The 6pm news said it loud and proud. Footage of armed police flagging down motorists and searching their vehicles was beamed across the nation. The warning was out. But to who?

The Real IRA are thought by police to have been responsible for several bombs set off in london over the past year. The bombs have been many but injuries few. Most recently, a device detonated outside a post office, doing little damage. Why they would have chosen a post office is beyond me. They are notorious for cctv, in my experience.

But, with an election campaign coming up, MI5 have warned of a serious bomb threat to major cities. This is alledged justification to a police presence around the country comparable with last week's mayday protests, when the area was a virtually militarised zone. This may seem like a bad thing to some people. But lets look at the advantages of having an area strictly controlled by heavily armed police.

1. The roadblocks and searches carried out by police could potentially stop a member of the real IRA from causing injury and terror to the people of Britain.

2. The psychological impact of having the rule of law so strictly imposed may strike fear into those people in this country who fall foul of the law, that is to say *criminals*, which may force them to fall into line of how any good society is run.

3. There will inevitably be a large number of arrests for petty crimes, ie possession of drugs, and this will allow the police to 'process' many people through their computers and will allow the police to add plenty more undesirables into their dna database.

4. The media will have a great story to report on what a great job the police are doing at saving us from the madmen of this world, whilst demonising all those suffering from police attacks. This will create a psychological 'buffer zone' between those who share one set of beliefs and those who bitterly opose them, spurred on by media lies.

5. The right to privacy will no longer be an annoying hurdle in the way of all-important police time, since now all letters can be read, all emails, phone calls, faxes and text messages are no longer private, since the necessity has come about for total monitoring of all communications.

I wish all this stuff wasn't true.