Over my dead body...! (in Off-topic)

Our wonderful government is contemplating the introduction of road charges based on when and how far you drive your car.

As if it's not bad enough that we will soon be expected to carry a national identification card we will now in the future be monitored where and when we drive our cars via satellite !

Never has the George Orwell quote been more appropriate: Big Brother is Watching

/end rant

Congestion charge was funny enough, not that we don't already pay road tax? I mean, take a look at our roads? Where is the money being wasted?! This is why I hate the government, always good at wasting the peoples money.

Sorry for the 2 posts, but I think the national identification cards are a good thing, if you have nothing to hide. Will be a lot easier to find out who people are, may cut crime/fraud rates down.

this is the same here in Holland, to lower traffic jams. ~_~. Already it became a law that you have to carry your ID around at all times since january 01 this year. For the cops to see who is involved in accidents and stuff :S they are actually allowed to fine you if you don't carry one (but how will they know who to send it to if you give a fake adress? :P)

I voted for this lot.... but as always you vote for a particular party and you get a government. I guess when they're promising a better health service they have to pay for it somehow!

I'm getting married in September - although I've been calling her my wife for ages! - and we are getting married 200 miles from where we live. We live in London and there is no point in having a car in London - you pay to drive through town, you can't park anywhere without paying a fortune and insurance - don't even go there. So to carry out preparations for the wedding we're going back and forth that 200 miles every other week. Train prices are ridiculous and you can only cope with the coach once in a while. So we hire a car. Hiring a car for the weekend is actually cheaper than the train. But if we get charged by the mile for our journey each time it would set us back almost 500 pounds a month on top of everything else.

They justify the charges by saying poorer people can't afford a car anyway.....

Anyone with a car will soon be poor....

GB, don't forget that your gov't is also considering extending copyright time limits so that songs/media that would have soon been in the public domain (like The Beatles) won't be.

Not technically related to your post, but kind of shows the flip side... While the little guy gets hit for daily necessities and taxed more and more, folks with money can buy their way to getting whatever they want.

OK, that sounded a little more liberal-ranty than I wished, but that's the way I feel at the moment...copyright thing really gets my goat. DOWN WITH DISNEY!

The changes to UK copyright laws were done when EMI realised that European rights to release early Elvis Presley material had gone into public domain - meaning that anyone could release a cd of Elvis singing 'That's Alright Mama' for instance if they wanted to - so long as they were only releasing it in Europe. To avoid that happening pressure was brought to bear by the big corporations. The excuse for it was that the big record companies need to continue to make money from their back catalogues to invest in new talent.....

Yeah, good point...the US kind of started it when they extended the time limit to, what...125 years?

Must be nice to be able to make one breakthrough and then live off the proceeds for more than a century. Here I'm a schmuck and have to get up for work each day. Drat.

Tell me about it. Engineer by day, musician by night - you can bet that I've daydreamed about that killer tune that's going to keep me in guitar strings for the rest of my life.......

I don't agree with the Fat Cat reasons for it, but on the other hand if you had written a song that sold millions you would want to make money from it. I certainly wouldn't want it to go public domain. Copyright laws - I don't really know them as well in the US as I do in the UK - are a weird creature. If you're smart UK copyright law is firmly on the side of the little guy. But situations like this one are to stop the enterprising little guy making a quick buck when the big guy could be lining his pockets....


=)

Not only do you have to get up for work each day but we're gonna spy on you via satellite whilst you drive to the office...don't do anything wrong now because we have all your details (including DNA) from your little ID card... bleh !

As well as that Bob stupid Geldof has invited 1,000,000 people to come and have a party in my back garden !!

Hey G_Bee, atleast you don't live here in USA, where making posts like this label you a terrorist!

"Bob stupid Geldof"...damn that is making me chortle uncontrollably. You are on fire, GB! Keep ranting!

i guess the elvis example was a bad one... see he is still alive and living off the royalties!

Subject: Over my dead body...!

can be arranged :p

hehe, that sounds purty much like fightin' talk...

