So there we have it. The rebellion on the ID Cards bill was quashed as The Leader In Waiting made the necessary noises, plus a few supposed “compromises” were, for the Government at least, well aimed to give what few rebels there were in the sycophantic back benches of the Labour party, an utterly misplaced feeling of success.
So brace yourself folks. You might want to consider asking the barber to shave a little patch at the back of your head ready for that tag to be nicely visible every time you interact with the Government machine.
If you’re not into tattoo’s, well, your passport will do - it’s been made clear that Biometrics will be appearing on some passports to be issued from April. That’s the start of the process that will end in everbody being compelled to have and carry an ID card.
Oh, and don’t think that any of this is voluntary as the Government would have us believe. Not a jot of it. Because many people need passports, we will have no choice but to apply for a passport when they expire and then get one of these horrible little cards - plus the far more ominous record in the National Register. Once you’re in, you’re in. No way of being removed at your request (so much for data protection, eh?)
Whilst I suspect any attempt to return the ID card will be ignored, I at least am very fortunate that I have very little interaction with the state beyond paying taxes and running my own company. Others are less fortunate, and the “non-compulsory” cards will be further forced on people through the implicit threat of bureaucratic delays, problems and other awkward hindrances that possessing an ID card would purportedly solve.
It’s compulsion, plain and simple.
The sheer audacity, and increasingly right-wing nature of this Government leaves me with a feeling of dispair I haven’t felt since the sabres rattled ahead of the invasion of Iraq. I have lost any last vestige of hope that The Leader in Waiting will be any better. What he makes up for in supposed left-ish sentiments and policies, he loses in belligerence, bloody-mindedness, not to say a penchant for fiddling (didn’t his mother tell him to stop?) with red tape: Try filling in office of national statistics forms, when you’ve already completed Inland Revenue returns with the same data in, and then tell me small company red tape is being reduced as He supposedly claims.
Worst of all, in contrast to my doom laden words earlier, I fully expect that this country is about to witness a spectacular amount of money being wasted. It pains me immensely, but we’re talking of the order of £15 billion pounds. Why? The ID card technology simply isn’t proven (I know, I’ve seen, used, and read-up on biometric measures), is insecure (read the proposals for why), poorly considered (did they listen to anybody other than the people who’ll be selling the technology?), badly planned (where they’ve even gone that far), badly researched, offensively detailed in what it records about individuals and their interactions, and completely and utterly unnecessary as a tool for any purpose other than to massage ministers egos and give them a misplaced assurance we’re somehow safer with expensive (We’ll be paying the taxes that subsidise them) pieces of plastic in our pockets. Plus, it seems MP’s don’t even care about financial costings. The list goes on
I’m sure a few school children could come up with a better way to spend that sort of money. The school children, I’d hazard, would certainly care more about it than the sycophants who probably don’t understand what they’re voting against as they fumble their way through the lobbies hoping to catch the eye of the whips.
Still, the fight goes on. Much like the Poll Tax, I think when people actually experience it in their daily lives, they’ll realise what they’ve sleep-walked into.
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