They'll probably ask to see our ID before allowing us to join demonstrations! If they let us through then we should really worry ...

Here's a bit of light relief, I hope, illustrating how these identity systems could work in practice, true story ...

I missed a Postal delivery yesterday. My postie left me a card detailing how I could go to the local Post Office and pick up the parcel. I duly walked up to the Post Office clutching my little card. I got the wrong bloke on the counter, I knew it by the way he studied the card. He didn't look up but made a sort of "mmmmm" sound and took his pencil from behind his ear and scratched the end of his nose. "Where's your ID?" he asked, still not looking up. I was dressed in my usual finery, Doc Martins, filthy pocketless jogging bottoms, and a twenty two year old Barbour coat. I had no means of identifying myself! I explained this and without looking up he shoved the card back across the counter, stuck the pencil back behind his ear and muttered, "No way squire, more than me job's worth, gotta follow the rules y'see, it's for your own good, can't have people picking up youf parcels can we? Next!" It was a sort of mantra, bet he said it a dozen times a day, smug git. But he had a point, even though the card had been put through my door and even though it did seem more than likely that I would have to be in my house in order to obtain the card. I gave the smug tosser the benefit of the doubt and duly walked home, picked up a union envelope with my name and address on it and returned. I got a different guy on the counter, "That'll do nicely", he said, when I handed him my card, "Here you are pal, happy xmas!"

It wasn't until I walked back home again that I realised he hadn't asked me for my ID.

But we already knew that and I think it proves the point ....

You read all of my post didn't you KLF?

I went on at some length about how these things happen slowly in, as I put it, dribs and drabs.
Like tiny drops of water wearing away a stone that holds up the towering ediface.

The control freaks love people like you.
You're a good lad, you do as you're told and have no truck with spongers, whiners, ne'er do wells and the like.
People like me get right up your nose because we question everything.
Even things we know are most likely good for us, we pick it up look at it and tear the fucker to pieces to see how it works.

Most things are benign. But every so often something comes along that is designed to make you behave in ways which benefit a tiny coterie of well placed privelidged individuals at the expense of the masses of poorly off, low paid and poorly educated.

It matters not one jot to me if scum bag Blunkett takes 1 year or 20 years to introduce ID cards. I'm not having it.
And if they ever become law, why do you think that your "name, rank and serial number" will be the only thing on the card. Do you believe that you'll be allowed to own and operate your own card reader at home?
You'll be lucky to be owning and operating a fucking PC at home the way things are going.

All the while we play into the hands of the terrorists.
They systematically scare the living daylights out of "democratically elected" administrations ensuring that billions of dollars/pounds are wasted on ever more elaborate schemes to protect the status quo. (like ID cards)
They also know that the underlying causes of terrorism will never be addressed, namely the cynical manipulation of poor, uneducated masses for the benefit of a privelidged few.

Do you really believe that having invested in an ID system, Blunkett or subsequent home secretaries won't start using it for all kinds of things other than being able to know who you are?

The current plans are being sold to us as follows.
Immigrants and asylum seekers will only be able to access state funds if they have an ID card.
How long before I can't get child support unless I carry and have shown my own ID card which contains say information on my marital status, financial position and how many kids I have?

You describe my thoughts on this matter as paranoia.
This is how the Thatch always dismissed arguments against her plans for union membership and industrial relations. She had only the interests of the British people at heart.
Just as Tony and David do today.

And finally. How ironic that I am sitting here slagging off a LABOUR administration when I have been a socialist all my life and a Labour member for most of my adulthood.
Whilst you clearly lean to the right politically and yet find yourself supporting moves by a Labour home secretary.
It is bizarre and is evidence if more were needed that Alberr, Dickie and I are right whilst Blunkett is both a twat and wrong.

Really this is the last bit of this post...



Eh? I know that. That was my point. They know who I am before they get out of the car.
I show them my DRIVING LICENCE not an ID card and all is right with the world.
Why would I need an ID card?
Why would the policeman who has stopped me for speeding want to know my name?
He already knows that.
Why would he want to know my address?
He already knows that?
Why would he want to know my National Insurance Number?

