The Home Office culture was one of being just above the problem, of hovering just out of reach of knowing what was going on on the ground, whether it was crime or immigration.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I think one of the odd things about public life, coming from the outside, is that people seem to be paranoid. Maybe they were quite frank initially, but then they did one thing which went wrong.
There is not much of a bureaucratic leap, if history is any guide, between a seemingly benign call for 'continuous situational awareness' and the onset of a covert and illegal campaign of domestic surveillance.
I maintain the rather old-fashioned view that this is my work and it's in the public arena, but that doesn't entitle everyone to know what happened at home before coming here.
Home wasn't so much a house as people, family.
It's a funny thing, 'The Office,' because millions and millions and millions and millions of people didn't watch it. But culturally, it is more of a phenomenon than almost anything else I can remember as far as British television is concerned.
We haven't had crime writers, and for a long time in the Republic, we didn't seem to have a crime problem as such.
I think it could be the biggest information problem that we face. 'If somebody is abroad and they even mention the name of an American citizen, bang, off goes the tap, and no more information is collected.
The American people might have a criminal syndicate running their government.
Anyway, that was the germ of the idea and of course... you know this was early days of sociology and whatever, especially on television.
And, because there was an honesty about all that was going on. It connected with the people in the street.
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