Prime Minister Tony Blair today denied that Britain is now a police state, despite claims by Magistrates in Bootle that they had been 'overwhelmed by evidence' from the security services in the case of a man convicted of a parking offence.

Doug Ramsbottom, a salesman, said: "I had intended to plead guilty to the offence of being three days late paying my parking fine, but I was shocked when I thought what would be a ten minute hearing turned into a 17 day trial. The prosecution felt obliged to present all of the evidence they had against me."

Prosecution witness DC Dibble Mullet said: "We have a duty to present all of the evidence we have on an individual in order to secure a prosecution, and obviously the more evidence we have the longer it will take. In Mr Ramsbottom's case this involved evidence from the traffic warden and the DNA sample the warden took from the car door handle, related evidence from the national DNA database, and as he had decided not to opt out of the NHS database, Mr Mullet's NHS records."

"We also had to provide evidence of how we had located Mr Mullet on a variety of CCTV cameras and on our national vehicle database which maps all UK vehicle journeys and stores them for at least two years. Even though he was already on his way to the Courthouse, we also had to show how we had located Mullet by his mobile phone signals."

"We think this man is clearly misguided as his Internet history shows that he is always looking at Automobile Association (AA) route maps. We also found references to 'Iran' in his emails, cleverly disguised as a resume, in which we identified 'Iran a recruitment agency' and 'Iran a charity for old people'. These messages were the main reason for asking the magistrate to keep him locked up for 90 days - to allow us time to decode them. That said, we really got him when he made a phone call to complain to his own MP during the trial, admitting the offence and asking 'what the hell was going on'."

Ramsbottom added: "The most worrying thing about all of this is not my civil liberties, but the fact that the satellite location photographs they presented show that I have a slight bald spot that I didn't know about. I am also a little concerned that I am now on 'List 100' and not allowed a library card anymore, and that Tesco know that I will run out of milk at 10:53am tomorrow morning."

A spokesman from MI5, who wished only to be known as "Tony", said: "We have done the British public a great service. This man is clearly potentially dangerous and our analysis shows that it could only be a matter of time before he becomes a Muslim, turns into some sort of terrorist asylum seeker, or does 71 mph on the motorway."

Ramsbottom was fined £15, advised to lower his cholesterol, buy a decent map, and not to park illegally again.
http://deadbrain.co.uk/news/article_2006_01_16_4345.php