It is fascinating how events and news items come together at times.

I have recently ordered several items from the Internet and am hugely impressed to see the delivery of relatively small items can be tracked with amazing accuracy.  I was impressed that a small package delivered by carriers DPD could be tracked around the country as their driver – a Polish gentleman by the sound of his name – made over 40 deliveries around south England until he arrived at Nell Bridge House, Adderbury with my small package.  I was even more impressed to learn that the Royal Mail – never at the forefront of innovation or private sector expertise – is also able to track the delivery of a small padded envelope with a tiny, low-value computer product.  I have even had an apology from Amazon that the Royal Mail failed to deliver an order on the date they had promised and it arrived just one day later.

I also learn that we are going to have to have our Jack Russell micro-chipped before 31 March 2016 to comply with The Microchipping of Dogs (England) Regulations 2014.  I am not very sure what benefit this will bring to dog owners.  Microchips will not be capable of GPS tracking so will not help a dog owner to trace a dog that has run away. However, it will enable stray dogs to be traced back to their owners which must be worth something.  Perhaps a tracking device capable of GPS tracking would be too large to be comfortable for a dog?  I do not know!

However, this brings me to the real point.  If we can track a small envelope in the hands of a commercial carrier or the Royal Mail; if Amazon can track their deliveries on what must be thousands of items per day; if we can micro-chip our dogs; and we know we can tag criminals on bail, why on earth can’t we track people coming in and out of our country?

My thoughts on this subject started with the identification of the Islamic State warlords’ recently recruited British executioner (allegedly Siddhartha Dhar) and news that he had a terrorism record as long as your arm, was known to the police and that he skipped off to Syria with his family when police politely asked him to surrender his passport. What has happened to this country? We defeated Napoleon, Kaiser Willhelm and Adolf Hitler but we seem to have lost the will and the ability to take on and defeat newer enemies.  Why on earth did the police not slap an ankle tagging device on Siddhartha Dhar until he returned to the police station with his passport? I think I can guess.  Fear of human rights lawyers like Leigh Day & Co who have been making a fortune out of cases against our soldiers or Cherry Balir’s Matrix Chambers with a reputation for their human rights work seems to be preventing our police and our armed forces from doing their job of protecting honest British citizens.  It is time we got a grip.