Police in Britain’s Greater Manchester area are using a sophisticated, and obviously overpriced, new weapon in the never ending battle against average citizens… the CCTV-Equipped Smart car. The Smart car has a 12 foot mast with a camera on top, along with a computer that records everything it sees, digitally. No longer will the filthy criminal get away with such anti-social behavior as “adjusting the radio” or “combing their hair” without the unblinking eye of THE MAN seeing it; and of course, billing you for it. Because that’s the whole point of these systems, revenue collection. They see a driver with one hand off the wheel, they send said driver a ticket, which said driver will pay because he’s a polite Englishman who stutters charmingly. They all do that, it’s part of their genetic predisposition towards social awkwardness. They all have that too.

They’re all also completely dead on the inside from living in a country with 4.2 million CCTV cameras, and where they force themselves to put on a show of unnatural politeness 24 hours a day lest the infinite watching cameramen catch them doing anything close to antisocial behavior; or a bit of the old ultraviolence.

That entire country is walking around in such a daze of fear and phony cheerfulness that they don’t even realize how completely absurd their country looks to the rest of the world. Privacy International rates Britain along with China and Malaysia in terms of protecting individual privacy. It’s ranked as the worst Western democracy in the world in that regard. And now they have roving cameracars focused on catching drivers who are adjusting their radios?

It’s time to take a cricket bat to those cameras. And don’t forget to Digg us: