Does it bother you that folk are reading your emails, listening to your telephone conversations, and probably insisting you have an ID card. I thought we were free.
1984 seems to be coming true.

Well I'm glad someone is or I'd be wasting my time.

I thought it was going to be a voluntary scheme. Do you know otherwise?

Not so long as we have a government.

Not the intended recipients Pushpull. The chaps in charge.
I can't see why anyone would buy an ID card that isn't compulsory. I bet it will be law to have one in no time at all. It worries me. I have nothing to hide, but see it as state control.

By the way, my youngest and I saw some great Morris dancing in Birmingham 2 weeks ago as part of the St. George's celebrations.

I don't really mind having an ID card - but I do strongly object to paying for one.

I'm with you on that maggiemay. There's times it could be quite useful but I'd object strongly for paying for one.

Why? We have to pay for passports and pay a fee to get driving licences etc.

Yes, but we dont need to drive, and we dont need to travel abroad, but the if the says we do need these, then we shouldn't have to pay for them.

I don't see whats wrong really with an ID card to be honest.

But we don't HAVE to have a passport or to drive a car.

Too slow sarah

I don't believe you are so naive.

Perhaps if you were a Jew in Nazi Germany, or a Palestinian in the occupied territories, or any kind of dissenter against a corrupt or totalitarian government you would see things differently.

The present British government may still have shreds of decency and morality left, but the people need protections against the state in the case the day arrives when it does not. Since 1997 most of the checks and balances in the British system have been dismantled as the state takes ever greater powers to itself.

Excellent, much more interesting. We danced in Nottingham recently with about 70 other sides. A BIG day out.

...and these are rapidly disappearing courtesy of the current media-fest....



Our local ladies' dancing group (not Morris dancers, but the female version if you see what I mean) was recently disbanded due to increasing age of the group and no new younger members coming forward. A sad day. I love watching Morris or country dancing (not much good at it myself - 2 left feet! )

I would object to having to account to some authority just for being alive! This rankles with me when I can trace relatives back hundreds of years in the town in which I have always lived, and some antecedent of mine was probably scraping out the straw from the room in which the Magna Carta was signed.

The old argument that 'if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear' holds no water either; things that are perfectly lawful now could easily be made un -lawful if someone in power decided they wanted you out of the way. Look at how laws are increasingly changed on the hoof - especially in the name of national security, and if you object, then you are no doubt examined very closely indeed.

ID cards are almost instant crime-generators - as a foreigner in Japan, I am legally required to carry a card at all times showing that I am a Registered Alien.

This requirement means that any time - and that means "any time", whether in my bath, turning my compost heap in my oldest clothes, escaping a burning house, or being scraped off the street and taken away by ambulance - any time I am not "carrying" that card I am committing a "crime".

The law is impossibly comprehensive ("all times"), so all the leeway is in how the law is enforced and what penalties are applied.

It would be very easy for the penalty for "card crimes" to be increased, and it would be very easy to argue that police need the power to enter my home just to see if I have my little card in a nice plastic wallet round my neck in the shower or not.

It's easy to see benefits to the state in eartagging their cattle and increasing the number of things citizens and residents need to demonstrate compliance in, but I haven't yet spotted any benefit to the individual.

A bit off-topic, but this thread reminded me - does everyone know that the current photo driving licences are only valid for 10 years and then have to be renewed at the cost of £17.50 (and again at the end of every 10 years)? The first ones were issued in 1998, so some people's licences might have already expired. It's in the small print on the licence, but no reminders were issued or any other kind of publicity.

I'm with Tom - except that central surveillance in peacetime goes back further than that. Remember the discussion about police forces sharing records in the 1984 (!) miners' strike. That's pretty much the start of all this - fears about 'the enemy within'

The government is our servant; l'etat c'est nous!

What about the personal information concerning about our lives that is being gathered every time we use google? This is in the hands of a private company that has the ambiguous and therefore sinister motto "Don't be evil". They are promising not to sell this information, but what is to stop them changing their minds in the future? At least our government has some accountability, but as far as I can see google is a giant corporate monster that is beyond the control of any government.

I'm trying to get into the habit of using ask.com as my search engine to avoid the google database.

To prove your ID?

In America driving licenses fulfill this role. However, not everyone drives so they have come up with a solution - a non-driving license!!

"They" made the digitized register of citizens "voluntary" in Japan too...it's just arranged so that every little procedure is quick and easy if you are on register, cumbersome, time-consuming and expensive if you are not...the carrot rather than the stick, but you have to be very determined to stay off it.

Tesco is another large corporation which holds a massive amount of personal data - if someone has a club card, car insurance, house insurance, personal loan, mobile phone and various other products through them, they possibly have access more personal information at the click of a mouse than the government does.

Driving licence and passport are enough for me. I don't see why I should have to pay our for yet another piece of paper. I still think it will become compulsory.
It's open to fraud and will not be the answer to state security. If you can get false passports, you will be able to get false ID cards.

I no longer use Google! Not that I have anything to hide unless they want me to play for them

People here are saying that they don't mind as long as they don't have to pay for it. But it is not just the fact that you may have to have one, it's that it will have to be used. It's nonsense that the government says it is so that we can prove who we are when we open a bank account, etc - we all have other forms of ID already. (Also they have been saying that they are scrapping the idea and then suddenly there is a trial scheme in operation. Funny.)

I can imagine that the police will want to stop people all the time and scan their card into a database to track their movements. Maybe the cards will be automatically detected when you walk through a scanner in the train station, supermarket or past a lamp-post. I, like most people normal people here, can't imagine the abuses of ID cards but you can be sure that there are people who can think up lots of ways to harm or control us.

Has anyone noticed how empty their streets have become over the last few years - nobody seems to go out anymore. Maybe it is because of the fear that the goverment and media are creating all the time.

I might be paranoid but that doesn't mean that people aren't out to get me.

I put that down to how easy it is to shop in the Internet and the boring High Street (once you hae been in one you have been in tham all).

That's interesting. I didn't know because I've still got my old paper one which is valid until I'm 70 I think. I was considering changing to a photo one because it saves taking a passport if you need a photo to prove your identity, but I think I might just hang on to the paper one until it literally falls apart *feeling of militancy to beat the system*

This was exactly my plan until my bag (containing paper driving licence) was stolen. Now I'm wondering if Big Brother was behind the theft.

When I was signing up for the electoral register (which, as I discovered, you can get FINED for if they find you not on it by the age of 17 ) they tried to get me to get an electoral thingy ID card. I said no.

You may scoff. Well actually I don't think that you are allowed to do that - see 'Public Order Act 1986 Section 5'.