Now obviously it stands to reason that if you enter Big Brother 7 then your every movement - bowel or otherwise, will be scrutinised by the nation. But did you know that there are now over 4 million CCTV Cameras in the UK? That means you are going to struggle to move around without your every move being observed. We are quite possibly living our own Truman Show!

How awful that poor Danni Minogue can't go to a lap dancing club for a bit of girlie fun without the CCTV pictures turning up in the News of the World (February 5 edition - in case you want to verify my research).

Well it's about to get an awful lot worse. Some bright spark has decided that tagging can be taken to a whole new level and stores are testing electronic tags that monitor goods. Obviously this has benefits in stopping shoplifting; however, in this consumer monitoring, profit motivated, all- seeing society, there is talk of the chips providing a life-cycle monitoring of clothes, goods etc.

This means companies will be able to track an item from production, through stock control, where it goes to when sold, where it is "eBay'd" to, and finally when it is thrown away.

Now, it strikes me this is potentially a very bad thing. I don't want anyone knowing what I'm doing with my goods. This type of nannying worries me greatly.

Tesco is trying to reassure us by saying "we wouldn't do anything to jeopardise the trust of our customers." This from the company that proudly advertises that if you give back the Christmas cards it sold to you, it could sell them to you again as toilet rolls! Before long they'll even know who has not returned the cards.

As Patrick McGoohan said in the Prisoner "I am a name not a number." Well not for much longer.

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