20 Comments »

1. The "logistical questions" that are still to be answered presumably include "how much will the cards cost, once the IT project to build the underlying database has overrun by a factor of ten or so?"

   Comment by Chris Lightfoot — 5 Apr 2004 on 6:06 pm | Link

2. Come, sheeple, come this way… The dip is ready, and you will be cleansed.

   Step outside convention, and you will be held without lawyer or trial on the basis of teething problems and unforeseen technical difficulties.

   And the sincere look of regret from an ‘Official’, coupled with a noble gesture to work hard to get it right, will shine from a TV News channel, complete with the cinematic atmosphere of serious-ambient music, and the absence of any useful information whatsoever. No change there, then.

   Is anyone paying attention to this momentum, these symptoms, and the cut-outs and the get-outs of those running the show? I guess this is a rhetorical question. Folk are not used to taking things into consideration, altogether and not in isolation, and making the connections that are staring at us, unseen.

   But hey, cheer up. They can have my body, my ID, my DNA, my family, whatever it is they think they want. It’s for my own good, isn’t it?

   Islamic terrorists are the hired-by-the-West dumb killers who have no idea that they are the strategic golden pawn in a game not even their ‘vengeful Allah’ could conceive of. It suits everyone this way. PR, psychology, manipulation played evenly across the board.

   Identify the pawns, and control the game.

   At the end of the day, that’s all it is. God knows nothing of this stuff we do to each other. He knows who you are, and he knows you are safe. And this is the greatest ‘blasphemy’, and the highest treason, because it turns the world upside down, and inside out. And then where would we be? (Like we’ve really understood life well, so far, and how to get on with each other.) Heheheh.

   [Disclaimer: This is, obviously, just an opinion, not a decree. I could be completely on the wrong track, and everything is just hunky-dunky-dory. Am open to being convinced, honest, Gov.]

   (Why would you want to put so much effort into identifying something so temporary? Beats me. Unless, of course, you’re just stock-taking.)

   Comment by HH — 5 Apr 2004 on 9:48 pm | Link

3. Why is the PMOS referring to the Madrid bombings in the way he does? The PMOS is trying to imply, to make us think, that without identity cards we are unsafe. That without them ghastly things like the Madrid bombings will happen.

   Spain has identity cards, and the bombings still happened. I’m very doubtful of any reassurances that ID cards will magically protect us from terrorism.

   This is like the linking of Iraq and terrorism to justify the Iraq war, all over again. The government repeatedly tries to link things to it which aren’t linked. Meanwhile real measures to stop terrorists fall by the political wayside.

   Comment by Francis Irving — 6 Apr 2004 on 10:54 am | Link

4. Yes, but did any of us think that the strategy would be anything other than that? Let’s be honest – people’s fear of 9/11 is the only thing that would ever override their fear of their own government. It’s their only angle – and their only option.

   Comment by Gregory Block — 6 Apr 2004 on 3:49 pm | Link

5. I have always failed to see why anyone should argue against the carrying of an ID card. Surely we give out enough information about ourselves every day – loans, Post Office, job center, doctor, work.

   The only argument I have is cost. If the government want us to have ID cards they should be FREE.

   Comment by Roy Hawksworth — 10 Apr 2004 on 5:02 am | Link

6. The reason I object to an ID card is because I don’t need ID’ing. I already know who I am. If I "Choose" to ID myself to anyone else I can do that without another government issued document. I don’t work for the government, and I’m not owned by the government. So, I’m happy enough for the government to "request" I carry its formal identification document, although I would politely decline the offer, but I am deeply offended by its legal imposition of such a document. I will choose to break the law rather than become one of the oppressed compliant sheeple. Sometime you believe in a principle so strongly that you have to stand up and be counted for what you believe in. This for me is that moment.

