So, I’m driving to football and I hear half a news bulletin saying that the Home Secretary stated the compulsory ID Cards scheme has been dropped and will now be voluntary.
I was in he car alone but, at hearing this, I actually said “Awesome” out load and did a little cock-rock air punch. From this reaction you can assume my opinion on the whole idea of having a compulsory ID Card in Britain is to the contrary.
After running round like a madman for 80 minutes and driving home, I hear the whole news item (yes, it’s either the iPod or Radio 4 in my car ladies). I half thought I’d misunderstood the story the first time around, it being such a massive U-turn and what-all, but no it was all true and sense was finally winning out.
The entire scheme has been a farce from start to finish. I mean, does anyone actually think that someone bent on coming here to commit acts of terrorism or people trafficking will diligently sign-up for an ID Card on their way in? Furthermore, if said individuals were circulating without ID Cards, are they really going to go do something that requires them to present one? The only people carrying these insultingly oppressive things would be John Smith normals, who frankly have better (or worse but more essential) things to spend their money on or time thinking about.
This is without even mentioning that I’m sure we have far better uses to which we can put the apparent £9 billion the scheme will/would cost to set up in the first place.
On my return home I look to the internet for confirmation of the news, surely if I type ID Cards into google this massive story will immediately spring forth and I will be bombarded with a plethora of news copy and quotes. Well apparently not, I have to manually go to the BBC website, then to the news section, then click on politics and it’s buried as the third story. Honestly, am I the only one that cares about freedom and liberty these days? Apart from the Yanks of course, but I find them a little… misdirected in their approach to the whole thing.
Anyway, enough of my blather and rhetoric. The simple fact it’s looking very much like we wont have to have one now. The Home Secretary has said he wants the whole thing to be voluntary, which effectively ends it as an even tenuously justifiable expenditure.
So go home reader and sleep safe in the knowledge that the only country wide government run database that abuses your civil liberties will remain the one the police keep your DNA on, even if you’re proven innocent of any crime…
What’s that buzzing?? Must be time for my tablets again…
Ahoy hoy!!
BBC story is here but watch the video too for better info:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8127081.stm
And a big well done and good work to the air-side airport staff, pilots and the unions that have supported them. As the first group who would have had ID Cards foisted upon them, they are the ones that have been fighting this, finally braking the back of this issue. We all have you to thank.
Stuporcollider 
ID cards were just an absurd concept to me. This conversation always plays in my head when I hear talk of them:
Are ID cards harder to forge than passports? Oh yes, undoubtedly.
What do you need to get an ID card? A passport.
So, I’ll just forge a passport and get a real ID card then, shall I?
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Indeed sir. No matter how much I look at it, I can never come up with a compelling reason for them. I have been told “Well if you’ve not done anything wrong, why don’t you want one” to which I usually reply something in the ball park of “Why the f*€k should I have to prove who I am to some random in a stab proof vest who thinks I look a bit too differant from the gibbering masses, you absurd arse!”
Whilst that may be no way to talk to my parents, I still feel my point is a valid one. Why should I have to prove who I am without good cause to believe I am false in some way?
That’s even before we get to arguments of the whole illusion that these things could be completely secure.
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You know if they said, we’re taking your passport, NHS card, national insurance card and drivers license and sticking them on this shiny new card, oh btw we don’t need biometrics cause we will lose them, I’d be all for this, the lets have another card that will do absolutely FUCK ALL at huge public cost, oh and it’s totally unhackable (haven’t they read the whole nothing is unhackable thing??)
Do I have anything to hide, no, do I trust the government to handle my data properly, no, do I want millions of tax payers pounds spent on a system that will not do what it sets out to do, no, do I want the option to leave my house and not have anything on me that says I am who I say I am, uh yes, I don’t do it regularly, but the option would be nice. Feels like the whole gun laws thing, lets sneak something through that costs a lot and does nothing, oddly enough criminals and terrorists don’t feel like carrying ID cards, because you know, they’re breaking the law anyway.
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