Innocent customer dragged from his bed at 3 am!

Another story in the "if you've nothing to hide, what have you to fear" department. Quite a lot! In this case, a man went to Tesco to do some shopping but the myopic security guards took his car registration and gave it to the police. Why? Because some thief had stolen a plasma screen TV ( a feat in itself!) and managed to walk past the guards. In a totally separate incident, a woman claimed that this man, Simon Brasch, who works for a hospice charity, had scratched her car. One thing led to twenty-four and later, at 3 am, Mr.Brasch was dragged from his bed after the bizarre mix-up following his visit to the supermarket eight hours earlier.

“I felt humiliated and degraded, I felt like a criminal. I was left to languish in a prison cell, my individual rights were completely put aside for a plasma TV,” he said yesterday. “I told them, ‘I have got a full-time job, I’m a database manager for a national charity, I manage a library. This is ridiculous, you’ll see a big mistake has taken place’. It was the worst night of my life.”

Two questions. Are the security staff at Tesco so poorly trained that they can't ask simple questions? Are the police so poorly trained that they can't ask simple questions? It's an outrage that people are treated in this way. TEN HOURS in a police cell! What is it? All the mounting paperwork that the police have to fill in. "Sorry Mr.Brasch, this'll take at least ten hours to sort out. We're up to our eyeballs in bumpf!"

The trouble today is that all customers are seen as potential shoplifters, all accidents are seen as potential criminal investigations. Common sense and civility have left the brains of "management". We are all likely to end up in a police cell like Mr.Brasch. There isn't anyone of us who isn't.

As The Times reports, the thief and TV are still missing.

Is this the Britain we want?