It sounded like an April Fool's joke, when it was reported that Middlesbrough's "talking" CCTV cameras - warning litterbugs "you are being watched" - will be extended to the rest of the country. But no, Big Brother is soon to come to a camera near you. After all, there are 4.2m CCTV cameras here, more than anywhere else in the world - one for every 14 persons.

And as if this was not bad enough, last week Blair's Work and Pensions secretary, John Hutton, made an announcement that also sounded like "April Fool"!! Only this too, was deadly serious.

Harrow Council's benefit staff are to pilot the use of a lie detector to "strengthen the fight against benefit fraud". "Voice Risk Analysis" technology will analyse changes in a caller's voice, during applications for housing or council tax benefit. It will register changes in intonation and assess who sounds "suspicious" and then the person would be asked to provide further "evidence" for their claim.

We are told this "ground breaking technology" has already been used successfully in the insurance industry. Later in the year, Jobcentre Plus will begin using it on their systems as well.

In other words, anyone who is poor enough (a large proportion of pensioners, the low paid and those who have lost their jobs) will now risk being criminalized on the strength of a phone application for benefit!

But, says Hutton, the phone operators will be "trained in intelligent questioning... which allows them to assess the risk in a conversation through the identification of categories of emotional content"! Sure, we can trust them!

And just why is the government choosing to do this? Benefit fraud apparently accounts for around 4.7% of expenditure, already down by two thirds since 2001. We are not told the price tag for the lie detectors compared to such chickenfeed savings to the benefits system. Yes, chickenfeed, compared with the losses from tax evasion by the rich! Yet we can be sure the rich are not going to be subjected to lie detectors when filling in their tax forms! But Blair's measures against the poor always appeal to these same rich people, who despise the working class and regard their own theft as just playing the system and "being smart".

And while the poor are criminalized, who will really benefit? You guessed it! The ever-growing private parasite Capita, which feasts almost solely on government contracts, and which along with Digilog UK, will supply the system and "advise on its use and training". So there, at least, is part of the answer.