There has been a fundamental shift in the past year from officials needing to make the case for restricting our freedoms to - in this country anyway - officials being asked to make the case for lifting them. Just watch any news or read any paper: the forces presuming liberty as a starting point are absent.

The shift has come from a weak opposition that tries to "out protect" the people at all turns compared with the Government (from the comfort seat of theory) and a supine people who have seemed in many quarters to welcome restrictions and the clarity of being told what to do. Or just are understandably now bored into passivity by the whole thing.

What this might mean for our future? We need the next Orwell to start imagining; or perhaps these days Spielberg or Video Game designers...