Our list of allies grows thin
So much of what this Government does is predicated on the fact that by far the vast majority of its subjects are yoked – incontrovertibly - to the rules expressed in Ginsberg’s Theorem:
1) You can’t win.
2) You can’t break even.
3) You can’t quit the game.
Alternative version: Don’t like it? What you going to do about it? Shouldn’t you be watching Eastenders?
We now, after the cynically termed “compromise” on the part of the House of Lords over ID cards, can add Burnham’s Theorem to our canon of wisdom:
1) You can have a passport
2) You don’t have to have an ID card
3) You still have to go on the ID card register. And pay for it.
The disgusting, disgraceful fudge that opponents of the ID card bill in both the Commons and Lords shamefully accepted is that from 2008, when applying for a new passport, you can opt out of having an ID card until 2010 but cannot opt out of having your details recorded on the National Identity Register, the massive database that will hold detailed information about everybody. Not only that, if you do opt out from having an ID card you still have to pay the same amount as if you were accepting your card. From Hansard:
Lynne Jones: I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way. Will he tell the House something about the charges for the passport and the identity document? In particular, will those people who decline to receive an identity card be exempt from paying the charge of £30 or thereabouts?
Mr. Clarke: No, they will notâ€â€[Interruption.] Let me make two points. The overall pricing strategy for these documents will be determined after the Bill has received Royal Assent, as we have made clear all the way through. We have given a variety of indications about unit costs, and we have made various commitments in the House that will be honoured, but the actual pricing strategy will be determined on that basis. Secondly, concern was expressed in the other placeâ€â€I cannot speak for this placeâ€â€about the principle of whether a person should be required to have an ID card, as opposed to being on the national identity register. We are accepting the proposal from the other place for an opt-out on the principle of accepting an ID card, though not on the issue of the national identity register. In respect to the other place, its Members were very clear that the cost issues were not a matter of concern for them.
Which is final proof of what those of us opposed to ID cards and the National Identity Register have been saying all along: this is all about cataloguing the population and the intrusive, abusive, and not to mention lucrative, uses to which this information can be put. The ID cards themselves are a side issue. This sham compromise inconveniences the Government not one inch. Shadow Home Secretary David Davis summed it up during the final debate in the Commons with a story from his army days:
The officers’ mess had given the sergeants’ mess a barrel of beer and the commanding officer asked the sergeant-major what they made of it and whether they liked it. He said, “It was just right, sir.” The CO said, “Just right?” He said, “Yes, sir. If it had been any worse we couldn’t have drunk it, and if it had been any better, you wouldn’t have given it to us.”
This despite Charles Clarke’s bleating that “[t]he date of 1 January 2010 adds a little bit of uncertainty to the Government’s plans for implementing the scheme”. While we’re on the subject of Clarke, he was a fragrant as ever during the debate: “Consistency and idiocy are characteristics of the Liberal Democrats”. John Wilkes he ain’t. His mother must be terribly proud.
The “Honourable” Gentleman has also gone on the record to say:
I don’t think there is any benefit in opting out at all. Anyone who opts out in my opinion is foolish.
For one, teeth-sucking, fist-clenching moment, I am forced to agree with the Home Secretary for the first and, please help me, last time. Thanks to a cynical government fix masked as compromise and a craven (or credulous) opposition, the game is well and truly afoot and the doors have been bolted. Can we solve, give lie to, Ginsberg’s Theorem in time? Given that the Theorem was Ginsberg’s take on the Laws of Thermodynamics, the precedents aren’t good.
With ID cards, like all the other government IT equivalents of homework done on the bus to school that we didn’t ask for but must suffer, innocent lives will be blighted, possibly, like with the Tax Credits system, to a terrible extent. Tough luck if your details are wrong or the technology won’t scan your card. And obscene Krakatoas of cash will go to line the pockets of those who neither need nor deserve it, and maybe will not even notice it.ÂÂ
As Longrider says over at Europhobia: “incompetence is now our most valuable ally“. We must now hope that the procurement and implementation of the National Identity Register is as cack-handed, expensive and late as the rest of the technocratic turds this Government has to seen fit to foist on us in its rudderless quest for a subjugated Utopia.
In that, at least, the odds are in our favour. We democrats grudgingly placed our faith in the hands of the unelected Lords. We must now, reluctantly yet with hope, put it in the hands of big business.
Posted on March 30th, 2006 at 7:06 pm
| See also • PIN: The tail on the donkey • One fine day in the middle of the night • Byrne the scoundrel |
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• Filed under Affronts to democracy, ID cards, UK politics |
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I’m severely depressed about this. The fuckers. What to do?
It realy is time to think creatively as to how we can defend our liberties from what is increasingly a Zanu Labour Gov’t.
This legislation is a sign that they do not trust the people. The problem is that with their misuse of leglislation and the levels of corruption we now endure, the real question has to be can we trust them. And to that the only answe has to be a resounding NO!
Jarndyce – two options:
1) Renew your passport and emigrate before 2008, which should just about give you enough residency time in foreign climes to apply for citizenship before your passport’s due for renewal.
2) Start blowing things up. It’s a tactic that seems to be doing OK so far – Sinn Fein gains sizable chunks of the vote and invites to Downing Street, Hamas gets power in Palestine, the various nutters in Iraq have got their civil war…
(And yes, I am indeed both pissed off and pissed.)
