Yes, that’s right. The police have asked that every single last one of us has our DNA sampled just in case we commit a heinous crime. And the government are AGAINST it.

Hang on. Was there a coup d’etat overnight or something? Where’s the REAL government?

The Home Office said a mandatory database “would raise significant practical and ethical issues”

It’s a veritable Damascene conversion! I eagerly await the now surely inevitable announcement of the abandonment of the equally impractical and ethically suspect ID database.

Home Office minister Tony McNulty told BBC that a national database was not a “silver bullet” and that it would raise practical as well as civil liberties issues.

Yes, that’s THE Tony McNulty. Him of blind loyalty to the ID scheme fame.

“How to maintain the security of a database with 4.5m people on it is one thing,” he said.

“Doing that for 60m people is another.”

Hurrah! Does this mean they’ve seen the light?

Hint: almost certainly not.