The only things he might want to know is has this punter been convicted of anything before. Well he can get that from the in car computer. Name - address ergo...criminal record flashes up.
You maintain that things like criminal records wouldn't be on the ID card.
So what is it for?

Hi Greta. Looks like we swapped places (me to DK and you to the UK) . Welcome to the forum. I think your post sums up my feelings at the moment. But I'm reading all the arguments here very carefully.

Martyn: don't you think data protection laws (strengthened, of course) would prevent him from getting all that other info?

I think any already existing terrorism act will excuse any government from abiding by data protection laws...
All in the name of national security Fred.

On my lunch break I read about an american report that stated that NONE of the americans (muslims) arrested under the patriot act were arrested on suspicion of terrorism. They all violated immigration rules and were therefor arrested, put in high security prisons with 24 hour lights on. After half a year or so most were put on a plane to wherever they first came from.

This shows that nations are very well capable of bending laws to purposes they weren't originally intended for. Any guarantees that will not happen with the ID card? Anyone?

But couldn't they breach those laws anyway?

Hi Fred E.

Talking of the 'Data protction act'........Humberside police are blaming the D.P.A for the fact that their checks on Ian Huntley came back clear.......apparently they delete 'unproven allegations' from their records after 4 weeks....as such, no pattern of his offences built up on police computers.


What i'm saying is.....strenghening Data protection laws is not always a good thing....a sensible balance needs to be found.

Following the disclosures about Huntley's past we already have a senior police officer suggesting that we should have these bio doofer cards asap.

10 to 15 years?

2 to 3 at the most.

Whoever wins the next election we'll be looking at compulsory biometric ID's within the first tory/third Labour term.

Name, address and NI number?

Yep...plus blood group, DNA and each and every run in with the forces of law and order.

The control freaks can smell and taste this and it'll be a miracle if we can resist in the wake of what is already building into a nice newspaper selling post Soham hysteria fest.

I know it's unlike me to knock the police and David Blunkett but the reason people like Huntley are able to slip through the net is bleeding obvious.

We have a regional police force when we should have a national one.

I've been appalled by the reaction of the police and government who have been systematically passing the buck since the mistakes in the Soham inquiry have been made public.

You only have to watch a programme like Crime Watch (I did tonight) to see that the so-called national criminal database doesn't really exist.

Time and again you hear stories where an offender has been recognised by a copper from a neighbouring force. What sort of criminal intelligence is that? What sort of detective work is it when a copper spends hours on the blower calling round different regional constabularies to see if they have a record of a suspect?

You don't need ID cards to catch criminals you need a proper "joined-up" police force that shares intelligence and isn't bogged down in it's own importance.

My turn to gang up on you, Kalif!

I got in trouble with the law as a teenager, and got a 'caution', cos of how insignificant it was, and it was meant to be deleted when I turned 18, but it got quoted back to me by all the police who did me for little things as an adult (drink-drive, pass out on private property). Not to mention however many public sector recruiters had access to it. And for what? Look how conformist I am! Well, in a law-&-order sense, anyway. It's neither necessary nor helpful, and a random check of a national ID card would penalise me more than the normal, time-wise, for something that really another person did.

The law regarding how long details of allegations/investigations can be kept by police is a grey area.

The D.P.A states that information can only be kept 'as long as neccessary'.

As such Humberside police clear their records after 4 weeks....Whilst North Yorkshire police say they never delete information.

I heard a discussion about this which included someone from the police and someone from the dpa. The police were claiming that they were abiding by dpa regulations and the dpa person challenged this and said it was nonsense. The dpa regs are straightforward and are there to protect us civilians. The police interpertrations are questionable but I don't think they were "wrong". Although it is from my humble persepective bloody incomprehensible why two supposedly 'same' organisations, Humberside and North Yorkshire police forces, have such different policies.

