Don't be so English about our privacy

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The announcement from the Government that it plans to let every Tom Dick and Harry vaguely connected with the state snoop on citizens' e-mails and mobile phones is predictable. It gives me the creeps but, depressingly, I doubt that the bulk of the public will be much bothered.

The English have a very peculiar and paradoxical relationship with freedom. I have always believed a sense of freedom (as opposed, perhaps, to freedom itself) to be one of the very deepest values to which our country subscribes. Unruled by a foreign power for 1,000 years, it is right at the heart of our idea of ourselves. Yet we often act as if we couldn't give a toss about it, and the state, which by its very nature will always gobble as much power for itself as it can, habitually sneaks its way into our private realm, largely unopposed by the country at large.

Part of this stems from a certain arrogance. There is a popular perception that the words "freedom" and "English" are so closely linked that no one will ever take our liberties away. So what if they're snooping on our e-mails? - it's only out of the best intentions. Democracy is safe. So what if we tolerate a far higher level of surveillance than any other country in the world? It doesn't matter - as long as you're not doing anything illegal, you've got nothing to worry about.

This is why the Government sees privacy as a chattering classes' issue. And I have some sympathy with that view. I don't think this administration is out to enslave us - although my blood boiled when they tried to introduce ID cards (to be forced to carry "your papers" is something I would rather go to prison than agree to).

As ever, the argument is about wedges, and their thin ends. And, above all, it's about the fact that although the state is permanent, governments and political climates come and go. All very well to allow those nice chaps and chapesses in New Labour to snoop about in our private affairs. But once the state has granted itself a right, it doesn't easily let go of it. What happens if governments of a more extreme hue emerge, as they seem to be doing all over Europe? Then all those friendly video cameras and government computer hackers might take on an altogether more sinister hue.

In fact, freedom from state interference is fundamentally important to our nation, and the precedents this Government is trying to set are deeply disturbing. At least if they want to snoop on us, they should let us snoop on them. Why not allow, as a quid pro quo, citizens to hack into government and civil service computers? But, of course, that's unthinkable. We're asked to trust them at all times. But they're never prepared to trust us. That's an equation that under the right - or rather, wrong - political conditions can add up to despotism.

I am totally in favour of women getting equal pay and equal opportunities. There is no doubt the Government should spend sufficient funds for good-quality, free nursery care, so women have the same access to top jobs as men. Institutional sexism needs to be rooted out. Everything a man can do a woman can do at least as well and probably better. And many men are insufficiently supportive in the home when their partner is out working.

Just one thing. Is there a teeny, tiny possibility that women are under-represented in many of the top high-flying jobs because they're actually, for the most part, too clever, and well-balanced to realise that knocking yourself out all day, every day for a salary, however high, is not necessarily the path to personal fulfilment?

Is it faintly plausible that, rather than endure the oppressions of a patriarchal system, women will never "catch up" with men in the world of paid work because, for the most part, they're not that stupid?

And, unlike most men, they have the choice to opt out. I only ask.

Anyway, congratulations to Ann Patchett for winning it with Bel Canto. I'm sure it is brilliant, but I doubt that I shall get round to reading it. There are stack-loads of women writers that I greatly admire, but very few of them whom I can get round to reading. Like Martin Amis, I am largely homosexual in my reading habits.

In this aversion I am very typically, and rather reprehensibly, male - surveys show that most men on the whole avoid books by women authors. Anyway, from a man who'd rather shoot himself in the testicles than read a Kathy Lette or Helen Fielding book, here's my short guide to books by women that men can really enjoy.

The Regeneration Trilogy by Pat Barker; anything non-fiction by Joan Didion - she's the greatest essayist, male or female, in the world; Beloved by Toni Morrison; Kate Grenville's The Idea of Perfection; The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler; and Zadie Smith's White Teeth - particularly the first 150 pages.

Er, that's it. Other suggestions for Books by Women That Men Would Like Too will be gratefully received.