Since I don’t live in London anymore (and haven’t been there since last October), I hadn’t heard about the Metropolitan Police’s latest insane ad campaign to basically inform us that we should be suspicious of everyone and everything (you can see the ads here), and the fact that it also ties in with the way that Britain is now a place where anyone with a camera can be hassled and threatened with criminal prosecution for simply taking a picture in a public place. It’s the kind of thing that really makes me keen on moving to another country, and makes me angry – because in so many respects, the ‘War against Terror’ has already been lost because, frankly, the terrorists set out to cause terror, and that’s exactly what they’ve done. And the Government’s response is more security, more paranoia, and more ways of making the general populace frightened, paranoid, and likely to turn on anyone just because they’re different.

(As an aside – on my recent air trip (to Cornwall, obviously a terrorism hot-spot), I had to throw away a tube of hair-gel I’d accidentally left in my hand luggage. Not news, of course, but it was mostly empty – the amount in the tube was well below the limit they set but, in one of those feats of nonsense there’s just no point in arguing with, the limit is determined by the amount that the tube was designed to take. And when are these rules finally going to be relaxed? Never, because there’s never going to be a point when anyone can say conclusively that the War on Terror is over. It all just makes me want to throw my hands up in the air…)

Anyhow – I wouldn’t have heard about this if it wasn’t for wonderful blog BoingBoing, and they’ve just put up a selection of remixes of the posters, many of which are quite brilliant. Have a look, enjoy, and let’s just hope that the downward spiral doesn’t continue. I was always hoping the future would turn out to be 2001: A Space Odyssey – unfortunately, it’s looking more like Terry Gilliam’s classic dystopia Brazil…