As klf says, a grey area ...

I reckon the police were desperate to find somewhere to divert publicity away from them because they expected, correctly, to get the blame for something that they think was not their fault. I don't think it is their fault and Dickie has put his finger on what is really wrong in the UK. Our antiquated system of local police forces which have no central administration is advantageous for criminals.

What always worries me about reactions to high profile cases like this, a particularly disgusting crime, is the way the gobshite journos and publicity seeking politicians use the emotive atmosphere to support their attempts at undermining protective legislation. The dpa is there for our benefit and should be defended.

Would ID cards have helped here? We can only guess ...

And if I may be so bold as to add...

Its own incompetence.

You have it in a nutshell Dickie.

ID Cards would be a way of doing nothing about putting right all the things that are so very wrong about the police forces in the UK whilst getting Joe Public to do the work for them and pay for the privelidge.

Not that I'd ever suggest the police are heavily populated by a bunch of overpaid lazy scum bags you understand.


Edit to remove errant apostophe...Bugger.

I can't resist.
Here it should be its.

But yep, its about incompetence, not ID cards.
I also think its about not taking violence against women seriously. Why does Britain have an 8-9% conviction rate on rape? Its appalling.

Clearly traunatised by seeing an inappropriate use of the apostrophe in my post on police incompetence, Maria then subjects us to three, count 'em, THREE "ITS" without apostophes when they are clearly and undeniably required.

I am outraged.

Look at how outraged I am.

Grrrrrrrr....

Completely off topic......but it must have been fuckin' hilarious to read Martyn and Maria's emails when they were courting !

Traunatised?

What the hell am I on?

You know what I mean.
Which actually sums up why being pedantic, as I so often am, is a pointless waste of time on this forum.
I've noticed of late that I keep getting missing letters from the beginning of words.
This I have to tell you is more to do with the frequent run time error messages I get, not because I'm crap at spelling or because our keyboard doesn't work properly.The error messages disappear after I hit another key but the keystroke has done the job of removing the error message but not of placing a letter on the screen.

I know. This has nothing to do with ID cards.
Most sincere apologies to all but this had to be said.

SYME don't need this. But I am interested to notice that it's only the disordered minds among you who feel they have anything to lose from your ID-thing, paranoid they'll be spotted and singled out, harrassed and scapegoated (perhaps rightly).

As (ego-)'tism' say (did you get that Braggtopia?): "My mind's untidy, but my whisky's neat". And while I'm just giving them away: anyone see the map of Britain in my avatar?

"War Is Over" (if you want it) - Happy Christmas, from Rav and Syme.

This post has not been edited by SYME on the 21/12, so there, Martyn!

Well, gosh!
I guess that showed him!

?

Do you think SYME could come over to my home and tidy it up a bit, please?

If an untidy desk represent an untidy mind, what does an empty desk represent?
BTW: Sometimes I do think I speak a different english from you people: Haven't got a clue what SYME's on about.

Syme speaks a language unto himself, Leontein!

I am suitably chastened.

No idea why or for what but chastened nonetheless.

I'm not paranoid though.
Just got back from the pub where I noticed that above the secluded corner in which we were ensconsed was a small camera. My companions have been aware of these devices for some time and evidently there is a sign on the door informing potential customers that should they choose to enter and imbibe they will be filmed and their activity recorded on video.

This is undoubtedly due to the fact that certain amongst us in society will and do behave in disgusting anti social and reprehensible ways.
I'm just not going to drink there anymore.

Pretty soon there will be a camera in your home.
It will be connected to a central control room and you will be video recorded whilst you eat, sleep and watch the telly, whilst you wank, fuck, shave and shit.
Some complete feckwit like Blunkett will tell you its because there are people in society who are out to do us all harm and it's his duty to protect us.

There are other complete feckwits like SYME who will say this...

"You've nothing to fear if you've nothing to hide"


Bullshit.

I think a re-reading of Kafka is called for ... he knew what ID cards were all about ...