   Comment by mark — 10 Apr 2004 on 9:14 am | Link

7. Count me in on that Mark

   Comment by PapaLazzzaru — 10 Apr 2004 on 8:27 pm | Link

8. Given the history of Great Government IT Disasters I predict that the ID card project will come in about three years late and \xA33bn over budget. And we’ll have to pay for it.

   Comment by Paul Harrison — 11 Apr 2004 on 9:40 am | Link

9. I don think your going to have much choice mark and PapaLazzzaru your going to need the ID card instead of your driving licence and probably your passport. You`ll probably need it for lots of other things too.
   Did anyone see I think it was Kenyon confronts. He showed that you could get someones finger prints of a glass and convert them to use with the id system. Then he went out and stole the home secretaries identity birth certificate and all.

   Comment by John Murphy — 12 Apr 2004 on 2:29 am | Link

10. As there is a total absence of policemen on our streets(I have lived at my present address 8 years and never spoke to or even seen one)who would check the ID cards,can it be done from cars speeding past? Also most of the 11 hijackers involved in the New York 9/11 incidents had perfectly valid visas-didn’t seem to be effective there.
    I do pay Council tax for these damned elusive coppers though

    Comment by Peter Howarth — 14 Apr 2004 on 4:18 pm | Link

11. Just as another data point here, Danny Yee links to an essay by Bruce Schneier about ID card proposals:
    <a href="http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0404.html#1">http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0404.html#1</a&gt;
    — this is from the US perspective, but it all carries over, I think.

    Comment by Chris Lightfoot — 15 Apr 2004 on 1:42 pm | Link

12. It took just 40 years for the highly advanced, democratic Roman Empire to move from ever growing taxation, to a register of people (ID cards), and then into a system of surfdom and ultimately a caste system. Here is how it happened….http://geocities.com/weakscream/

    Comment by brainclamp — 3 Jun 2004 on 9:00 pm | Link

13. Well…

    Rome was never that democratic, quite frankly. Rome itself, like America, was built on slavery; albeit a different and more brutal kind of slavery. More importantly, Rome was never caste-less; and the whole of the history of managing the megalith that was the actual city of Rome was itself a study in how to prevent the masses from rioting.

    So, while I welcome another member of the public to my particular side of the fence, I’d prefer you do a little less blind jumping; that kind of web page is the sort of fanatical drivel that ignores the power of truth, in this case:

    ID cards will not make us safer; they will just make it easier to identify our bodies.

    Comment by Gregory Block — 5 Jun 2004 on 10:22 am | Link

14. I do not think it can be called drivel.

    Life in Rome moved from a money economy with artisans and science, to a land based (barter) economy, with a feudal structure and caste system within 40 years as every citizen was registered with the government.

    In fact citizens were not allowed to move from thier lands, or trades as it messed up the ‘database’ (register) and created additonal expense for the government.

    It can be argued that the government expansion from 270AD, its welfare liabilties and spending exceeded its income from taxation, and thus created a collapse in the money economy during 270-300AD, with massive hyperinflation, climaxed in the destruction of the freedman-artisan economy, and attempts at forcing people to work for a negative real economic return through a prices and incomes policy.

    This failed and a barter system took its place.

    There are parellels with recent times when there were similar attempts at extending spending through government, when its spending exceeded its income, and thus government control was prescribed which would need vast extension over the economy during the high inflation of the 1980’s.

    Take this from the 1983 election manifesto of the Liberals. The same Prices and Incomes policy more or less as Rome in 301AD, (minus the death bit).
    "In drawing up its counter-inflation programme, the Alliance has faced the question of pay and prices policy head on. Unlike other parties, the Alliance will seek a specific mandate from the electorate in support of an incomes policy"

    From Labour’s 1983 manifesto : No hints of spending limits…
    "We will expand the economy, by providing a strong and measured increase in spending. Spending money creates jobs. Money spent on railway electrification means jobs, not only in construction, but also in the industries that supply the equipment – as well as faster and better trains. If we increase pensions and child benefits, it means more spending power for the elderly and for parents, more bought in shops, more orders for goods, and more jobs in the factories. More spending…"

    So it is not so far in the past when we have faced similar massive pressures. A register of people, and ID cards held by government means government can extend its control over people’s lives in many ways people currently think impossible.

