Are you completely and utterly mad? Why should I have my civil liberties cut due to the incompatence and inability of the government to do what it was put in power to do? I.D. cards (biometric or otherwise) have absolutely nothing to do with illegal immigrants or the war on terror, its about keeping tabs on the general populace...
whoever they may be.
Why should someone who has not done anything wrong have to carry an I.D. card which will eventually,
with no doubt, become compulsary to have on you at all times? Inevitably it will come to the police being able to stop any individual on a whim and demand an I.D. card being produced or face a fine/arrest/prosecution. This is surely something to which any law-abiding citizen going about their law-abiding business should not be subjected to?
If I've done nothing wrong I don't want to be tracked or leave a readily traceable 'footprint' (this kind of data will be collected every time they stop you because they feel like it). If I'm suspected of something doing wrong it should be up to the police to detect and investigate, which is something that they find difficult to do given the metophorical handcuffs into which they have been placed by this government. With the inability of the police force to do their job properly - thanks to all the red-tape, bo**ocks and hoops they have to jump through, which now can't be undone as this would be like the government admitting "We f**ked up", which is never going to happen! - the government need to find new ways to control its populace... certain functions of the police force will be reduced to nothing more than a 'security' force serving the governments own agenda.
Furthermore the government cannot be trusted that it won't use this data, now or in the future, to subject us to further restrictions of civil liberties. All it would require is the next "Big 'Scary' Thing" to
nearly happen (which if recent events are anything to go by are almost comical by comparison to the very real threats faced by those in the 80s at the hands of the (P)IRA. Incidentally we survived that without requiring I.D. cards). This 'event' then gets whipped up to a frenzy by the media (who's job it is to whip things up as thats what sells papers), and the government has got its latest excuse to introduce bills that further control
us.
It does not take a large stretch of the imagination to envision one day, together with I.D cards, a central database of every
legal citizen (whatever their unknown intentions!), traceable movements, and the use of data that they once 'promised' not to use that we will all end up under some classification system. One section of society gets 'this' classification, another gets 'that' classification... And if the **** really hit the fan before you know it this government (or
any subsequent government) will be introducing their own (silent) version of the infamous yellow star!
Okay, so that may be taking things a little too far (into the future!) so to bring things in back to the present... With I.D. cards and the classification that they will no doubt inherit any one section of society that may have a cause for a bit of civil unrest will immediately find themselves placed upon curfew or restricted from certain areas.
Scenario A (and this is absolutely not the worst case I can think of... I'm sure you could think of things far, far worse too!):
Due to ever increasing hikes in fuel duty the government gets whiff of some possible fuel protests largely driven by the hard-hit working classes. Pre-empting the possibility of blockades at oil-refineries...
Police officer: May I see your I.D. card please sir? [checks card, checks computer, see's holder is of classification "W" (Working Class)]
Police officer: Sir, due to intelligence I'm afraid you are restricted [sufficiently vague enough to make you think "ooh, terrorists"] from entering this area. You may not approach within 2 miles of [arbritrary area so as not to specifically mention the refinery]. Please find an alternative route or face arrest.
Meanwhile Mr. Rich B'stard is allowed to pass in his gas guzzling luxury car because, well, he's loaded and couldn't give a flying fig about fuel duty and such (and supports labour!), and is therefore not likely to do something which would cause a cascade effect and embarress the government.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not some civil liberties 'nutter' but the writing is already on the cards (to mix metaphors!). Did you know its already illegal to be in group of 15 or more people, with a collective purpose, without written authorisation? Obviously this kind of 'law' is only be enforced where it is in the governments interest (impromptu protests and such). Unfortunately you can't use it to get out of going shopping with the missus "But love, I don't want to break the law... there will be more than 15 people there and that would be breaking the law. If you want to risk it..."
I just think this government is going about everything "**** about face". Curtailing the liberties of the many, for the sake of the few just doesn't seem right... whichever way you look at it or try to justify it. Power should be given back to the appropriate authorities to deal effectively with their own problems. Funds should be released from the governments useless and often failed pet projects to enable those authorities to execute their functions in a manner which gets tangible, visable results.
When Labour came into power they did so with a flurry of taglines like "Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" and other such crap. To me there is one tagline, and one tagline alone, they should have used. If they had this country would not be in half the mess that it is now (or, depending on how you look at it, they would have had to remove themselves from power):
"Tough on incompatence, tough on the causes of imcompatence"