We´ve been using ID card in Germany ever since but
1. they're not compulsory and
2. they don´t have a PIN number
Actually they contain no more information than our passports do, except your address. You´re obliged to be able to identify yourself when controlled and you have to show your identification document, wheather you show a passport or an ID card is your own business. Because police is mainly interested in checking your address it could be useful to have an ID card. Therefore and because ID´s are cheaper and smaller than passports most germans only apply for a passport when they need it to travel overseas.
I understood from the discussion that most of you are afraid of being more controlled with ID-cards but I bet most of you use a credit card and have no problem with your credit card company registering when you bought where which sort of underpants, where you spend your holidays, where you do your shopping, which books you read, which music you hear - how can you be more controlled? And what, if some future adminstration decides to control credit card companies? They wouldn´t need an ID card to know everthing about you. On the other hand I can´t see what an ID card could be good for if you´ve done well without it so far. It can´t keep illegals out unless it´s printed on your forehead.

This is indeed cause for concern.

related news item I read:

(our royals have produced another little one, this took place in the lobby of the hospital)
"a man carrying a rather large backpack was stopped by police. He showed his passport but refused to say where he came from 'originally'. They searched his backpack, which contained nothing conspicuous, but he was still removed from the hospital"

So a passport alone is obviously not enough, we might want to put in 'where you originally came from', or what your religion is, or... or... or...

You twonk.

I repeat...I'm not paranoid.

I'd be paranoid if I kept telling people that there are secret cameras filming me whilst I'm having a drink with my mates.

The cameras are there and they work and you are warned of their presence by tiny notices on the doors as you go in.

I'd be paranoid if I kept suggesting that the government is going round secretly installing cameras in peoples homes to spy on them.
That never happens does it? Ask Tony Benn.

I am, however, theorising about what certain politicians might feel they can get away with, with impunity, should they be allowed to continue on their current path.

Do you have any idea what paranoia is?

I would have a better idea,if people didn't keep picking on me.

Or it that just me being paranoid.


WHAT am i talking about.

I was just thinking that introducing ID-cards makes only some sort of sense when at the same time an obligation to register is introduced, similar to the system in my country. As far as I know there is no such obligation in the UK by now, is it? Do they have such plans as well?

The plan is to introduce ID cards compulsorily for asylum seekers and immigrants and at the same time voluntarily for existing citizens, I mean subjects.

As you quite rightly appreciate, no system like this can work unless everybody carries ID and are required to do so by law.

Ergo, the talk of voluntary uptake is spin, or as we on the left like to call it, Bollocks.
The stalinist/fascist arshole that is our home secretary will be as quick as shit off a shovel making them compulsory and he'll be yelling "HUNTLEY HUNTLEY" at the top of his voice just to make sure we know its for our own good.

I think I.D Cards would be quite good especially over Christmas!
As I intend to get slaughtered on a mixture of Guinness and cheap champagne! Therefore anything with my address and details on will of course enable me to get home ok. [hic,hic]

Many years ago, when a decent jacket always had a buttonhole in the lapel, I got into the habit of tying a luggage label on with the following inscription: If found drunk there's a tenner in my ticket pocket, please put me in a taxi to.......

I did wake up at home once wondering how the hell I'd got there. The tenner had gone.

Edited due to drunken typo......

One time I woke up having locked myself in the spare bed at my parents house where my girlfdriend was supposed to be staying the night, my bedroom light was still on and my friend not there, I couldn't remember how I got home from the pub and was still drunk and next to my bed in my room I found my purse open with all these vouchers gone (I had a voucher book with heaps of cool ones I liked cut out for my purse - all my favourites were gone!). Apparently I had come home alone, said hi to my brother and left all the lights in the house on (unusual) before crashing in the spare room! I think I may have been driven hom,e in a cab and maybe bartered with the driver when I had no money, but I only think...

Hey, hey hey! What have we here?! Vanilla'd rather natter on with us all than catch up with 'er own family over Christmas lunch! You deserve another beer, babe - you're a top bird! Wish I'd done the same!



