Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Basic instinct

So the government are abandoning plans for the ID card scheme to be compulsory?

In a significant climb down, Mr Johnson yesterday announced that the cards would only be issued to Britons on a voluntary basis.

In which case - what is the point? We already have a voluntary ID card scheme known as a "passport" so why bother with another one? Not only that, but the passport is useful if you want to get out of this country - which increasing numbers of Britons are choosing to do.

Mr Johnson is the man touted by the mainstream media as Gordon Brown's successor although, for the life of me, I can't think why. Johnson is to charisma what Brown is to cheerful - as far as I can tell, his only real quality is that he isn't Harriet Harman (which, to be fair, is a major positive for any politician).

But perhaps the biggest reason why we should hope this man never gets to be in charge of the country is this seemingly throw away comment .....

Mr Johnson insisted he was still an “instinctive” supporter of ID cards

That is the basic instinct of the people who now govern our country. The instinct of mistrust, repression and surveillance that typified regimes like the Soviet Bloc. That is what our fathers and grandfathers spent six years fighting against and another fifty defending us from in western Europe during the 20th century.

The wolves aren't just in the sheep pen - they are running the farm.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The 'not carrying a card' pish is a smoke screen. Having to carry a card is irrelevant - it's the huge, invasive and insecure database behind it that is the problem.

This was always about collecting vast amounts of personal data for the express purpose of surveilling the population AND selling the data to the highest bidder.

The requirement of the ID 'Card' to transact for various age restricted merchandise is only the start. It will extend into every area of our lives and put everything it collects in a large user (hacker) friendly repository.

That's if the f***tards in power don't lose the data in the post first.

The DVLA selling our details shows us the precedent for and intention of selling private information that we are compelled to give to companies.

And if they manage to push a National DNA database through, be prepared to have data about your very essence sold to healthcare companies.