h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

And if i'm never suspected of a crime or arrested why do i have to have a card?

If you are never involved in a road traffic accident as a driver, why do you have to have insurance?

If you are never ill, why do you need to register with a GP?

Ben

1) To prove entitlement to benefit. Anyone who doesn't think there is an immediate need to crack down on benefit fraud simply hasn't seen the figures. Although this won't negate it totally, it would stop a lot of the 'casual' drug related fraud that occurs.

2) To prove reidency status. This is secondary to me, but seems to exercise a lot of the electorate. (8 - 12% of whom are putting Immigration at the top of their concerns in this election.)

Those are the two most obvious, immediate advantages.

Ok, lets turn this around.

If it's such a bad thing, why are so many Europeans able to deal with it?

Historical and cultural differences, obviously.

Or maybe they don't use EDS for major government IT contracts...?

B

Well, as you know, I have some experience of government IT contracts. In essence, if the Government is serious about this (and lets be honest, they are), they will make this as safe as the banking system. They'll have to our it won't fly.

And to write of the European example as simply 'cultural and historical differences' is rather...odd, not to mention vaguely smacking of the idea of 'Well, they're foreign, they don't know any better'. They've had far more experience than we of occupation by foreign powers, which carries a fa greater threat to personal liberty. Indeed, they don't seem to have a difficulty reconciling having to carry documents under the Nazi's or under their own government.

Amusing Failing to vote........

But not an answer to Blu Sharks question , which is valid.

And to Pixel, I think BS answered your question about why,, I tried to cover it in my previous post If a citizen wants to use the services of the state requesting proof of entitlement is not unreasonable.

Well, my reply was flippant, but essentially it's true. The reasons why Europeans are less ansty *are* cultural and historical, or else their governments are better at IT than ours is. Any implication in that that Brits are right and Europeans are wrong must have been put in there by the reader, because it wasn't put in there by the writer.

To be honest, I don't believe that the Europeans are better at government IT than we are. Consultancy at that level is international, and having worked for one of the largest consultancies and with another couple of the largest, I do know a tadlet about it.

Ye-es, the Government will have to do it to Banking standards, but that is going to require a major step-change in the thinking and habits of the relavent Government departments. Not to say that the Banks are better, just that the cultures (that word again) are massively different.

Ben (which is, incidentally, my name)

>If a citizen wants to use the services of the state requesting proof of entitlement is not unreasonable.<

Actually a little more elegantly put than I had managed, and to be honest, a pretty good catch all answer.

>I don't believe that the Europeans are better at government IT than we are.<

Uh huh. So what are these 'cultural and historical' differences?

Dunno. I was just applying logic to the situation. If it isn't the technology per se, then it must be cultural and/or historical. Hard to see what else it could be, really. I am open to being told it's something else, but I can't think what else it can be.

Speculating - because my knowledge of the social history of Europe during the 19th and 20th C is negligable - Napoleonic government was pretty structured and bureaucratic, and the Germans are renowned for being very structured and law-abiding (Nein, nein, walten-sie! Das man is rot - or whatever it was that they used to yell at me when I crossed an empty street without waiting for the Green man).

The Brits had ID cards during the war. Maybe it was because we dropped them afterwards and the Europeans didn't that we now have a couple of generations' cultural difference.

Maybe it's a legacy of Imperialism - making people justify themselves is what conquerers do to subject peoples.

Maybe they trust their politicians more, or care about them less.

Like I said, I dunno. But if it isn't scepticism about the technology, then it has to be all in the mind, doesn't it?

Ben

Have you never seen the footage from the end of WW2 when the British people were shown in the streets destroying their ID cards?
We have an historical aversion to government interference and a culture that should in theory put personal freedoms and liberties first.

>We have an historical aversion to government interference and a culture that should in theory put personal freedoms and liberties first.<

Both of which are laudable. I guess my problem is that I don't see how carrying another piece of plastic will make any difference whatever to my 'freedoms and liberties'.

I actually suspect that with the French it's a question of don't care about their politicians. They have their own, well established and efficient nmethods of getting what they want from their politicians. Or perhaps they just realise that governments already have more information than they can possibly ever need or use except in a specific, given instance and just write the whole thing off as nothing to be unduly worried about.

Hi Pixel

YES

And I had an ID card and Ration Cards too. At least my Mum had an ID card for me...

I honestly cannot see your gripe. If there were no current fraudulent practices using state provided services that you and I pay for within our taxes, and if the requirement to prove identity ( checkable ) would limit the possibility of terrorist activity, then where apart from emotionally, is the difficulty?

I am not advocating the wholesale waving of cards when you want petrol or a beer. I simply cannot grasp why a legitimate & law abiding person would want to hide their identity.

If you were actually involved in an RTA and a policeman asked you for some ID , are you saying that you would refuse ?

Novo

Well, I am not sure which is scarier - if the govt cock up the IT and it doesn't join up, so you get people who are entitled to benefits failing to get them, for example, or if the govt manage to do joined up IT, and it all works amazingly smoothly.

We all know people whose circumstances don't fit the check-boxes on the forms, (which is my main aversion to filling the b*gg*rs in), and if you are "none of the above" and that leaks from system to system your entire life can be cocked up for you by joined-up government.

Ben

I object to them mainly on the strength that I feel it will be an expensive waste of time.

Those people who choose to "do wrong" will quickly have access to realistic fake ID cards. I am sure of this. Whatever technological means the government use to prevent this will be quickly circumvented.

Now that mean that those who really want to will be able to go about and do their illicit business, whilst the rest of us will be compelled to carry around another exepensive card that it seems we will have the pleasure of being forced to pay around £50 for. Great.

Also I rather suspect it will become another tool by which the police opress people who are ethnic minorities. I am willing to be folding money that disproportionatly Black and Asian males will be the ones forced to prove thier identity via the ID card.

The problem is that Esso or Threshers may decide independantly to ask for "the wholesale waving of cards" when you buy petrol or beer.

Think back to when cheque garuantee cards were first introduced. You didn't need them to write a legal cheque, but within a few weeks every single shop required you to use them.

Some places are already resisting cash transactions "to prevent money laundering".

Ben

I think part of the cultural and historical differences between us and Europe is that most European countries have a far stronger state apparatus, and are used to governments interfering in their affairs. They generally pay higher taxes to finance the state apparatus, which can be a good thing eg the railways in France, the social security in Holland.

The UK traditionally has veered somewhat towards the 'laissez faire' approach which is found in it's extreme fprm in the US. But that suspicion of state interference in our affairs makes the notion of ID cards seem far more threatening. And I think that's because we have a freer society. Freer to be more individualist and capatilist, but freer to be a down and out living on the street.

Whenever we in the UK try and do something bureaocratic it generally results in an almighty cock up, and that scares me

Blimey! I find myself in agreement with redpeckham!

*savours the moment*



Ben

>I am willing to be folding money that disproportionatly Black and Asian males will be the ones forced to prove thier identity via the ID card.<

I'm willing to bet folding that it already happens under existing Stop and Search rules. So that objection is a nullity.

>[Europeans] generally pay higher taxes<

Guess again. Highest taxes in Europe, right here.

>most European countries have a far stronger state apparatus<

Uh huh. Denmark, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, The Netherlands. Well known for their high levels of 'state apparatus'. I'm also cautious of Ben's characterisation of Germans.