With apologies to Jacques-Louis David; johnsadlerillustration.com

• IT it is perfectly understandable in the current situation to want government to clamp down on people’s freedom of movement and generally introduce laws that exercise tighter control over the populace.

However we must be wary that many emergency measures have a bad habit of outliving the emergency and blighting lives for centuries to come.

The obvious example is income tax which was introduced by Pitt the Younger in 1799 as a temporary means of funding preparations for the imminent war against Napoleon.

Enthusiasts for drone surveillance, facial recognition systems, and the like should be careful what they wish for.

D BARKER, NW6