ASunday newspaper reports that Britain's intelligence services want the right to listen to every phone call made by every person living in this country. And they'd like to read every email sent as well.

Good luck to the devious snoops, I'd say. This is not to say that MI5, MI6 and the police should be granted the right to listen to us in such a sneaky manner. Far from it. We should all be able to make our boring phone calls or send our dreary emails safe in the knowledge that some state-employed eavesdropper isn't jotting down every mundane word.

But just imagine how bored the monitors would get, tapping into the domestic nitty-gritty of our lives. It would serve them right for listening into everything we say instead of letting us carry out our blameless lives in private.

The words 'Big Brother' lack the power they once had, especially since the voyeuristic game show on Channel 4 appropriated the term last summer. Yet if the security services were allowed to store every phone call, including those made on mobiles, and to log every email, that truly would be just too much power for the state to wield against us.

As ever in such serious matters, there is a funny side to all this. Apparently, the National Criminal Intelligence Service, which has asked the Home Office for what we might call these bugger's rights, wants to store all those phone calls and emails in a giant, government-run warehouse for seven years.

Just imagine what a job that would be. Most phone calls are hardly exciting. We know this on two levels. One, we all make inconsequential phone calls. Two, we hear other people making such calls on their mobiles.

A passing irony here is that mobile phone calls are public knowledge anyway. There is no need to log all such calls when you can step into the nearest supermarket and hear some phone-wielding twerp telling the world: "I'm in the supermarket. Just by the biscuits. I'll be home in half an hour."

Or that modern favourite, that irritating catchphrase of modern life: "Yes, I'm on the train..."

It's almost pointless to moan about mobiles these days, as just about everybody has one. Yet it is still a sign of the times that so many people should spend so long talking into their hands about nothing much at all.

As to the phone spies, those listening in at our house would not glean much. Calls to friends, calls to family, and the occasional mumbled conversation as the children arrange something or other. I suppose one benefit might be that the security services could provide me with a translation of what the children are actually saying.

AND now a domestic diversion. Imagine for a moment that a male-shaped person might fail to put the lid back on the salad dressing in the approved manner. If such a failure of kitchen procedure should (allegedly) occur, who is to blame for what might happen later?

Imagine again that another, female-shaped person picks up the salad dressing, gives the bottle a hearty shake and ends up with oil splattered all over her favourite, smartest cardigan, while also liberally dressing half the kitchen.

Think, if you will, of the possible consequences. Treasured cardigan won't wash clean and ends up in the bin. Alleged incompetent husband ends up in the doghouse.

At this point, we have to consider the thorny problem of blame. Following such an accident, is it the fault of the person who apparently didn't put the lid back on properly - or that of the person who shook the bottle without first checking that the lid was secure?

It would take a braver man than me to sort that one out. Anyone out there know Solomon's phone number?