John Walsh's article about Big Brother is fucking nonsensical bullshit. His argument is that the success of the reality show Big Brother - which wraps up in a couple of weeks time - transformed Britain into a surveillance state. 
The most genuinely shocking thing about Big Brother, however, is how casually we accepted its dubious strategies.
we've quietly become a nation of housemates, endlessly spied on by authorities and by businesses.
Yes, but is there a causal connection? Damn, is there even a correlation? If all that is requried is presence of Big Brother-style reality shows, surely the same can be said for other countries that show a variant of Big Brother including, oh, the Netherlands, Poland, Australia, South Africa, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Israel, the United States, Canada, Brazil, India, Ecuador, Mexico, Nigeria, Spain, Switzerland and many more countries. And that is just the Big Brother franchise. There are plenty of other similar shows in countries all around the world. Has Grande Fratello plunged Italy into a surveillance society?
If Walsh thinks that the installation of CCTV or "the surveillance society" or whatnot is driven by Channel 4 reality shows, he is just delusional. I'm pretty sure that all the blasted Home Office ministers who have been dropping these barmy edicts over the duration of the New Labour project - Jack Straw, Blunkett, Clarke, Reid and Smith - weren't sitting there in the Cabinet thinking "ah, I know. CCTV won't be popular with the public, but if we can only get Davina McCall on board..."
Presumably now that Big Brother in the UK is coming to an end, this is going to prompt the public into being disgusted with the surveillance society and a rollback of all the illiberal stuff that Walsh bangs on about. He's really in a perfect position: if it does happen, we can thank the fact that we don't have reality shows on TV any more. If it doesn't happen, then, who cares? It is just a piece in The Independent. I mean, changing policy on surveillance has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that we've voted in a different government. No, change of government is far less important in determining societal attitudes to surveillance than a reality TV show.
Today, if you open a pub, the police will try to install CCTV in it to keep tabs on the drinkers. If you, the landlord, complain that you don't like this intrusion upon your customers' privacy, you could lose your licence.
This puts it in sharp relief really. Who watches reality TV? Young people. People my age. The BBC3 demographic. Hardly the sort of law and order types who are grumbling to the newspapers about how the police need to "crack down" on alcohol-driven violence outside pubs. No, the political will for that comes from an altogether older set of voters. Much more Songs of Praise than Big Brother.
There's loads more rubbish in the above linked article. But I can't be arsed. Damnit, the pain is bad enough without any more of this rubbish.
