This coming from a country that at one point in time was the largest empire in world history.
They've merely turned it inward. The sun never sets on the British smart meter.
Seems to me it's returning to a time when it controlled every aspect of it's "subjects" lives, with the queens governor, or sheriff or whatever had "first rights" with a bride before the groom was allowed in Scotland. Taxes are about as bad as they were back then, and the government (king) owns all the land. You can't own guns, hunt, pick wild berries on the crown lands, cut wood, etc. Doesn't seem a whole lot different than it was a couple centuries ago.