Longrider

Those of us who remember the Thatcher years will recall that famous speech; The lady’s not for turning. This summed up the modern politician - the sheer arrogance and self righteousness that blinds them to the flaws in their policies. We are seeing something similar with Identity Cards. Despite negative press from the Guardian, The New Statesman, The Daily Mirror, The Sun and even the BBC among others, the Home Office is set to continue with its plans for ID cards and a National Identity Register.

I’ve already commented in depth about the privacy issues the audit trail will cause so there’s no need to tread old ground. However, I’ve not made much comment about cost. Now, at last the media is waking up to the spiralling costs of this scheme. The London School of Economics is suggesting that the government has significantly underestimated the cost. Indeed, with the cost of the technology and the need to renew in the event of changes of circumstance, the cost has risen from an initial £75 through £85, and £93 to an estimated £300. The Home Office dismisses this. Well, they would, wouldn’t they? But who are we to believe?

Government - and I use the term in its loosest possible sense here - is notoriously lax when it comes to budgeting other peoples’ money. Quite apart from high profile IT disasters such as the passport fiasco, you only have to look at devolved government and the Scottish Parliament or more locally to me, the Bath Spa overspend to see that the evidence points firmly at the LSE being right and the politicians being wrong. Unlike business where the bottom line is make a profit or go under, government doesn’t need to worry, so taxpayers’ money is frittered away on expensive projects that do not appear to have been properly costed and where there is little effective fiscal control.

So we have a juggernaut of enormous dimensions hurtling towards a disaster - if it follows the Australian model, it could bring the government down - and yet the government resolutely stands firm. It is in the manifesto, so they will do it. Even if the evidence is overwhelmingly telling them that they are wrong and they’ve never let a little thing like a manifesto promise worry them before.

Why? U-turn if you want to? Is that why? The macho, arrogant attitude of the Thatcher era? It takes a braver person to admit that they were wrong and change policy than to carry on regardless with a bad policy. It is just that politicians just haven’t yet learned that lesson.

There is another possible reason. Something raised by a poster over at the No2ID forum. That of mass surveillance. Why else would the US administration be so interested? After all, they have made an industry of poking around in the affairs of other countries of late. Yet it all sounds so conspiracy theorist, so unreal, so “Smiley’s People”. The poster quoted Sherlock Holmes:

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

Having eliminated all of the stated aims of ID cards and looked at the nature of the NIR, mass surveillance is the only rational explanation left, even if it does sound improbable. And that is a prize worth the risk of disaster.
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So the French have rejected the EU constitution. While it came as no surprise that the vote (of around 70% turnout) was 55% against, it will still send shockwaves through the European Union. France was one of the founding countries, one of the drivers of the great EU bulldozer. So what will it all mean? Have they just given the wrong answer and be required to go back to the polls until they come up with the right one? Certainly pundits were suggesting that this was a backlash against an unpopular government as much as a rejection of the constitution. Possibly. However, when you think about the ramifications of the constitution, the “no” vote is less surprising. The French rejection is as much about losing the French way as anything else.

I love France and the French way of life. The pace suits me. It is so different to the hurly burly of Britain. That’s why I like it - it is different.. There is a downside to this - French society is heavily regulated and bureaucratic as anyone who has had to deal with it will attest. Red tape is an industry of its own; the state has fingers in every pie. I could relate tales of the French banking system but I won’t, it’s too depressing.

British objection is for the opposite reason. The British are worried that it will bring in more regulation and control into our lives, not open it up to greater free trade and open markets. So there you have it, two counties with entirely different cultures worried about the same, yet opposite influences on their national identities. Now multiply that by the amount of member countries and you won’t be surprised that the Netherlands is also likely to vote no.

Therein lies the problem - homogenisation is guaranteed to unite everyone sooner or later, but for all the wrong reasons. What is going to work in Warsaw just won’t do in Paris and what is going to be just dandy in Berlin will be a disaster in Lisbon.

So why did Spain say yes?
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Close up shots of the kittens.

