Paranoia

I never realised what a paranoid man I live with. we were chatting about this finger print checker thing that a couple of police forces in England are using to check your finger print against the national database to see if you're a known offender and such like. I think it's a good idea since I'm pretty sure my finger print would turn up no hits (I wouldn't have a job with the police if I couldn't make sure of that :)) It ended up being a convesation about Big Brother and invasion of privacy. Him not being able to explain to me how Big brother and Invasion of privacy are two different things he took a little bit of a strop so I changed the subject to talking about the dog (he either has fleas or a skin condition). He then put the telly on to watch the news and we ended up talking about the prescribing of heroin to heroin addicts which somehow lead back to the finger print thing. I happened to say I don't care if they keep my finger print I've done nothing wrong so it doesn't matter, Mr man says

"Ah but if all your information is stored on computer then they can find something you've done wrong."

"So" says I "how can they find something wrong if I haven't done anything wrong?"

"They can fabricate it"

I think I might have made the mistake of asking who "they" might be, he mentioned a few people including the government, I wanted to know why the government would want to change any of my details and I got told that it was a pointless question. At this point I could see it was going to turn into an argument but I wanted an answer so I told him it wasn't a pointless question, I would like to know the reason why they would change any of my details

"If you can't think of a reason why the government would change your information then it is a pointless question, you're an intelligent person and that's a stupid question"

Now I know he said the question was stupid but I still take it as him calling me stupid so I pounced

"It's not a stupid question, I don't know why the governemt would want to change my details, I wouldn't have asked otherwise so tell me" (I really don't know why the government would want to change my information)

"I don't have an answer"

At this point I was gathering my stuff to go upstairs and get changed and decided I had won

"Because you don't have an answer to justify your statement then my question is obviously stupid. Don't call me stupid for not being able to think of a reason when you can't even think of one yourself"

And with that I flounced upstairs.