State Opening of Parliament

Today the new parliament was opened by that Saxe Coburg woman. A small gathering form No2ID was there – including our own dear old Longrider…Ahem.

I dunno, here I am at 47 going on a protest. Whatever next. The whole thing was good natured and the boys in blue were bemused when the group got separated by the crowds and they had to arrange an escort to take us across Parliament Square to rejoin the main protest. He even asked whether he should check our identities… Okay, so it was weak and he had the decency to look a little embarrassed.

The evidence for the occasion is below. I’m the one behind the camera.

On a serious note.

Identity cards will not:

• Combat terrorism
• Combat benefit fraud
• Do anything to make our borders more secure
• make any difference to organised crime (unless you include helping to increase it)
• Reduce identity theft (by the way, the £1.3bn a year figure is bollocks)

Identity cards will:

• Criminalise swathes of the population
• Create a “Papers Please” state
• Make identity theft easier to execute
• Create an opportunity for the Home Office to fuck up 60 million people’s data in spectacular fashion that will make the passports fiasco look like a practice run

There’s more, but it gets depressing…