The Lords are our saving grace, yet again. This undemocratic but venerable institution is doing its level best to save us from the authoritarian tendencies of Big Brother this Labour government.

The government has been defeated in the House of Lords over the issue of keeping people’s DNA and fingerprints on the police national database.

Peers backed a Tory amendment calling for specific guidelines to help people seeking to have their details removed from the database by 161 votes to 150.

But ministers are unlikely to redraft the legislation, arguing that existing public safeguards will be sufficient. (BBC)

It seems that the House of Lords represents more of the electorate than the elected House of Commons, as they fight for us to keep our civil liberties.

Yet even as they do this, they just keep on driving deeper and deeper inroads into our rights and freedoms. Such as ID cards being brought in by the back door, little by little, so that by the time people notice, it’s already too late, as from later this month “ID cards [will be] compulsory for foreign nationals who come to Britain.” And this will spread to the some Britons from autumn next year. And then slowly and pervasively out across us all. Until we all exist only as a magnetic strip, all of our personal information just a swipe away.

But of course they’re not content with just that. They want to press ahead with their plan to know everything we communicate as well. So that nothing we say or write can ever be private again. After all, they’re The Government! We’re just their pawns, not real people!

I’m glad that we have sent the MP edition of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four to parliament. Maybe they’ll read it and realise where they’re going wrong…

Fat chance. They’ll probably read it and realise that the telescreen would be a far more effective tool for them, knowing our luck and these politicians…