Have you noticed that when you get three items of bad news all in the same day, it makes everthing seem terrible? One thing is okay, you can shrug it off; two, well you can handle that; but three - sheesh!!

So here are my three from today, starting with the puppy. I was in London this morning reading the Independent. On the front page was a picture of several dogs locked up in a cage and a story about an eight week old puppy that had been thrown down the garbage shute of a high-rise building - surplus to requirements. The headline was all about how the credit crunch has caused a massive rise in the number of abandoned pets.

The headline missed the point. A credit crunch does not create the ability to throw a young puppy into the rubbish chute – that comes from a deeper, less human part of us that is already available.

Now for the mountain. Did you know about how they cut off the tops of mountains in Kentucky and West Virginia in order to get at the coal? They literally explode the top (like a World Trade Centre Tower) and level it, burning all the trees (because the mining companies don't do logging) and dumping the toxic waste into adjacent valleys, polluting the water supply in the process. But hey! it is environmentally friendly because it produces “useful, flat land” and creates jobs.

Again the story missed the point – it is not just about jobs, or even profit. There has to be something shut down inside you to be able to wilfully destroy so much natural beauty.

The third story is about the massive big-brother database which officials in the Home Office are proposing. This database will hold details of every phone call, email, text message and web page visit of everyone in Britain. It is claimed that the purpose is to simply “collect communications data and protect the public”.

This is not about some altruistic desire to protect the public. The need for ever greater control and regulation is born from fear, loneliness and an innate distrust of people.

Authoritarianism and tyranny are growing in our fair and pleasant land. When you notice that every new piece of legislation coming out of the Home Office creates more laws which empower the state and reduce individual freedom, it raises a question. Are fascists running the Home Office?

(By the way, the puppy is okay!)