Get your passport renewed now. Your appearance has changed. It needs renewing. Now. This spring. Yes, it’s an expense you don’t need, but it ain’t gonna get cheaper.
Beyond that, your personal choices are: campaign against the government (we’re doing it), vote Tory (David Davis has pledged to get rid of ID cards), try to spoof the system in the hope that enough like-minded people (and crooks) will be doing the same. Labour already thinks you’re no different than a criminal – what’s to lose?
Get your hands dirty before the appointed fingerprint scan. Fail to hold your eyes completely steady during the iris scan (a psychological condition brought on by stress). Join a religion that mandates the wearing of a scarf across the face unless your firstborn is present in the room. You may as well be facetious about this. The government is. I seem to remember the ‘Jedi religion’ becoming popular around the time of the last census, so a ‘viral’ campaign (or should we say pub banter campaign) – well, it might just work.
And fortified by a bottle of vino, I recall that there’s a person that travels the metropolitan transport network daily. His name and address are known to the computers. But it isn’t me. I don’t expect any comeback – whose house would the inspectors visit?
I like the religion idea. Couldn’t we invent a religion that could allow us to get past what the ID cards require? It would be a great PR campaign too and a way to make a big deal about this. Most of the public don’t realise how the government is trying to slip this past us.
And dude, how did you get the Ajax preview thing working at the bottom? Is that the name of a specific plugin for Wordpress? *grin*
Sunny, the comment preview plugin is here. I nicked it off Jim Bliss and his lovely new drum.
Jarndyce, as to ID cards, I’m almost tempted to say relax, sit back and enjoy the fun. This is going to be one of, if not the, largest IT projects on the planet. It has a deadline a mere two years away and will almost certainly be given to Capita or some other serial incompetent to cock-up.
In the meantime, we should sign up for ‘“ID cards” uk‘ and national identity register (and variants) Google News Alerts. We should then blog every minor detail – who gets the gig, the cock-ups big and small that leak out, the political backsliding and embarrassments – others will link in and word will spread.
Keep an eye on The Register who have been all over this (I think they have an email list) and Private Eye who we can expect to watch all this very closely. And of course, NO2ID.
I read somewhere that there’s going to be problems with builders as their fingerprints wear away over time. Might be worth investing in some very fine glass paper and having a rub every time you have a spare five minutes.
What happens if you suffer from amnesia and can’t remember who you are?
ID Cards – please excuse the link-dump:…
Spy Blog – The final vote on the Identity Cards Bill 2005 – Ayes 301 (including the Conservative front bench) Noes 84 NO2ID – ID Cards bill passes BSSC – Official: It’s Compulsory Perfect.co.uk – Anyone who opts out is……
[...] UPDATE: I wrote this yesterday an forgot to post it till this morning. Either way Justin beat me to the punch with another excellent article… Go read. • • • [...]
I am a scientist and one of the chemicals I work with disolves skin proteins. I once got some on my finger tips by accident and had no finger prints for a good while.
Seems like a fair use of underhand tactics to me – the government use them, so why can’t I?
Well finally being what Dubya, in one of his clunkier neo-logisms, called a “northern Irelander” I have a perfect solution….
Under the terms of partition all people born in the Province have the right to apply for an Irish passport.
Which might just make up for the whole taxation without representation bind we in NI are in. Though we pay taxes, thanks to the fact that none of the real political parties post candidates in elections here we effectively have bugger all say in the running of the UK.
Irish passport for me too, as thanks to my Corkman Dad I’m automatically an Irish citizen. If I’m reading the Embassy website right, you can apply up to three generations below an Irish-born person. Or you could be adopted by an Irish citizen. I fancy acquiring an extended family.
http://oasis.gov.ie/moving_country/migration_and_citizenship/irish_citizenship_through_birth_or_descent.html
It’s true, it is possible to get hold of proteases that will obliterate your fingertips. I’m off to the Chemistry labs at lunchtime to blag some.
I like the emigration idea. I’m thinking about Bhutan.
As for using your religion as a get-out excuse, Buddhists hold that there is no permanent self (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatta). So, my reply is going to be ’sorry, cannot define my identify as I have no permanent self….’
Anyone with an interest in liberty should definitely renew their passport as soon as possible. That’s not so easy for me living abroad, but I will make some enquiries at the Embassy. Then I guess we are all just hoping that the project goes to hell, financially, technically or politically, before anyone gets round to registering us. There is some hope of that but then consider how long it is taking the NHS to die.
I would not count on the Tories to repeal the law, by the way. It’s amazing how attractive the shiny levers of State power become once you get your hands on them. David Davies is sound on this, but not much else. David Cameron is functionally indistinguishable from Blair (which is, I understand, his big plan). He is therefore unsound on this and just about everything else. I am finding it hard to take seriously the idea that we should hope he’s lying through his teeth and is a good man really.
Any other practical suggestions one could make are probably criminal these days, by way of being incitement to this or that or glorification of the other.
Emigration is definitely the answer, but where? Looking at the streets of Paris this week, one might think France was the place where the people can stand up to the State. Unfortunately, the ****wits were demanding that the State oppress them more. They are hard to get one’s head around.
Anyone with thoughts or suggestions on good places to live for libertarians? Preferably English, French, Polish or Russian-speaking as I am tired of learning new languages. We need to be able to carry a gun (not trusting the State to protect us) and speak freely (though politely, because everyone we might annoy will also have a gun!).