    Comment by brainclamp — 8 Jun 2004 on 8:03 pm | Link

15. There cannot be any economic parrallels between Rome and any modern situation. Whilst most economic thoeries currently assume perfect information and competition, which we don’t quite have – the disparity between todays markets and those of AD320 are, ahem, "quite" different.

    Comment by lodjer — 9 Jun 2004 on 9:24 am | Link

16. You are wrong to assume there cannot be any parallels in history.
    Whenever anything, any state, firm, civilisation, even biological organism spends more than it takes in ; That is; its liabilities are greater than its income, it must either reduce its liabilties/spending, or increase its income through growth.

    The nature of the economy is irrelevent.
    It does not matter if the rise in income is from conquest and slavery, or from technological innovation, or from consuming more resources.

    In the case of an organism, like your body, if you spend more energy than you take in, your body will contract to adapt to the new situation. It will first burn its energy store, then start consuming its own functional components.

    In the case of a state, (a body politic) when its liabilities exceed its income, there is a process of inflation, as the state prints money to meet its liabilities, and consumes the saved income of its population.

    Then, (as for all practical purposes its population is its income), it nearly always attempts to control the population and thier output, and thus raise its share of income.

    Prices and incomes policies, ID cards and registers, there are many examples in history that repeat – the forces are always the same.

    Comment by brainclamp — 9 Jun 2004 on 3:26 pm | Link

17. What is a prices and incomes policy?

    A prices and incomes policy is a attempt by the state to fix prices (eg; the price of bread) and relate it to a persons income, which is also set by the state.

    This is an attempt by the state to control the economy, when money inflation is very high (as the state is printing money!)

    The state, not merit, not how well people do or how productive they are, decides what people’s incomes should be in a range of occupations, and what prices should be set for a range of goods and services.

    Obvoiusly the state and its banks are the ones who print the money and cause the inflation in the first place, so such a policy is an attempt to get people to work for often negative returns.

    Comment by brainclamp — 9 Jun 2004 on 3:41 pm | Link

18. I didn’t say there weren’t any parallels in history, just that I didn’t see one here. Which I still don’t.

    Comment by lodjer — 9 Jun 2004 on 4:10 pm | Link

19. Rome registered all peoples under its dominion, after a Prices and Incomes policy failed, when hyperinflation raged.

    If the liberals got elected in 1983, a time of massive inflation, their central idea was to introduce a prices and incomes policy, (with a Pay and Prices commission), while spending continued.
    http://www.libdems.co.uk/manifestos/1983/1983-liberal-manifesto.shtml

    As buzy bodies went into factories deciding what you should earn, and what the price of bread should be, it is highly likely the policy would not have worked and created more inflation.

    What happens then? When more inflation occurs? We would be facing a simlar situation as in the roman situation.

    In history, there are few democracys which survive inflation above 20%. ID cards are an ideal form of government control – which, as I have just shown from the above, can occur through economic pressure. It is not so far fetched to see it could affect everything you do and how your life is run – your freedom.

    Comment by brainclamp — 9 Jun 2004 on 9:40 pm | Link

20. Good site! Good resources here, All the best!

    Comment by masterF — 23 Jun 2007 on 2:26 am | Link

---

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Post a public comment

Name (required)
E-mail (required)
(You must give an email address, but it will not be displayed to the public.)
Website
(You may give your website, and it will be displayed to the public.)

Comments:

This is not a way of contacting the Prime Minister. If you would like to contact the Prime Minister, go to the 10 Downing Street official site.

Privacy note: Shortly after posting, your name and comment will be displayed on the site. This means that people searching for your name on the Internet will be able to find and read your comment.