...about Government data that WAS password protected. A step in the right direction...?

"Soon, authorities may also be able to enter your home to inspect for non-human genetic material, for looted cultural property from Iraq and for 'undeclared' carbon dioxide."

Well excuse me for breathing...

Well, well, they're going for those too now. Oh dear. Alright, it's a fair cop, you can have all the methane that I've stored without a proper license. Here you go. And there's more where *that* came from. You're welcome.

Mine's the one with the big ballon on the back.

... direct marketing company restricting itself from sending anything to me. As I happen to live in Middlesex.

I worked for a defence company who decided to instigate blocking software for any words like 'confidential' or 'secret'. At the same time they instigated a legal disclaimer that was automatically appended to be bottom of every email, which contained the phrase 'This email may contain information which is confidential to this company'.

We spend days in happy ignorance that every single email from the whole company was being trashed.

before we all have to supply a key to our property to the local authorities then. And Plod. And HM C&E.

That's presuming we're going to be allowed to have our own 'property' in GB's new Stalinist State.

You might be allocated a coat, if you're lucky, and toe the party line.

What, like a cat? What happens if they find one?

However, to be fair to the Home Office, there is no evidence that it is any worse than any other government department in this respect.

Somehow I get a tight restricted breathing feeling when I try to analyse that. Oi! What's that chap doing with my hey.. you...

Strewth, looks like our pot plants are all in for it! Presumably they'll all shortly need biometric passports with leaf scans and their DNA will go on a government database. I expect we'll need to produce that documentation so we can offset their CO2-absorbing powers against the new household CO2 tax ... so that'll be ten more pages of tax return to fill in (and special plant credits for the elderly to claim).

I guess the US will also get to see the details through some high-level agreement. After all, big bushy pot plants could be concealing terrorists. And they'll obviously want to know about any castor-oil plants.

Then of course there are the, ahem, lethal "pot" plants. I imagine they'll get deported cos they won't have a visa, but we'll need detention centres while their cases go through he courts. Just hope there aren't any fires.

We'll have to think of the children(!!!) too. Plants with big kiddy-skewering spines and carnivorous ones that could digest a small nipper will clearly need special regulation. A licensing scheme involving a huge IT project and expensive annual checks on everyone who's ever owned a pot plant should do the job nicely. That and compulsory CCTV in every greenhouse.

Thing is, will they delete all this PII (Plant Identification Information) when it's no longer needed? I'd hate to think they still had a dossier on my cactus that popped its clogs years ago.

I'd get my coat, but it's covering my baby marrows. Can't be too careful with all those paedos about!

u=v... Good suggestion. My humble offering is s=5.

...presumably, inhaling is okay - we're just not permitted to exhale. Oh, and whilst we're mentioning great non-exhalers... AKA 'he of the presidential seal of approval' (lol) I still believe him when he said, "I did not have 5exual relations with that woman"... after all, all they did was talk about it over a nice fat cigar... didn't they?

I'm none too certain what a "plant passport" is but suspect it's along the lines of a phytosanitary certificate: a piece of paper issued by the agricultural authorities in one country assuring the agricultural authorities in another country that a certain specimen of a certain plant is free of pests and diseases.

Used to be these were easy and cheap to get, so individuals found it practical, for example, to import plants from the UK into Canada, from the US into Canada, and so on, in complete conformity to the law.

But the "user pay" concept took over, the fees rose to prohibitive levels, and those days are now past. This application of "user pay" overlooks the fact that it's in everyone's interest to keep out plant pests and diseases, not just the importer who desperately wants a specimen of the double-flowered, silver-variegated form of /Veriolitsis glomulama/, the better to indulge in gamesmanship with his fellow plant nuts.

Gardeners, however, are as a class criminals and have never let anything as simple as a missing piece of paper stop them. The rise in fees has the net result that more plants are smuggled without inspection than ever before.

[Aside: phytosanitary certificates issued by China are, as you would expect, worthless. A small bribe is all that is required to get one, evidently, regardless of the subject plants' health.]

As for the Colorado potato beetle, it's a serious pest and one that's been the subject of serious efforts to block from the UK. But laws to facilitate this have been on the books a long time: probably things like mandating reports of any infestations found, and so on. Look at how the hoof & mouth disease outbreaks in Britain have been handled for an example of how this works.

And, moreover, no thinking citizen would disagree with a law giving entry in pursuit of a Colorado potato beetles.

At one time, the theoretical view of the law was that statutes merely gave voice to what everyone agreed was the law: no raping, stabbing, killing, stealing, etc. NuLizar (hail our Lizard Overlords) doesn't understand this bedrock conception, and thinks they can pass laws to institute their personal silly ideas.

Just as Monte Python had silly walks, so NuLizar has silly thoughts.

Gordon Brown & Jacqui Brown in a Punch & Judy show, anyone? Or have P&J shows been outlawed as tending to encourage violence among the young? (As thought without them Britain is an utterly peaceful place where no one does anything awful to anyone else.)

Better stop; I'm starting to rant. Please forgive me, O Divine Moderatrix!