Okay, so I was using manual focus in a dark wardrobe, which means that the kittens are little more than blobs. You can just about see a tortoiseshell face in amongst the fluff.

As I write this, Ahmose is pausing between kittens. She has two healthy kittens. Unfortunately, the third (the firstborn) was stillborn after a protracted labour. The veterinary surgeon said that this was due to its size and this being Ahmose’s first pregnancy. Still can’t help wondering if we could have done something, though. I probably always will.

Looks like it could be a long night.

Pictures to follow…

Edited at 22:00 Looks like that’s the lot. A litter of three with two survivors. We were planning to keep one anyway. So what’s another one?

Today Charles Clarke takes the identity cards bill back to Parliament. He claims that he has accepted genuine worries that have been raised about the previous bill, which failed following its third reading due to insufficient time at the end of the parliamentary session. However yet again the same old clichés are being trotted out by the government and its apologeticsin an attempt to sell this rotten, corrupt piece of legislation. We are told that identity cards will combat fraud, terrorism, illegal working and immigration, and that it will provide a one-stop shop to prove our identity.

Now is the time perhaps, to remind people of just what exactly identity cards do and do not do:

• ID cards will protect us from terrorism: They will do nothing of the sort. Those responsible for the bombings in Madrid and the outrage in New York all carried valid identity documents. The new breed of terrorist; the suicide bomber, does not wish to hide his or her identity. Indeed they want the world to know who they are and are prepared to star in a video prior to the event to prove it. Until they carry out their activities they are unknown to the authorities. Those who are known will use forged identity documents. It is worth bearing in mind that our erstwhile Home Secretary, David Blunkett was forced to admit on television and radio that identity cards will not combat terrorism. Not to put too fine a point on it; that identity cards will combat terrorism is a lie.
• They will tackle crime: Since when has the necessity for carrying identity documents stopped such people as bank robbers, rapists, muggers and murderers? Those countries that already have compulsory identity card systems are no less vulnerable to these types of crime. It is also worth bearing in mind that the type of crime the Home Secretary is particularly keen on mentioning is identity theft. All too often it is not identity theft at all. They quote a figure of £1.3 billion per annum as the cost of identity theft, yet this is a disingenuous figure. Much of what the government touts as identity crime is in fact nothing more than straightforward fraud such as the customer not present deception. This is not identity theft. Indeed the only effect that a high level document such as identity cards will have on crime is to increase it and make it simpler. Organised gangs will be rubbing their hands in glee at the introduction of a whole new revenue stream courtesy of her Majesty’s government.
• The government will make sure that our personal details remain secure and private: No, they won’t. Any information on the national information register will document where we live, what we earn, our medical details, where we have lived, who we work for, criminal records, purchases over £200, biometric information such as fingerprints or iris scans, and possibly within a few years a DNA sample. This information will be available to government officials in different departments. Not only will they have access, but those private companies employed by the government to manage information. And if you believe that this will not find its way into the hands of private companies and those who would use it to defraud us, I have a nice little piece of real estate going cheap, just for you in the Chernobyl district.
• Cost: Present estimates are that it will cost around £85. Of course, if you lose it there will be a fee. Also should there be any incorrect information, you will have to pay to correct it. You will also have to pay to move or get married.
• Immigration: The idea that identity cards will in some way control immigration is laughable. People smugglers will continue to operate and they will do so with the added bonus of being able to sell their victims forged identity documents. There are those who say, messrs Blunkett and Clarke among them, that being biometric, the cards will not be able to be forged. Given that perfectly legitimate biometrics have a one in ten failure rate, and that not every outlet will have a biometric reader, this aspect of the argument is significantly weak. Biometric technology is not a panacea. Not only is the technology new and therefore immature, but it is inherently insecure because should your biometric details be compromised, they remain compromised until you die. A conventional password is at least something you may change should someone gain access to it. Oh, yes, of course they will be forged.
• Benefit fraud: It is possible that should somebody attempt to use a false name to obtain benefits, identity cards may have a small impact. However over 90% of benefit fraud is conducted by people using their real names but concealing their circumstances; convincing a doctor they are too ill to work, or working cash in hand while claiming unemployment benefit.