Lorenzo defeated we love Stella (Hell Blenders) after 8 rounds of combat

You're gonna need help tho ;)

lol beee, you just wait a few months then it will be the other way around :p

:)

ID Cards, good thing. Especially if they contain (what's the technical term? Bio-electrical?) data like DNA. Just a step closer to something like an ID/Credit/Debit/GPS chip inserted at birth. :) Gogo Cyberpunk!

Crappy new Road charging idea. Bleh... It will force people to use cheaper, smaller, back roads. And no matter how sophisticated my Dad claims the GPS system will be you *will* get shady people making a profession of tampering with the GPS boxes in cars so your car isn't recored/is shown doing other cheaper - or non speeding, things...

ID Cards, good thing. Especially if they contain (what's the technical term? Bio-electrical?) data like DNA. Just a step closer to something like an ID/Credit/Debit/GPS chip inserted at birth. :) Gogo Cyberpunk!

-Yeah, great until you lose it and someone nicks the data. I prefer the government not to have information like that on file.

;) IA, they've probably already got it!! Unless it's a school record, they're not keep for that long at all.

As for losing it, that's why they should be implanted!

But then people would complain about nefarious surgery to remove them...

/me implants a "carp" on the forehead of GL :p

Actually developing this brain implant idea from GL I'm thinking that perhaps I was a bit too hasty in rubbishing it.
It's actually not a bad idea, that way whenever Bob stupid Geldof opens his mouth someone in authority can flick a switch and close it again. Also the million people en-route to my back garden for a party next month can all be turned around and sent to GLs place instead.

Yep, I'm liking it more and more :)

Hey, as long as they are a million hot chicks in nearly no clothes I won't be complaining! ;)

But for the love of all that's good, don't send me a million drunk Scotts men, in Kilts, who have some strange desire to sing loudly until 4 AM!

And why are all festival security guards Scottish?

I'd noticed that about festival security - they all look and sound like Jimmy Krankie with a skinhead, regardless of gender and there's always a couple of them with teeth missing

Actually no, they all look like my aunt Joyce from Glasgow. Which is a scary thing when you're at Reading Festival at 11pm on the Sunday after spending all day in the beer tent....

It's a conspiracy, we're taking over the world and decided to start first in uhm... eh, Reading. :)

whats your problem with id cards got something to hide

Anyone who doesn't at least have an uneasy reaction as a first response to ID cards hasn't read much history or thought things through. Certain programs aren't a big deal (and I have not read up on the extent of the UK version), but ID cards or any sort of registration falls firmly in the "convince me why we need this" category by default.

And your question is an excellent one. Let's say that yes, I do have something to hide that is none of anyone else's business. Just wondering if you are saying it is everyone's right to know that secret?

There is still a such thing as privacy, and it IS still worth fighting for.

...now you've got me started again.

/start rant

I'm not ideologically opposed to the idea of ID cards, however given this govts record on efficiency, costing and bureaucracy I expect the introduction of this will be a complete nightmare.

Why do we need a card anyway?
Under what circumstances is it necessary to accurately identify an individual on the spot? And what costs would this carry in terms of cash and inconvenience?

The Government outlined a number of situations where the ID card would be used: security, immigration control and access to public services being the main ones.

The security requirements appear to be obvious. A law enforcement officer wishes to check who someone is and so asks for an ID card to be produced. If it is not, then that person can be taken to a Police station for further checks.
Well duh, this currently applies. A voluntary ID card would have little practical effect in that it doesn't change the rules for the Police requesting ID from anyone. All it does is introduce a new form of ID that the Police would hope to be more reliable than other forms.
If a new law were introduced to the effect that it was compulsory to carry the ID card then the nature of the relationship between us and Police would be changed with significant civil liberties implications. The Home Secretary has said this is a separate debate for the future but this does not make sense as the security benefits of this project would only be realized on the introduction of compulsion.

The case for strong identity at points of immigration control is perhaps the most sensible part of the package. We do need to know that the person who is passing through a port is who they say they are and that they have the right to enter a country. But this can be resolved by including biometric data on existing passports. There is no need to extend this to a general application to the population as a whole.
The notion that this would somehow control illegal migration does not stand up. Illegal immigrants would not be able to obtain ID cards but this is no different from their current status without legal documentation. The constraints on controlling illegal migrants lie in the number of people checking their status and the points at which this happens. It is not the nature of the documentation being checked that is the issue but the fact of whether the checks happen at all.

