I have to say I wasn't a fan of the SNP. However, at least they have the balls to say no to the government and actually have the power to follow through.

The UK parliament is a joke at the moment with an unhealthy majority for the government. We need a system which more or less guarantees a minority government or a power sharing government. This way it might be possible to get some fair voting to take place.

I almost feel sorry for the English and Welsh now...

This is simply the next logical step in the REAL reason for wanting to introduce ID cards.

It has nothing to do with illegal immigration. Nothing to do with terrorism (but everyone knew that anyway).

It is, and always has been to do with tax and government revenue, and I'm amazed that this has never been pointed out before. This is the most valuable application of the ID card. The government want to keep tabs on everyone to help with the collection of tax, and the enforcement of the ever-increasingly complex and unreasonable tax laws that this country has. By linking-in more and more data and by making use of the ID card compulsory (either explicitly in law or effectively by making it too inconvenient not to use it), the tax man (or rather his bloody big computer) will be able to keep track of who you are, how old you are, who you work for, how much you earn, who you bank with (think about it), when you are in and out of the country, etc etc. It'll make his life much easier!

All birth certificates have a red warning on them saying "This certificate does not prove identity." If the IPS were to simply import the existing births database, they'd be importing data of unknown quality. Much of it is probably OK, but if they are to position themselves as a gold standard for identity then sucking mud isn't a good start.

Besides which, as those who really care about identity (such as banks) already know, it doesn't matter who the person in front of you is, it only matters that it is the same person as last time.

Surely it should be "Identification" - my "identity" is my own: I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered!

Oops, got carried away there ...

I'd like my money back please, and to cancel my payments to the UK Government "fuck the people" fund.

I didn't pay them my subscription fee for them to start compiling a database of everyone's income, TV habits and penis size (well, I pay it because they're extorting it from me, but that's another story). How the hell is this going to help anything?

Ignoring the fact that nowadays you're probably more likely to be locked up for typing a slash in the wrong place in a URL, or shot by the stazi because you're running for a train -- how will this combat "the terrorist threat", or street crime for instance? We already know that a bloke called Ousma Bin Liner wants us all dead, and the brainwashed scum who crashed into the world trade centre had passports -- hell, I'm sure even some of the people who mug old ladies have some form of ID, how come we still have terrorism and crime?

[/rant]

I feel better with that off my chest now, anyone know a country not run by power-mad, self-serving, egotistical, morons that allows immigration?

The great British Public is not "letting this happen", they are not being given a chance to do anything about it. Laws about this sort of thing are never opened to public approval, and are never important enough for 'the other side' to repeal when they get into power assuming the great unwashed don't vote for more of the same again.

Expect to see them take over the cemetaries too, then they'll be digging you up to get the latest bio-id data from your corpse.

and contrary to what he said, the tax/control/track aspect has been raised numerous times by the anti-id fraternity and generally forms the crux of their argument against ID cards and the NIR.

The problem is the populous at large are too blinkered to see the real reasons and happily accuse those who do see the true reason for the NIR/ID system as card carrying members of the tin foil hat brigade, which is unfortunate, and ultimately lazy thinking.

Public apathy will be key to the government introducing this system.

I will leave this country before succumbing to state enforced registration of my biometrics.

"It is, and always has been to do with tax and government revenue,"

If only it were that benign! If all the intention of the ID database was to have better and fairer taxation (after all, its not us working slobs who are dodging the tax man) I would be all for it. But I fear that is very far from the case.

I can't see it being used to keep track for tax purposes. Your NI number is supposed to do that and anyone who, is honest, and has to fill out a self assessment form each year would love it if there was a large computer that could track it all automatically.

I mean, they know how much you earn from any job you apply for, they should know how much interest you've paid through your bank accounts and have access to pension data. Why can't they work out how much tax you've paid and should've paid and automatically send you a refund?

If this card allowed that it would be one positive for it.

Seeing as the ID card seems to be inevitible why not make it a lot more useful and store a type of public/private certificate on the card. Then you could have a small reader attached to a PC and with the help of a pin or password access all you bank accounts, vote in referendums, etc safe in the knowledge that viruses/keyboard loggers will not be successful.

Surely in the 21st century online identity is the most important, not offline?

http://www.ratifiersfordemocracy.org/ukrfd.htm

just sharing a fairly reasonable idea i stumbled upon once

Quoted. "however, Hillier is "Home Office Minister responsible for Identity." Just identity, but all of it."

Every time I read this article, it seem to register to me as "Hitler is..." ...ah well!

"Seeing as the ID card seems to be inevitible..."

No they are not - if we all vote for Tories.

Well within the lifetimes of a lot of ppl on this forum, oil production will start to fail.

Hence the need to be tooled up with Trident and have all sorts of controls and monitoring on the British public.

Then we'll see the _real_ purpose of all these anti-terrorist laws. The establishment will need to preserve their lifestyles at all costs.

Jon said <i>"I will leave this country before succumbing to state enforced registration of my biometrics."</i>

From what I can see, though, there won't be too many places to go where the population will not be required to do so.

