Thanks to Phil Edwards for pointing this out to me on boingboing, the original article at The Times Online. Here we have Philip Pullman talking about how our freedoms are being destroyed:

The image of this nation that haunts me most powerfully is that of the sleeping giant Albion in William Blake’s prophetic books. Sleep, profound and inveterate slumber: that is the condition of Britain today. We do not know what is happening to us. In the world outside, great events take place, great figures move and act, great matters unfold, and this nation of Albion murmurs and stirs while malevolent voices whisper in the darkness – the voices of the new laws that are silently strangling the old freedoms the nation still dreams it enjoys.
Go and read the whole thing.