Kerblam! by Christopher

Tuesday, February 14
Valentine's Day, and Labour's legislation love affair

Ah, single again on Valentine's Day. Great.

In other news, my country's Labour government has just won the first of a series of battles concerning new legislation - the first (which took place yesterday) was the vote on making the government carry out a report on costs before introducing identity cards. This now means that every person in the UK will be getting ID cards in about two years' time - and it'll most likely be a mandatory scheme, meaning that we'll have to get one, or if we're after a new passport after 2008, a new passport and ID card together, which'll cost even more. A quote from the BBC News article,

Home Secretary Charles Clarke had said a stand-alone ID card would cost £30, while one linked to a passport would cost £93.

But that figure has been disputed, most notably by a London School of Economics report estimating the cards could cost up to £300 each.

Some experts predict that the cost will actually be much higher, as the government's figures are very much erring on the conservative side of things (I was watching the news last night, and a guy from the London School of Economics was saying that the actual cost of rolling out the new infrastructre to support this scheme may cost upwards of £31 BILLION, as opposed to the government's £584 million. However, there are some very strong reasons for NOT having an ID card scheme, as put forward by a guy called Andi Ye on the BBC Action Network page for ID Cards... There's no easy way to link to what he's written, so I'll quote it. It's worth a read.

Christine Cook says her Spanish ID card [which costs £4] gives her no problems. Good-o, Christine, but...

- It stores one form of biometric data, not three

- Humans' face and iris change over time. Face and iris scans haven't even worked reliably in the lab, let alone when comparing the data of 60,000,000 people in the UK whose features will change over the cards' 10-year lifespan

- And nobody complains about civil liberties in Spain because the ID card isn't integrated with all government and commercial databases

- You say your Spanish card costs £4... doesn't it give you a clue that something is different when even the government say it will cost £30 (£93 together with passport). The London School of Economics say the ID card alone could be £300. Who would you rather believe? And you're not just paying for the cards, you're also paying through your taxes for every terminal, in every police car, every doctor's surgery as far as we've been told. That's just for starters

- You say it cuts down fraud... not on internet transactions or telephone transactions it doesn't... it has only even the possibility of being effective when the cardholder is present. The codes which protect the ID card will be cracked within a couple of years, after which time the card will be worse than useless. And even in the short term, the validity of the ID card itself is only as good as the ID demanded to issue it.

- Did the Spanish ID card stop the Spanish bombings? No. The UK government tried to sell the ID card concept on the basis of fighting terrorism; but even the government has now had to acknowledge it will not help. In fact more or less every justification the government has given has been completely disproved

- The UK government has, just now, half-admitted that the ID card will be compulsory; something which was never conceded even a few weeks ago. Do you trust a government which will use any public issue to falsely argue its case, and flip to another justification each time the falsehood of the previous argument becomes widely known?

- And what when all the IT systems *are* linked together, and some mistake by an official or some small change in your iris-print stops you accessing NHS services, or blocks all bank accounts; or your identity is successfully stolen and absolutely everything is available to the identity thief? Did you think of any of this? Have you got the answers?

Shame on you. Do some research for yourself about the UK ID card. You could do worse than start here:

//www.trevor-mendham.com/civil-liberties/identity-cards/

So, I'm slightly worried by this scheme, now the delaying tactic (to review the cost of the scheme before putting it into action) proposed by some party members has been outvoted, by a fair majority too - 51 votes. Also worth a read: the BBC News 'At-a-glance' information on ID cards.

Oh dear.

Moving on, Today (February the 14th) is another important day of legislation - and one piece of legislation that I'm actually in favour of... Today, MPs are to vote on whether to impose a total ban on smoking in pubs and clubs across England. The vote is actually for the new Health Bill, which includes a raft of amendments and new legislation on a variety of subjects from tighter hygiene standards in hospitals (to try and eradicate MRSA) to more stringent checks and controls upon controlled substances. The Bill also brings forward the deadline for full implementation of the country-wide smoking ban in pubs and restaurants (if it is approved) to summer 2007, allowing for a full review within three years' time.

On the whole I'm for this, I don't like breathing in smoke as I've had to live with my mum for the past 20 years (who is a constant smoker), and while I don't mind her smoking because she's my mum, I've only just realised the joy of having fresh air to breathe when I'm at uni... Even though everyone else around me smokes, I can breath without inhaling second-hand cigarette smoke, which is just glorious. I think this is great, considering when I was ill late last year, I was ill for quite a long time, and the illness refused to move off my chest and lungs for much longer than I've experienced in a long time - I think this was because I'm living in a city now, and along with the urban living comes the inreased exposure to vehicle emissions, a generally higher level of smog, all those things which can bring back asthma in people who've not had it for years, or since childhood (that's me).

So, one piece of legislation I'm broadly in favour of, and one I'm fairly against (but don't really have a choice now, by the looks of it). But wait, there's more! By two pieces of legislation, get the third free... And that's what the government's giving us: a Commons vote on glorification of terror laws, designed (at least ostensibly) to prevent the... yes, you guessed it, glorification of terror. I believe the vote for this latest piece of amended legislation, with some compromises to please all parties, will be taking place on Wednesday or Thursday (though I think it's Wednesday). A strong voice of support for further toughening the anti-terror laws has been heard from Gordon Brown, a man who many have been saying is now participating in a 'Dual Premiership' with Blair (something which Brown has publicly denied) in preparation for Blair stepping down at the end of his tenure as PM.

Oh well, at least if I'm still single I can interest myself in politics to keep myself busy, this is going to be an interesting week from the looks of it.

Dragged out of Christopher's memory and pasted
into his blog at 2/14/2006 08:21:00 AM. Roughly.
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