Secrets and Slaves. (Get angry. Right now.)

Ah, Monday morning. You never disappoint. I raise a glass on Friday, sleep through a lot of Saturday, get to spend some quality time throwing dried pasta at Mrs Harkaway and giggling, celebrate life a bit more in the evening, and chill out on Sunday. Then Monday comes along, with a fresh crop of crazy for me to enjoy.

Today's crazy comes courtesy of Her Majesty's Government, and if you live in the UK you need to pay very close attention to this one. This is not a kidding-around issue, or a distant issue. This is a real, serious, get-off-yer-arse issue.

In fact, as I look at my paper (today it's the Independent, because that's what the last guy left behind) I realise there are two get-off-yer-arse issues.

Isn't that just great? Barack Obama's waiting to undo 200 ill-advised Busheries, and in my beloved London, Gordon Brown is still racking up his own tally of authoritarianism and stupidity.  Makes me feel proud to carry a passport. No doubt I'll feel even prouder when I have a biometric ID card and the government loses all my data.

So, here's issue 1:

Human Trafficking Not A Priority

The modern slave trade is a growing horror, it's very real and very nasty. The UK is a choice destination for human trafficking. Oh, yes, it is. We're a slaving centre. Don't it just make you glad?

So glad, in fact, that we're no longer funding the police team which was out there trying to stop it. I know there's a recession on - although everyone's still eating in expensive restaurants, apparently - but really, is this a good place to cut? 

No. No, it isn't.

And then there's this little gem:

MPs seek to censor media

Yes, beloved reader, they really do. They want more power to prevent newspapers from reporting, on grounds of national security. Ohhh, boy. Now, never mind that that's a phrase which, as the man says, has lost a great deal o' meanin' lately. This is an area with a very, very inglorious history. (See Ordtech, Binyam Mohamed, Bisher al-Rawi)

Broadly speaking, our leaders have a long track history of doing bad things, claiming they haven't, and slapping an "Official Secret" stamp on it when someone comes along and demands to know the score. They do this even (or particularly) when someone has been specifically asked to involve themselves in murky doings by our intelligence services. They seem to feel quite easy about selling people downriver, abandoning them to be tried in our courts (or somewhere less charmingly quaint about habeas corpus) for things we asked them to do, and putting the whole thing under the sign of the rose.

For example, in the Ordtech case...

Paul Grecian, head of Ordtech, had been working as a Special Branch informer and was the first person to inform Whitehall that President Saddam Hussein of Iraq was building a "supergun" with the help of British companies. Despite that, he was investigated and prosecuted by HM Customs and Excise.

Evidence withheld by ministers from the trial, but finally disclosed on appeal, revealed the full extent of his assistance to Scotland Yard's Special Branch and MI5 and MI6.

However, officials were prepared to disavow his help. In August 1990 a Foreign Office official reportedly compiled a briefing note for the security services, which said: "If Ordtech ends up in court {Mr Grecian} may be persuaded to keep quiet about his connections with {Special Branch} and yourselves but there is an obvious risk he will try the 'working for British intelligence' ploy."

I'm not saying that's what this legislation is intended for. There may be a genuine concern here - though, as with the infamous 42-day legislation, it seems to be proposed on the basis of "situations which might occur at some point in the future but haven't yet".

What I am saying is that no government can be trusted to behave. 

Isn't that sad?

And yet, at the same time, unquestionably true.

They simply cannot be permitted this degree of autonomy. It's like leaving your dog locked in the kitchen with a joint of beef on the counter. Howevermuch they start out intending to be good, sooner or later a circumstance will come along where it is absolutely imperative that the dog eats your Sunday roast. It's not that they want to. It's just that it has to be done. 

And if that strikes you as shrill, you should probably check out some of the uses to which anti-terror laws have been put recently...

A council has used powers intended for anti-terrorism surveillance to spy on a family who were wrongly accused of lying on a school application form.

For two weeks the middle-class family was followed by council officials who wanted to establish whether they had given a false address within the catchment area of an oversubscribed school to secure a place for their three-year-old.

There's nothing particularly remarkable or sinful about this. It's on a par with a lot of things people do in the world. It does mean, though, that we can't just let our leaders get on with it. They have to be scrutinised - especially when they want a free hand.

So write and tell them so. Do it now - it only needs a couple of lines.