One fine day in the middle of the night
So much of what this government does turns on the sixpence of semantic deceit. Why else are city academies allowed to select 10% of students by aptitude in a given subject but not ability. I’ve yet to hear a clear explanation of the difference that did not um, er and wriggle.
No logical contortion is too ridiculous. It’s this most malleable of mindsets that allows the likes of Jim Murphy, sponsor of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill, to acknowledge the concerns people have about the bill but still refuse implement adequate safeguards against the new law being abused.
It’s the same deal with ID cards. It’s being sold as a voluntary system but from 2008, when renewing your passport, you will be automatically issued with an ID card. It’s a voluntary system where you must have a card.
I offer this exchange, from the most recent debate on ID cards in the House of Commons, between Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, and his Tory opposite number, David Davis:
David Davis: Does the Home Secretary think that foreign travel is voluntary for diplomats, soldiers and other Crown servants and their families?
Mr. Charles Clarke: It is not compulsory.
Six impossible things before breakfast? When it comes to believing utter rot, New Labour make the White Queen look like Richard Dawkins.
Posted on March 19th, 2006 at 8:14 am
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No, the Safety Elephant has it exactly right. Under the new dispensation, members of professions whose rules and traditions have evolved over hundreds of years to ensure their political neutrality had now better get with the programme, as defined by the faction in office, or get out.
As Lindsey Beyerstein was remarking the other day, “The Enlightenment was a blast. Glad I caught the tail end of it.”
Chris
Thanks for linking to the Commons ID card debate - it’s worth going back a few pages and reading the whole thing. What’s striking is the sheer nastiness of the government’s position, as represented by Charles Clarke and Andy Burnham. They’d never take that sort of tone in public - but when it comes to less well reported interchanges, they don’t hesitate to bully and hector.
“It’s not compulsory to travel” is almost on a par with “it’s not compulsory to eat”.
I don’t know why they want this scheme as badly as they do. Can it possibly be worth the personal degradation?
Welcome to the Small Print. Common understanding of language is generally nothing but an agreement - a single word or phrase may have a whole bunch of assumptions and justifications lying behind it, predicated by trust and belief in the motivations of the other party.
People that naively think today’s democratic governments speak *for* them (rather than about them) go with the hype - the “I want to believe” meaning of nebulous concepts such as “compulsory” and “torture”. Hurrah for democracy! Hurrah for freedom! Language is in the mind of the beholder.
IIRC, Orwell’s Newspeak stripped out swathes of words for being too “fluffy” and vague. Why have 3 words meaning roughly the same thing, when 1 will cover them all? Neat trick - the logical aerobics skip over the fact that, indeed, any word can mean anything if sufficiently abstract. What is “democracy” after all? What about “love”?
Limited attention spans and a soundbite culture just make the whole problem worse.
‘Voluntary’ means you can change your mind…
Since ID cards will be voluntary, I presume I will be able to hand mine back to the Home Office when I decide I no longer want one.
……
[...] True, it is not compulsory to have a passport (at least, unless you work for the Foreign Office), and I can hand mine back to the issuing agency, the UKPA, at any time I choose. Since ID cards will be also be ‘voluntary’, I therefore presume I will be able to return mine to the Home Office, when it arrives along with my renewed, biometric passport… [...]
“I don’t know why they want this scheme as badly as they do.”
What’s the chances the BIO-Tech and IT companies behind the technology, have large unpaid loans outstanding, with certian political parties ?