The Government’s latest idea to provide a homage to George Orwell is to scan motorists fingerprints whenever they get stopped – apparently motorists are a bit too cagey when stopped. The problem with all of these kind of big brother plans that our Government(s) have introduced is that they are hardly ever symmetrical – it’s always about them checking on us and never the other way round. I’d be quite happy for this to be introduced if I could buy one of those scanners and get it hooked up to a database to confirm the identity of the officers when I get stopped – make sure they are who they say they are, don’t have any outstanding IPCC investigations, or a history of harassing motorists, etc.