If you're not really interested in politics/political stuff, then you can either look away now, or do yourself and the rest of us a favour, and give your head a shake, take a look around, and think, "hmm, actually, I don't like the state of things, maybe I should do something about it".

Checking through my feeds today, I noticed a lovely little story doing the rounds about the fact that if you go on a protest in the UK now, you're not a protester, you're a "domestic extremist".

Yup, people who aren't criminals, who've done no crime, and have no criminal record, are on a secret police database, used by three police units who seemingly won't disclose their budgets, or, in the case of two of the departments, even name their heads of operations.

Also, according to FIT Watch, ANPR units have been used to keep an eye on who has been coming and going to certain events, including climate camp. But it's OK, I'm sure that falls under the "don't worry, we won't use our technology for snooping on anyone other than the bad guys" category.

I'd say it's the thin end of the wedge, but I think we've gone a long way past that now. We're a long way into the slicing the salami/boiling the frog thing.

Hopefully we're not too far down the salami, and that frog is going to notice what's going on soon, and hop out of the pan before it gets too warm...