The only beneficiary of the identity cards bill with its underpinning national identity register is the government, its agencies and their minions. This will give the government and its employees and employees of those private companies that it engages carte blanche to snoop on British citizens in a routine manner that has not been possible before. Technology is the servant of people not the other way round.

Lord Goddard’s judgment in 1951 reflected human behaviour; the relationship between the authorities - the police - and the public. In the half-century that has passed since that judgment human behaviour has not changed one wit. Lord Goddard’s judgment is as valid today as it was when he made it. Consequently Identity Cards will turn us into a “papers please” state. This is a bad piece of legislation in the making. It is dangerous, one of the building blocks of a totalitarian state, we must resist it.

Good news indeed, the Royal Mail is returning to the rails. It was always a fraught relationship with tight performance targets for the railways. It was failure to meet some of those targets that cost the railways the business.

During the nineties, I was well aware of those targets and the need to get the postal trains to their destinations on time. As a signaller, I did my bit to signal them efficiently, giving them priority according to instructions. However that determination was frequently undermined by circumstances. Failures in signalling equipment such as tracks, points and signals - not to mention other operators’ trains would conspire to prevent us meeting those targets. On one occasion salt spray caused multiple track failures in the Weston-Super-Mare area and I spent the best part of a couple of hours talking the driver of the first postal from one signal to the next. Indeed, it was still going on at shift changeover at 06:00. The post was late in the west country that morning.

Railtrack was the custodian of the infrastructure and as such, contractually liable for those failures. For most of my signalling career, the withdrawal of the postal contract was a sword of Damocles hanging over us so it was no great surprise when it finally happened.

That GB Railfreight has secured a new contract is good news indeed. As a former railwayman, I feel that the postal and the railway are made for each other. I really hope it works out this time.

24 hours after getting my blog delisted from Blogshares it’s back on there again. This, despite me putting a no bots tag in my headers.

I don’t want to be a part of this site yet they have an automated system that denies me this choice. They claim that they don’t have to give me the choice as my blog, once published, is in the public domain. Well, legally, they may have a point. There is, however, the ethical consideration. When people don’t want to play your game, it’s downright bad manners to force them. Certainly I have no wish to be associated in any way with this site and the more I find myself embroiled unwillingly with it, the more annoyed I become.

Ultimately if they cannot control their spiders, I’ll have to take matters into my own hands and close this blog. I’ll replace it with one where I can ban their IP from accessing it.

Let’s see how things develop.

Update Well, they’ve delisted it again.

I have to say, it’s a long time since I came across a business model based upon such outrageous arrogance. The assumption is that blogs are fair game because they are published on the net. Blogshares’ owners take the stance that they are not infringing copyright because they are not reproducing the writing, merely the URLs linked in and out and using these to "value" the blog for trading. In that, they are perfectly correct, my copyright has not been breached. And, indeed, I have not been too bothered when I’ve encountered my writing when it has been borrowed by others on the net when that clearly is a breach of copyright. Providing they recognise the work as mine, I’m not too fussed; such is the nature of the net. So why does Blogshares piss me off so much?

This a commercial site that relies on the work of others that it obtains for free in order to make money. In other words, I am contributing to the business of someone who has not bothered to ask my permission to use my work in this way, has no intention of doing so, has no intention of paying me for doing so and is arrogant when challenged about it. Indeed, reading the fora on this site reveals some pretty nasty people who round on anyone who dares to suggest that they should be asked for permission. The general response is that we don’t have to and don’t care. I have to ask is this a community I would wish to be a part of? The answer is pretty obvious, I think.

At best, it’s bad netiquette. At worst it’s intellectual theft - although the latter would probably be difficult to prove in court. The opt-out nature of the site means that unless you seek them out and request de-lising, you are in; like it or not. You are a part of their game; like it or not. You are contributing to the wealth of the site owners; like it or not.

That’s why they piss me off; they are ethically reprehensible.