I don’t often disagree with ScepticIsle, but I do on one point. He says we’re sleepwalking towards a police state. I fear we’re marching there.From tomorrow, it will, in effect , be illegal to photograph policemen.Of course, the government will claim that the intention of this act is to stop terrorists preparing to kidnap policemen. This is phooey. For one thing, we know that so-called “anti-terrorist” laws are used to harass innocent people and have no use in catching terrorists. And the police are already using absurd pretexts to stop people taking photos.Instead, the effect of this measure is obvious. Say the police are attacking an innocent person - which they do . A by-passer takes photos as evidence. He is then arrested under the act and the photos then disappear. The CPS then drops charges against the police as it has no evidence.It doesn’t matter that our by-passer will probably escape conviction as he has a “reasonable excuse.” The damage is done.It’s already very difficult to prosecute the police even when a jury finds that they lied through their teeth. This act will make it even harder, and will enable the police to further mistreat and harrass ordinary people.The police are, in effect, above the law. What’s more, whereas the public cannot photograph the police, the police are increasingly freely photographing even wholly innocent members of the public.In this sense, the police - far from being the servants of the public, as Robert Peel intended, are increasingly becoming an army of occupation. Any of you, I suspect, could give everyday examples of an arrogance more suited to an ill-disciplined mob than to a public service.Herein, though, lies something that puzzles me. Leftists of my generation were raised to be deeply suspicious of the police: Blair Peach Cherry Groce , and the miners strike taught us this. Why is it, then, that a government many of whose members were similarly socialised should be so keen to give them even more power, even though they know this will be misused?