Posts by S Taylor

It's long, but worth a read.

So let's get this straight.

I have a passport. I have a birth certificate. I have a marriage certificate. I have a medical card with my social security number on it. I have a driving licence, an MOT certificate and a Certificate of Insurance. I have a television licence. I have several credit cards. I own a house and the local authority knows where I live because they keep telling me to cut my hedge (actually, they keep telling me to cut next door's hedge, but that's another story). I have a library card. I get regular utilities bills. I have an email address. When my picture is taken by one of these cute yellow cameras at the side of the road, the DVLA in Swansea knows exactly who I am and can have Mr.Plod waiting on my front door mat before I get home. I'm on the electoral roll, and actually have a vote for all the good it's ever done. I pay my taxes, and have had a job for most of my life so have also been paying my National Insurance contributions. I've been checked by the Criminal Records Bureau so I can work with children.

I went into a shop recently to buy a new computer. The young assistant asked my name, typed it into his computer and then told me where I live and what my telephone number is. He then spent the rest of the interview calling me by my Christian name, though I didn't know him from Adam. I had a telephone call the other day from a man in India who even knew my date of birth.

I am so deeply woven into the fabric of our society that I couldn't hide if I wanted to.

Yet now the government want me to have an Identity Card. Why? They already know who I am, where I live, when I was born, who I'm married to, who my children are, what my qualifications and employment history are, whether I have any convictions for speeding (I have) or for offences against children (I haven't), and probably the name of my cat and whether I pick my nose with the right forefinger or the left. So why do they need to issue me with an Identity Card?

To combat terrorism? Yes, I can quite see that any responsible citizen with an Identity Card would think twice about letting loose with a Kalashnikov in IKEA one Saturday morning. But your bona fide terrorist with a bomb strapped under his parka - what's he supposed to think? "Oi, wait a moment, I don't have an Identity Card. I'd better not do this"?

Perhaps it's to ensure that only people who legally live in this country can get the dole or go to hospital or draw their old age pension? But they already know all this stuff about me. They know, if they can be bothered to check their computer like the lad in PCWorld, that I've paid so much National Insurance and Income Tax over the years that I practically own the bloody National Health Service. Of course, if there's an asylum-seeking illegal immigrant terrorist who looks exactly like me, lives at the same address and happens to have laid his hands on my passport, birth certificate, marriage certificate, medical card, social security number, driving licence, MOT certificate, Certificate of Insurance, television licence, credit cards, library card, utilities bills, email address, Voter's Card, wife, cat and hedge, I can see where an Identity Card might be quite useful.

No, the real reason is because they can make me pay for the damned thing. There's the crunch - it's just another tax. I've paid all my life so I can get the medical help and pension I need when I'm old, and now they won't give them to me unless I pay a little bit more.

Well, think about this, Mr.Brown, old cock. By the time this all becomes a law that applies to everyone, I'll be really old. All I'll want from life is three square meals a day, a bed, a bit of telly in the evening and somewhere to crap. How about I refuse to get an Identity Card, you prosecute me, I refuse to pay the fine, and you have to send me to gaol? I imagine I'll get three meals a day there, a bed and a pot to piss in. And if I'm ill, the prison hospital will bloody well have to treat me whether I've got an Identity Card or not.

Get out of that!

In the old days...

When I was a lad, it was 'Death by view graph'. But time moves on, I suppose. Previous posters have it spot on; It's how you present, not what you show and tell on screen.

Introduce your point, then, whilst you expound your latest... whatever, press key 'B' (for blank screen) and everyone then looks at you because there is nothing on the screen.

Powerpoint is a wonderful piece of kit. Professor Swellor, et al, should move into the real world of working for a living and stop shining their shorts in the surf. :-)