I am a free guinea pig

...so where is it i sign up for my id card?

with dna in hand i head down to the polling station to leave a mark on my ballot paper. lol

"biographical footprint data"

Fingerprints not enough now, then..?

Sadly Lloyd, the fact that it will no doubt be a tremendous clusterfuck in the ways you describe will not stop it from actually being implemented, with all the attendant dysfunction we would reasonably expect.

And once the project has a bit of momentum behind it, it won't matter how messed up or over budget it becomes, because the argument will be made that it would still cost *more* to revert to separate departments and systems, and/or that to do so would represent a colossall waste of the taxpayers money already invested, etc.

Sound familiar ?

Yep, that's pretty much the way I figure it's going to go. I'll be honestly surprised if they get the thing running properly, nevermind actually get any useful data mining out of it.

Though if it does go live at least I'll have only one place to go to correct my name when they misspell it. Oh ho.

"I feel better with that off my chest now, anyone know a country not run by power-mad, self-serving, egotistical, morons that allows immigration?"

Switzerland. The meaning of the word democracy is ill-defined in common use because our masters like us to think that elections == democracy. Anyone with half a brain is able to figure out that popular sovereignty is the only guarantee of true democracy, regardless whether we elect a parliament, or have a soviet of deputies, or just randomly choose punters off the street by lot. A mechanism for achieving popular sovereignty has been in place in Switzerland for over 100 years, it is the Right of Initiative & Referendum. It means nothing more than that the people are ultimately in charge in a meaningful way (not through elections) and can reject or introduce specific elements of government policy and legislation. This is sometimes referred to as Direct Democracy which confuses the hell out of those with no imagination (no it doesn't mean you have to vote on everything).

Sadly the subject of popular sovereignty is taboo in mainstream news media and this is why the majority of the British public (also in other 'representative democracies') continues to think that democracy is a popularity contest. Somehow they do not notice that in fact it's more often than not about choosing the least unpopular 'leaders', all of whom in any case believe that the people need to be protected from their own stupidity. If you wish to understand the role of the media in our 'democracy' you could do a lot worse than to start with Chomsky & Herman's analysis (no, not a conspiracy theory but a falsifiable theory in a scientific sense).

Будьмо!

Michael - you have heard of the National Entitlement Card, no ? Today free bus travel, tomorrow - who knows...

The solution to this disaster is to obtain and publish the data contained on as many ID cards as possible as and when they are introduced, starting with oneself. As long as the police are not instructed to drag grannies from their beds at 4.00am to be enrolled, then a compromised ID per se cannot serve as a basis for refusing a person's normal rights and entitlements.

The consequence is that the UK Govt will be looking for at least 2 Luther Blissetts, the real one, me of course, and my namesake, in order to collect taxes from. (They already know that the self-eomployed understate their receipts by 50%, and an increasing number of ad hoc taxes will be introduced, as "fines"). Not for their own good, of course, as they didn't own the money they spent to start with, and in any case if their self-determined salaries are inadequate there are well-established venal or immoral means to supplement it (e.g. joining the Carlyle Group). No, the UK Govt collects for the banking cabal who printed it, and who decide if they will allow the UK Govt to "borrow" it, just as they decide how much to mortgage you for, and at what rate of "interest". Just as they decided they didn't need a change of government at this particular moment in time, so as to implement the new EU constitution which is not a constitution.

Remember Red Ken trying to raise money on the open market to improve the Tube? Remember PFI (aka PPI under the Tories)?

"Interesting" don't you think?

This situation continues to get worse and worse. I sent a letter to my MP about ID cards last year (the venerable David Cairns, who as I have previously stated is NOT, contrary to local opinion, a nauseating self-satisfied bastard who's so slimy and oily that if you threw him into the sea he'd float and Greenpeace would need to come clean the seabirds. He's not that at all. Honest!).

In the letter, I described how I fear ID Cards as the slippery slope to fascism, how this is exactly what happened in Nazi Germany, and how the greatest threat to liberty in 21st Century Britain is not the jackboot of Adolf Hitler, but the Armani shoe of Tony Blair.

Unsurprisingly, he didn't agree, said that I do opponents of the ID card a huge disservice by comparing the greatest post-war PM with 'ol Adolf, and how these ID cards will stop everything from terrorism to genital herpes. Ok, I made the last bit up, but you get the idea. Apparently there will be NO mission creep at all with these cards and the database, no other agencies will get their slimy paws on it without a court order, nothing to worry about here Citizen.

Yeah. Not worried here at all. Hope fully the SNP will stop the most outrageous of these atrocities if for no other reason than it'll piss off Labour. With any luck the sheer incompetence of Labour, their eventual loss to the Tory's, and the subsequent collective arse-clenching here in Scotland will mean we may, just, get independence from the fascists. Feel sorry for the Welsh though. Don't feel at all sorry for the english though. They voted for these muppets. Seem to recall they voted in Maggie several times too. Ain't karma a bugger.