No, you tell me what he said, copying-&-pasting or providing link, can't you see how controversial the info is, why d'I haft' ask?

What was that, Leontien? Laughing gas?

To kalifornia: !

No

[QUOTE=Martyn,Dec 23 2003, 09:40 PM]The plan is to introduce ID cards compulsorily for asylum seekers and immigrants and at the same time voluntarily for existing citizens, I mean subjects.

Aha, so I misunderstood the whole thing and the info on BBC news is wrong then. In Germany asylum seekers have no ID cards at all. German ID cards are for grman citizens. Immigrants from outside Europe use their national passports with a german residence permit in it, Immigrants from inside Europe may use their national passport or their national IDcard, they need a german residence permit as well, in case they want to stay longer than three months. Asylum seekers on the other hand unsually don´t have whatsoever national documents, they get a sheet of paper with their personal data on it -such as name, birthday, place of birth, nationality- how they declare them, and a photo on it. The paper can be of as many styles and sizes as there are cities in Germany. As you have no chance to proof the personal data as they are given and fingerprints are not registered there lots of asylum seekers live here under several aliases and have as many of those personal sheets of paper. Every foreigner, even those from within the EU, is registered in a central database and has a PIN there, but this number appears on no documents. But even this central registration of course does not prevent people from living and working here illegal. They just don´t get registered and that' s it.

I believe I am correct about the ID card proposals. If the beeb are saying something very different then it could be that I'm wrong.
What I said was what I believed to be the case.

I might go and look around to check my facts but not promising cus I have better things to do and my hatred of Blunkett won't allow me to discover that his ideas are somehow less malevolent than I think they are.

Seems like the system in Germany is designed to ensure that only genuine Germans get access to welfare and state benefits, whatever they might be and that asylum seekers and immigrants can basically take what they can find one way or another, by fair means or otherwise. The state however will not actively discriminate or single them out for harsh treatment.
Unlike, so far as I can tell, that which Blunkett wants for the UK. But whereas Germany has moved so far away from its tragic and horrific past that it is an entilrey different country, Blunkett would really rather like it if UK immigration and the police treated the asylum seeker and the immigrant as the blood sucking vermin he believes them to be.

He really doesn't care if you've been raped, tortured, shot and traumatised or that you don't speak english. If you don't tell a person in authority that you are seekinf asylum in the UK in the first 5 minutes of your setting foot here, you automatically loose the right to ask for asylum.
If you stay he's going to make it miserable for you. If you refuse to leave he's going to imprison you prior to deportation and to encourage you to fuck off he's proposing to "take your children to a place of safety". This is justified by the explanation that since you are going to be starved and frozen out of the country, it would be uncivilised to inflict such treatment on your kids.
To listen to the bastard trotting out this garbage is enough to make you throw up.

No, the welfare system in Germany is for anyone poor irrespective of nationality; you just need legal papers (asylum seekers are legal as soon as they ask for asylum). Social benefits is payed in the town where you´re registered, so the registration thing just tries to make sure that one doesn´t get benefits in more than one town. You can ask for asylum at any time, no matter how long you´ve been staying here illegaly before, but I have to admit, that asylum seekers are not allowed to live where they want to. They shall only move within a specified area (usually the territory of one land), but they get a room to live in and they´re allowed to work. And, of course, they get social benefits in case they can´t work or don´t find a job (which is not ununsual nowadays) like anyone else.

The difference being, of course, that if we choose we can get money out of our bank account from a cash machine and then use this to pay for our items, which I would undoubtedly do were credit card companies to be placed under government control. Government should not try and extend its' influence into areas in which it has no business - and people going about their everyday lives is no business of the government. I have "nothing to hide" when I go to the pub, but it doesn't mean I want people observing what I do.

ID Cards will not help national security - events such as 9/11 require meticulous underground planning and if these people can do such planning without being detected it is hardly likely they will have done anything to draw the authorities to their attention. Unless merely by stepping on to the streets we become objects of suspicion. That's not a country I want to live in...

