping complexes are using it now to track shoppers as they go round and build a view of there activities.

So it is time to say NO. We do not want to be tracked and monitored. The intrusion outways the risk of non-detection and crime prevention.

There is a better way to improve society: that is to improve our moral education. This is the job of churches, mosques and other moral or religious establishments. A challenge that they are not facing up to today. When we elect (sorry appoint) a new archbishop of Canterbury soon, let's keep this very much in mind.