THERE must be a perversity entrenched in the job descriptions of those intent on controlling our personal activities.

The more difficult and unpleasant conditions are made, the more we – the subjects – are bound to appreciate having struggled through them. I have a fundamental objection to being serially beaten about the head as a penalty for being normal.

I reckon to behave with reasonable honesty and courtesy to those individuals, establishments and institutions I interact or trade with. It is normally an equitable process.

Sadly, I am increasingly of the conviction that in its dealings with my fellow citizens the state apparatus, particularly any branch involved in protection and welfare, is becoming more aggressive through frustration with its own impotence, and has embarked on an exercise to salve its conscience. Intimidating the just in order to deter the thugs is an attractive policy. It satisfies the need to tick boxes in the ‘measures are being taken’ file.

Despite all the advances in aids to communication and freeing up of social taboos and restrictions, we have become a far more introspective, jittery society. And that’s in the main due to heavy-handed measures adopted principally by those charged with protecting us.

The 9/11 atrocity was undoubtedly a wake-up call, and it is absolutely right that airline passengers should be checked for any potential weapons – there are indeed ‘crazies’ abroad in any society. But in the general reaction to unpreparedness, ‘security’ has turned into an officially-sanctioned Topsy, universally devouring personal liberties. Travel may be safer, but is an unnecessarily less-civilised experience.

The fundamental breakdown occurs at the point where system meets individual. The example of air travel is an easy one because we all have to negotiate the security gate – which, actually, has little to do with the airlines themselves, or the courtesy of their own staff.

Nothing excuses behaviour such as I encountered recently during the ‘flight transfer’ process at Gatwick airport. We passengers were confronted by an oversized, superannuated sergeant-major figure who bawled ‘shoes off, belts off’ as if we were wayward offenders at some middle-American boot camp. It was not ‘what’ was being requested, but ‘how’ it was meted out to passengers who had all already subjected themselves to thorough checks earlier in the flight security chain, which summed up the unacceptable face of officialdom.

Such behaviour has nothing whatsoever to do with the purpose of the job. It is part and parcel of a ‘scare and manipulate’ culture and is grossly offensive, the moreso as it is little more than a crude displacement activity, since the victims are absolutely not the likely perpetrators of violence and mayhem. Sadly though, there’s a growing acceptance of such ritual humiliation.

Let me say immediately that I relate this particular experience as an illustration of institutional depersonalisation. The majority of airport security personnel are courteous and professional. The same goes for individual members of the uniformed services charged with ensuring public safety and keeping order. Indeed, on the evidence of the many ‘real cop’ TV docu-reports, the level of restraint in the face of wanton aggression and insult is beyond commendation.

The point is, though, in such situations officers are dealing with yobbish confrontation, not general contacts with the public going about their legitimate activities who have the right to expect courtesy and the duty to respond in kind.

Which brings me neatly to ‘vetting and barring’, which data-hungry authorities are falling over themselves to adopt. It’s long been recognised that there should be background checks for those who work closely or full-time with children and the vulnerable.

But when it gets into the hands of the institutional ‘over-killers’, all proportion is lost. It also has the makings of destroying another prized tenet of society – namely trust between normal decent individuals.

Current laws already make it unwise ever to smile at children in a street – one local council in England even employs wardens to challenge any males walking alone through its municipal park, in case they may have ‘inappropriate’ intentions towards the youngsters playing there. The assumption has to be that the state considers everyone guilty of harbouring some anti-social intent, and that’s a truly sad reflection on officialdom.

Parents, volunteers – even the NSPCC in the UK – have challenged this latest conversion of a sensible precaution into litigious alienation. Like the over-zealous security squad, the would-be child-protection czars are reacting belatedly and disproportionately to a shocking event out of embarrassment both for letting it happen, and despair about how to tackle it.

The inquiry into the Soham murders in 2002, which directly influenced the current proposals, revealed that the deranged Ian Huntley was indeed already known to police as a result of previous convictions – yet was still allowed to work with children.

These new measures which submit parents and volunteers to obligatory police checks won’t in themselves address the problem of abuse. Furthermore, child protection agencies readily admit that the bulk of abuse is carried out in the home or by relatives or people closely connected to the victims, who will be exempt from the intense screening anyway.

Assumption of guilt may be a device to promote acquiescence, forcing erstwhile willing volunteers to pay for the masochistic privilege of vetting adding the final insult. The likelihood is that rather than endure such humiliation, many will simply vote with their feet, leaving a vulnerable sector of the population bereft of the support and example once selflessly bestowed.

Now of course, if any reliable official statistics were to be produced demonstrating that the targeted sector was incontrovertibly guilty of what is being inferred – then that becomes a different story altogether.