Dave Page is opting out of the spiffing new Manchester ID cards opportunity. Wonder why?
I don’t need to carry about vast quantities of paperwork with me on a daily basis to prove my identity or address. I rarely need anything more than my bank card to talk to my bank. A card that lives in my wallet is something I’m more likely to lose – and risk the fine for not reporting a lost ID card..
All perfectly true and all arguments those of us opposed to the scheme have been making since this particular turd surfaced via David Blunkett in the wake of the Twin Towers attacks in 2001.
However, egregious though the concept of the cards is; it’s the database that is the real killer;
The ID card may well be voluntary, but the underlying national identity register database reeks of compulsion. Registering for a card means being tracked for life by the largest state database system in the western world, which has no equivalent in European ID card systems.
The Home Office is keeping quiet about the fines for not keeping your information up to date on this database, the vast numbers of faceless bureaucrats who will have access, and their inability to keep it secure. They don’t like to remind us that from 2011 we’ll be forced on to the database to get a passport, and after that perhaps for a Criminal Records Bureau check,
Of course, you get the idiot factor, the Boxer types who are queueing up to be tagged for life, so much do they love the all benevolent state. The state is mother, the state is father.
Others, however, are more aware of the dangers,
Look for the umpteenth blinking time, the physical artefact of an ID card as used in other countries is not what’s at stake here. The UK version will tie together far more info than any other scheme in the world, and it is the meshing of the databases behind the cards that is the real civil liberties issue, not the little plasticised rectangle in your wallet. Those who sign up for the UK scheme had better be happy with hundreds of thousands of government agents and also private firms being able to access damn near every last bit of info about you, from health records, to tax, to travel patterns, to hearsay on the ISA register. You might think this government to be both benign and competent. I think it is neither, and I certainly don’t believe that all future governments will be both, so count me out.
Precisely.
I no longer live in the UK and renewed my passport early to give me the maximum breathing space possible. Hopefully by the time I need to renew, the scheme will be nothing more than a distant memory. If not, I will renounce my British Citizenship. I will not be tagged in this way and I will not allow the state to manage my identity for me. I know who I am and if I think you need to know, I’ll share sufficient information for us to do business and no more.
Hopefully the good people of Manchester will kick this voluntary scheme into touch and give the government a well deserved two-flinger salute.
Well this Mancunian will not be getting one. I have had 9 CRB checks in the past year, “a nice little earner” as Arthur used to say. I work in a School but will not use the canteen as I am “required” to be fingerprinted in order to use it.
Frankly, I am sick to death at the growing autoritarian tendency to believe that I am incapable of governing my own life and must hand all my details to an increasingly Kafkaesque government.
The present generation of English people seem to have completely lost their centuries-old attachment to personal freedom and privacy, and their aversion to being snooped upon. In Victorian times they held what they termed ‘Continental’ intrusive policing in contempt. Wartime identity cards were got rid of as quickly as possible after the 1939-45 war ended, and I remember feeling slightly resentful when I started travelling to the Continent in the 1950s at having to allow my hotel to register my passport with police. What business of theirs was it to know where I was staying, I wondered?
I fear it won’t be long now before we have compulsory CCTV cameras installed in our bedrooms and even our loos. And judging from accounts of the juicy gossip which used to emanate from old-fashioned village telephone exchange operators, there will be an eager queue of applicants wanting to be monitors – much better than reality television!.
Michael – good summary.
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Sure, it’s the database that’s the real issue, but it will be interesting to see how many people in Manchester actually sign up to this nonsense.
.-= My last blog ..It could have been worse … =-.
What a shame that the Conservatives are going to kill ID cards but no the register that lies behind it.