HMRC, NSPCC, RSPCA, parking wardens, local authorities and so on are all examples of a blight creeping across a previously freer country. These institutions act, to varying degrees, on the basis of presumed guilt or have officials operating under a unitary judge-jury-and- executioner system.
The best remedy to a system of presumed guilt, of course, is to give these Gestapo just what they want and turn everyone into suspects. The result will be such an overload of cases that they have to go back to how things best worked in the past: guilty before innocent. Busybodies, slanderers, malicious gossips, incompetents and plain idiots will have to produce some shred of evidence of misdemeanor, which should separate the wheat from the chaff.
It would take an inordinate and quite possibly impossible amount of political clout to reverse the decline of our freedoms. However, by demonstrating how impractical a system of presumed guilt is, perhaps we can force some sense into the system.
Pick up your phone books, chaps! Anonymous email accounts (hide your IP address through a proxy), letters with random return addresses (wear gloves) and phone calls using voice synthesisers and cash prepaid PAYG phones are the way to go.
N5