Let me start at the beginning. In the early 2000s, I was a young and somewhat naive trainee journalist working a rural patch in East Yorkshire. My job involved lots of reporting of village fetes, council meetings, parochial talent competitions and the like; so, as you can imagine, I was always on the look out for some local drama. One day, driving around the meandering country lanes, I chanced upon a particularly arresting demonstration. Placards displaying horrible scenes of animal experimentation festooned the hawthorn bushes and grassy verges. I could not resist stopping to get some insight into what they were protesting about. Undeterred by the presence of a police car, I discovered they were against a local research lab they claimed was using animals in its clinical trials. I personally do have an intrinsic abhorrence to testing on animals however I am not, and have never been, a political activist for the anti-vivisection movement. I have stood twice for local councils as a tory and still consider myself to be fairly right of centre at heart. Anyway, getting back to the story: As we were a fairly sedate family owned local rag, my editor did not want to do anything on it, but encouraged me to keep coming up with ideas. 

Weeks went by and I got on with job covering occasionally dramatic council meetings and never eventful village fetes. That was until my mother, who lived up in Durham, phoned me to say that she and my dad had been visited by two plain clothes police officers who had quizzed them about my political allegiances and whether I was an animal rights activist or not. Startled, my mother recounted that she said she thought not, as the only political activism I’d been involved in to date was as a conservative party researcher. The officers had ‘visited’ on two occasions; the second time for ‘supplementary questions’. They had also peered at DVDs on the coffee table; clearly suspecting they might be related to the anti-vivisectionist cause rather than the reality: much more sedate Merchant Ivory productions. My mum had explained, remarkably calmly, that I was a reporter in East Yorkshire, so that was probably why I had been at the demonstration. 

Chilled by these revelations, I realised that the police in attendance at the demo had taken note of my car registration and even though it was by then registered to my East Yorks address, had chosen to alert the police in County Durham to make further investigations. Big Brother was really watching me and I still, to this day, suspect that a file is lurking on me at MI5. I used to tell people this unnerving story and even wrote a small editorial in the local rag about police snooping citing this rather sinister event. 

Bringing the story forward to the present day, I had the temerity yesterday to RT the acclaimed actor Peter Egan @PeterEgan6 who had tweeted that he thought the biggest concern of our time is animal welfare. It is, I agree, a huge concern and one that I feel does not gain sufficient attention in the media. From the horrific trade in rhino horns to the growing cult of owning a monkey pet in the UK, sparked by celebs of low itelligence but high popularity such as Justin Bieber acquiring Marmosets as pets. Well, I thought, well said Mr Egan. Trouble was Twitter has now alerted me to the fact that I am now being followed by an Argentina based medical institute, which specialises in clinical trials and is sponsored by all the big pharmaceutical companies. 

Given my previous experience, I cannot help feeling a bit unnerved…