Love the idea of one card for life which covers all those things. Altho the thought of that one means of identity being lost, stolen or copied...erm...but then the govt would likely fine me, make me pay for another and stick me on some register as potential terrorist as I must have sold it to an underground sect hellbent of deploying dirty bombs throughout the laundrettes of Scotland
It just has a slight tinge of '30s Germay to me. With a dash of USSR as well. I have no doubt they meant well
And of course this current shower of shite are doing a cracking job, mate they're all the same. FFS Cameron has openly admitted that he's an admirer of Blair. We now have consensus politics in this country, some of policies new labour introduced are more right wing than some Conservative policies. What they are good at, is blaming each other and never accepting any responsibility for some of the momentous mistakes they make.
Unknowingly a large percentage of the population are happy to disclose most of their intimate private information to Big Brother already for a a very small fee. It's called a Clubcard or Necter Card, hand one of these over when you pay and Big Brother knows your demographic group, which rubber johnnies you prefer, if you drink lager or bitter, olives or pork scratchings. They are the biggest con of modern times.
And if morticians tied dead peoples shoelaces together we wouldn't have to worry if there was a zombie appocolypse
Personally I'm sick of going in to nearly every shop or petrol station and them asking me if I have one of their cards. Fuck me it's tesco, sainsburys, costa, boots, the list goes on and on. I can just see it now: Nip out on the bike then petrol station fill up (card sir?).....no sorry, Tescos for a sandwich (card sir?).....no sorry Costa for a coffee (card sir?) ...... NO Boots for some baby teething gel ......(card sir?).......GRRRRR NO! Policeman doing a random check ........Card sir?....... RIGHT, THATS IT.....THWACK! ........Jail
I'd be in favour of the ID card if it took the place of passports, driving licence etc etc. But it doesn't. So what's the point??
Actually Steve when you were born your birth was registered (which has always been legally compulsory), and no doubt you have a birth certificate. If you work and earn money on which you pay tax, you must compulsorily have a National Insurance number which is supposed to be unique to you. If you drive/ride you must have a driving license; if you travel outside the UK you must have a passport. And it is legally compulsory to be on the Electoral Register (although not to vote). Etc etc. All these things exist, and have existed for many years. You can't opt out of them or ignore them Steve, because you are a part of them. These antiquated systems are extremely vulnerable to identity theft, duplication, fraud, and fakery of various sorts. They are widely exploited by thieves, terrorists, hackers, drug smugglers, illegal immigrants, tax evaders, and others. Are you happy about that? The new National Identity scheme, now discontinued, did not impose any new requirements or any new compulsion on anybody. It did allow a mechanism for solving a whole host of problems, which now have not been solved after all.
The point is, it draws the threads together. One human being has one identity, established by photo, signature, fingerprints and later maybe DNA. That person then cannot be issued with more than one licence, one passport, one NI number, etc. nor be issued with a document in a fake name. If somebody else tries to pretend to be you, a means exists of establishing which one is the genuine El Toro and which is the fake. Or it would do, if it hadn't been scrapped. So we are back to open vulnerability to fraudsters and fakers, as before.
This strays well away from the thread topic. Still (since you ask) here are two: 1. Introducing the lower 10% Income Tax band and then abolishing it again. It should have been either introduced and kept, or not introduced at all. That part of the population which benefited (in terms of paying less tax) was not a bit grateful, because the later abolition left them more resentful than if it had never been introduced. Gordon Brown should have known better. 2. Introducing the Freedom of Information Act 2000. It contains the germ of a good idea, but as implemented it meant that anybody can make an unlimited number of FOIA requests, free of charge, and the public bodies are under a strict obligation to respond to every request within a tight time limit - but without having any funds or resources to do it with. It could be 10 requests per day, or 100, or 1,000 per day and the same tomorrow and the next day. Tony Blair has said himself it was his worst mistake. Two basic political rules: * If you provide something to a group but then take it away again, they are more annoyed than pleased. *If you undertake an obligation which is resource-intensive, but without providing any resources, the consequence is unspecified and arbitrary cuts to other things.
He did but he has either forgotten about Iraq , Afghanistan, Gordon Brown, Peter Mandelson etc so they don't count or he thinks they were all less bad than the Freedom Of Information Act. What strange world he must live in.
Tony Blair: "One of the biggest mistakes of my career. For political leaders, it's like saying to someone who is hitting you over the head with a stick, 'Hey, try this instead', and handing them a mallet. The information is neither sought because the journalist is curious to know, nor given to bestow knowledge on 'the people'. It's used as a weapon." Lord (Charlie) Falconer: "…FoI is not for press it is for the people. It needs to be properly used in order to promote good Government. Information needs to be handled responsibly, and I strongly believe that there is a duty of responsibility on behalf of the media as well."