PS Hi everyone, I'm new here. Anything I ought to know?

Thanks for clarifying Meg.

The approach of the German government appears rather more benign than that which Blunkett the bastard would like to employ here.
The key comment I seized upon was this...



If, as Blunkett and his acolytes believe, asylum seekers and immigrants are such a godawful burden on the tax payer why doesn't he let them work?
And if allowing them to work, as he seems to be suggesting, would deny jobs to unemployed Britains, why are the job centres always chock full of positions nobody wants to fill?

Do you know, I'm actually getting sick of the argument. Those of us on the left can find little or nothing that would excuse the behaviour of the current Labour(?) administration. For all the good things they've done since replacing the tories in 1997, they've been veering to the right ever since and inflicting policy after policy that could have come straight from a Thatcher cabinet.

The very suggestion that had everybody been carrying an ID card, those two litle girls in Soham might still be alive or that fanatical, dedicated terrorists might not have been able to fly passenger jets into the world trade center is preposterous in the extreme.

I despise Blunkett and Blair for their gross dishonesty and their flagrant disregard for the basic freedoms we've enjoyed in this country for so many years. The tories used the IRA as an excuse to deny us one little freedom after another. To inflict upon us one seemingly insignificant curtailment of our rights after another always to a chorus of protestation from each Labour leader and his party members.
Now Blair does exactly the same thing this time promising a safer better life free from the hell that the terrorist would unleash upon us.

Events, completely out of his control now seem to be catching up with Tone.
We fucking warned you, you sanctimonious bastard. Bush will drop you like a hot potato just as soon as you even remotely look like compromising his election plans.
How sickening that I, a lifelong Labour voter and supporter should, after just 7 years be rejoicing at the imminent demise of a Labour primeminister.

So Blunkett is pushing ahead with his madcap scheme to save us all from terrorists.

If it wasn't so serious I would be pissing my pants with laughter.

There isn't a single solitary argument for introducing ID cards for existing UK citizens, sorry...Subjects!...that will hold up under scrutiny.

They are to be introduced because Blunkett, like all the power crazed far right and far left nutters before him, wants complete control over the population.
Freedom, democracy and free speech are already becoming things of the past.

They'll only have your name and address on them.

Give me a great big fuck off sized break.

Where would this be?
Over the rainbow and a mile or so up the yellow brick road?

What I don't understand is how its going to "combat terrorism"?
If the terrorists can already fake passports or come into Britain illegally then an ID card isn't going to stop them. Furthermore, if the "terror" is from within the UK and they are UK citizens then how is it going to catch them.

It smacks of the Third Reich if you ask me, where people will be singled out because it has X, Y or Z on their card.

And I refuse to agree to anything that I HAVE to carry with me when I leave my front door which, if it is compulsory, I'd have to do.

oh god....

ID Cards... Hmmmm...

i really struggle with this one.

1. i dont mind holding something that helps me prove who i am, if I i want to prove who i am to someone.

2. i do mind holding something that can then be linked to a database that holds lots of information on me, other than who i am, thus allowing some big brother state to watch my every move. ive stopped using my tesco clubcard, coz it just gets damn scary when they know what type of toilet paper i prefer.

3. will i be able to get into glastonbury if i don't have one?

Thumbing through the tabloids waiting in the barbers I saw this is the Daily Mirror.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/tm_ob...-name_page.html

The regular barber had a mate standing in because he's chopped off his finger with a cut throat. Nasty.

There's no reason not to have an ID card. You know, we do have a government, because we want one, to maintain law and order - you don't turn around and say "What about my freedom, to do whatever I want?" What I want to do won't effect other people, so I'm in favor of it, as is everyone else it won't effect.

Checks are needed it's not abused, is all.

Is that a rare moment of lucidity from SYME??

dickie, i can't understand symes post. could you explain it in terms a simple country boy can understand?