KEY POINTS:
This week a British newspaper revealed 59 state secrets courtesy of the Freedom of Information Act. It's pointless to wonder why the bulk of this information was ever suppressed in the first place. The state - any state - believes that information is power and therefore operates on the principle of when in doubt, classify.
When the authoritarian state is taken to its logical conclusion, as in the Soviet Union for instance, it achieves a monopoly on information, forcing the citizenry either to swallow what they are fed - lies and propaganda - or risk harassment or worse by dealing in a black market of whispered rumours.
The Times' list has something for almost everyone in that it reinforces many perceptions - knee-jerk and otherwise - of contemporary society.
Those who look back in yearning to a time when children weren't exposed to sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll will take grim satisfaction from figures that suggest Britain's youngsters inhabit a netherworld modelled on Ancient Rome in its terminally decadent phase.
Innocence is indeed in short supply when in a single year "hundreds" of 10-year-olds are charged with crimes including serious sex offences, actual bodily harm and assaulting a police officer, and the National Health Service is giving girls as young as 13 injections and implants to make them infertile for three years.
Those who have suffered corporal punishment are well aware that the catch-cry "a little discipline never hurt anyone" is among the most fatuous ever coined but, like the battiest conspiracy theory, the belief that getting bossed around and punished for obscure infractions is good for you will always attract adherents.
Thus we learn that a key Government adviser identified the abolition of national service as the moment when it all started to go wrong.
This smacks of the sort of wishy-washy half-measure that got us into this mess: just imagine what a squeaky-clean, law-abiding place Britain would be today if World War II could have been spun out for another five decades or so.
For a start the Elgin Marbles wouldn't have been damaged - part of a centaur's leg fell off - by a pair of schoolboys hooning it up in the British Museum, a shameful episode that had to be hushed up for 46 years.
New Zealanders who have observed the parasitic army of sleek, extortionate marketing and management consultants take the capital by storm in recent years will hardly be shocked to learn that the British Government shelled out $6.25 billion on consultants in one year.
And those who have been subjected to highway robbery at the hands of police and parking wardens hell-bent on achieving their revenue targets won't be at all surprised to learn that British tax inspectors are offered bonuses to encourage them to squeeze the lemon till the pips squeak.
While recent court cases have provided a sobering reality check for anyone who still idealises our police force, the perception of the British bobby as an unswervingly upright Dixon of Dock Green figure is hard to reconcile with the revelation that 200 serving police officers in Britain have criminal records.
Those who believe the only truly iron law of economics is that the rich get richer will grind their teeth over the news that wealthy landowners receive the lion's share of European Union farm subsidy pay-outs, while anyone who has recently had major dental work will relate to the fact that National Health Service dentists - quite a few of whom seem to be Kiwis - are pulling in $700,000-plus a year.
These days little that appears in the British press doesn't contain a swipe at the wretched Tony Blair. We learn that he blew $5700 of taxpayers' money on cosmetics and almost $3.5 million on overseas travel, including holidays, in RAF aircraft.
Despite his risible pretensions to be the guiding spirit of Cool Britannia (itself a risible concept), the guest list at his country residence included the likes of Des O'Connor, who was already hopelessly square when Blair was in short pants.
Most scandalous of all though is the fact that since Blair came to power the number of murders carried out by strangers has increased by a third. This will be Blair's dismal legacy: Britons can no longer rest assured that should they be murdered, it will be by someone they know.
The undoubted gem in this collection, and a titbit that should intrigue historians for years to come, is the fact that the Thatcher Government concocted a scheme to search for the Loch Ness monster using a team of dolphins.
This isn't quite as deranged as the Peter Cook character Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling's dream of teaching worms to talk and ravens to fly underwater, but it's up there. No wonder they kept it a secret.