The final case being put forward is that of controlling access to public services. This again carries serious implications for all of us. If such a system were to be effective then all possible points of entry to the system would need to be equipped with card readers which would have to work all the time and the production of the card would be necessary in all circumstances.
This creates a convenience cost for all of us. As well as having to remember the card, there is the potential for errors in the data processing or systems not working that may cause us inconvenience. We should also not underestimate the strong feelings that may be generated as we effectively move from trust-based systems to ones that are based on distrust until proved otherwise.
The financial costs of producing such a system with the number and range of access points that will be necessary is also likely to far exceed any estimates that have been produced to date. Combine this with the need for an exceptional level of security and reliability and you can see the bills adding up.

So, we are going to be asked to pay for a system of ID cards with no certainty that they will achieve their stated objectives. They may be an expensive white elephant that is hardly used if kept on a voluntary basis. If the compulsion route is pursued then at best they could become a bureaucratic obstacle in daily life or at worst represent a dramatic change in the relationship between state and citizen towards one based on suspicion rather than trust.
The Government would be well-advised to put this particular technology onto the back burner while it gets on with implementing the many other more useful and achievable solutions to its information needs. These include tried and tested Police systems like the National Fingerprinting System and breaking developments such as the new NHS national records programme. Information technology has a lot to offer public services but ID cards may well be an own goal for e-government.

/end rant

The driving thing, don't forget to tip your pizza delivery guy more......... if you have pizza delivery.

When driving, aren't you already required to have your ID and insurance info with you at all times?

In America, driving requires license, registration, and proof of insurance.

That is fine with me, because driving is a privilege. I do not want to be required to carry an ID just to walk around and allow the police to at any point stop me and ask, "Where are your papers?" Life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, unlike driving, are civil rights, not merely privileges.

How does that work in the UK?

I think most people in the UK are deeply suspicious of anything that suggests a move towards a nanny-state. The British as a country don't particularly like being told how they should live their lives and never have done.

A place where your every move is monitored, where the leader does what he likes to the community and where you have to watch everything you say or do for fear of fines or expulsion is not a country where most Brits want to live.

Wait a minute that sounds remarkably familiar........

Ah! "biometric", that's the term...

I never drive with any of my documents. They are too important to lose/have nicked from your car.

Police wanting to see your licence give you a seven day 'provider' notice, where you have to take your licence to a police station within the next seven days. Even in accidents, I just exchange personal details with the other parties, they never see my insurance documents.

I have, and carry no form of personal ID on me at all. Bar a debit card. There has been no situation I've ever needed any past my late teens, when I finally looked old enough to drink without raising suspicion.

But, I wholy agree with the necessaty of compulsary ID.

Nanny state I don't agree with. I'll shout and stamp till I'm red in the face if someone tries to dictate to me what I can and cannot do (if my actions are legal...) but I see no problem with ID cards turning the UK into a nanny state. CC TV watches you just as well, and all your personal information is held anyway.

One bad thing about ID cards, is they can be nicked just as easily as your wallet.

It's no help to you in an accident when you lie bleeding and the paramedics are trying to find out who your are / what problems you have (allergies to drugs etc..) / who your next of kin is etc if your wallet and ID card have already been nicked before they get there!!

That's why it should be implanted! ;)

It's already done for cats and dogs! :D

Woof!

The problem I have with ID cards is mostly one of personal privacy. If they contain, as has been entertained, amongst other things your medical records there are many agencies you would not want to have easy access. A person's medical records can say far more about them and their lifestyle than where you go and what you spend your money on. And can affect your life in many ways - insurance for instance. Many companies in the UK will not offer you life insurance if you have had a test for HIV for instance, because you are then a higher risk because of the implications that makes about your lifestyle. Regardless of the outcome of the test.

My idea of freedom is living my life the way I see fit, which includes maintaining my health or damaging it - so long as I am hurting nobody else. And ID cards would not stop the elements of society who hurt other people or commit crimes. It would just be another thing for them to sidestep. Meanwhile the decent portion of society would find their personal freedoms limited and controlled.