I have never been convinced by Francis Bacon’s aphorism: “knowledge itself is power”. Presumably I am gaining more knowledge as I get older. Yet I feel more wimpish, less in charge of my own life or the lives of others, with each passing year. Are librarians powerful? Are academics? Are those minicab drivers or retired schoolteachers who always seem to do well on TV quiz shows?

No, knowledge itself is not power. What helps people to acquire and retain power – whether in politics, business or personal relationships – are secrets. The powerful are paranoid about keeping their own. They are cunning about extracting other people’s. And they are ruthless about using secrets thus acquired without scruple or hesitation.

Which brings us to Secrets ‘R’ Us, otherwise known as HM Government. How ironic that a Labour Party intent on compelling us to carry identity cards is funded, it seems, by people who channel six-figure donations through third parties to conceal their own identities from the public. And how doubly ironic that, just as the ID-card lobby is wheeling out the whiskery argument about “the innocent” having “nothing to fear”, a whole gaggle of apparently chaotic Government departments should manage to “mislay” two, six or ten discs (the revelations are still ongoing) containing the personal details of almost half the population. The innocent have nothing to fear? Oh, very satirical! Nothing except everything about us – from our birthdate, shoe size and favourite brand of cornflakes, to our bank and credit card details, health records and tax returns – being flogged to the highest bidders in the mafia dens of Moscow or Hong Kong.

But, you say, very little of that information was on the missing discs. Theoretically, that statement is true. In practice, it’s codswallop. Our “secrets” – the intimate details of who we are, what we do, how we earn and spend money, where we go and who we meet – are like spider’s webs. Once someone has picked up a thread, the entire skein can be traced. How? Because the online “security industry” is not a scrupulously separated set of agencies operating to strict ethical standards. It’s a barely regulated jungle. The same private company, the very same computers, could be processing sensitive data for a Government agency while supplying lists of potential punters for, say, companies flogging pensions or holidays. Your birthdate, or your National Insurance number, is the key to the cyberspace castle that contains almost everything that’s worth knowing about you. Giving that out is like giving up your virginity. You are forever breached. You will never be anonymous again.

There are no “Chinese walls” in the secrets business. What your credit card supplier knows about you, the entire retail industry knows. That’s why talk of a national ID card revealing only “limited information” about you is hogwash. One database leads to another. A “guarantee of confidentiality” on a contract requiring you to divulge yet more information about yourself is not worth the paper it’s written on. Especially, given the apparently lax controls in the public sector, if that guarantee comes from HM Revenue and Customs or the National Health Service. You would have more chance of keeping personal details out of the hands of crooks if you got yourself a megaphone and broadcast them from Speaker’s Corner.

But identity theft isn’t even what irks me most about the secrets industry and its biggest client, the Government. In a way, writing about that is playing into their hands – because it implies that the basic problem is the activity of criminals. It isn’t. The real issue is why, if we want to participate in the modern world, we have to divulge so much private information in the first place. I suppose it might be possible for a dedicated hermit to live anonymously, even today. You would need to change your name and obscure your birthdate, find an obliging employer to pay you in cash, keep the dosh stowed under your bed, pay rent to an equally obliging landlord who required no references, renounce all dealings with banks, have no credit cards, never drive or fly, and of course manage to avoid falling ill, being involved in an accident, looking “suspicious” to the police, or getting pregnant. By following that somewhat ascetic lifestyle, you might just manage to cling onto what was once regarded as the birthright of all Britons: the right to remain anonymous.

But most of us have sold our secrets for a walletful of plastic. All we can now hope to do is claw back a little of our dignity. I grudgingly accept (without quite understanding why) that if I want to open a British bank account these days I will probably be required to divulge details of my family ancestry going back to the 18th century. But I do bristle with indignation when I have to supply my birthdate, employer’s name and details of two credit cards (“for security purposes”) to a spotty youth selling mobile phone accounts in a shopping centre.

David Blunkett says that ID cards will put an end to this blatant commercial prying, by providing a “robust” form of identification that will alleviate any need for citizens to divulge more details about themselves. With all due respect to the former Home Secretary (which admittedly doesn’t amount to much), this is pie in the sky. At the height of the Blitz, when British civilisation was facing a far greater threat of infiltration, invasion or obliteration than it does today, there were far fewer requirements for people to prove who they were than there are now.

Those who pry into others’ secrets are usually deeply insecure or intensely boring. Lacking talent or charisma, they can make themselves powerful or interesting only by trading gossip about the lives of others. A neighbourhood nosey-parker is detestable enough. But a whole industry of nosey-parkers, in cahoots with the Government? What does that say about modern Britain? Stalin knew less about Soviet citizens in the 1930s than your supermarket knows about you.

Blazing a very nervous trail

Mixed feelings clash in my manly breast at the news that school blazers are making a comeback. Not only are parents and teachers said to be in favour, but so are pupils – even in comparatively rough areas. Wearing a blazer, it is claimed, gives them “a sense of pride”. One London headteacher attributes an astonishing 25 per cent rise in GCSE passes to the reintroduction of the blazer.

I must say that I’m sceptical. But there are traumatic reasons for that. From the ages of 11 to 18 – emotionally vulnerable years for any chap – I was compelled to walk through the mean streets of North London each day in a maroon-and-black striped blazer, looking rather like a zebra who had overdosed on raspberries. So wounding were the taunts of passing louts, so deep the mental scars, that to this day I have an aversion to wearing any colour gaudier than the most sepulchral grey.

I’m also perturbed by the comment of a school uniform supplier, who boasts that today’s blazers are “virtually bullet-proof”. Virtually? Parents with children in London comprehensives will surely want an assurance that the blazers are completely bullet-proof.

Flushed with greed

People are upset about the inadequate supply of lavatories at the new St Pancras station in London. But at least the loos at St Pancras are free. Other stations often charge 20p for admission. That makes my blood boil – and doesn’t do a power of good to other parts of my anatomy, either. I’m not geriatric, yet I can remember when “spending a penny” meant exactly that. And that was the old “d” penny, not the newfangled “pee” (as it were). Which means that the cost of using a station loo has increased by a whopping 4,800 per cent in 40 years. Who are these racketeers charging so much for supplying a basic amenity? In the interests of public convenience we should flush them out.

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