Longrider

There’s a rather disturbing article in the Guardian today. A retired teacher put £250,000 into her bank account following the sale of her house. Sometime between the deposit in May this year and three weeks ago, it vanished.

Margaret Wilkinson is scrupulously careful with her money. She closely guards her banking details and shreds letters and correspondence before throwing them away. In May, Margaret, a 59-year-old retired teacher, sold her north London home and placed £250,000 in a Lloyds TSB savings account.

Just three weeks ago her offer on a new home in Surrey was accepted and she went to transfer the money.

Only then did she discover that the whole lot had been stolen from her account in one of the most serious cases yet documented of ID fraud.

Identity theft is a crime that many see as raging out of control, with more than £1bn stolen every year.

Actually, the biggest fraud being committed here is by the Guardian. “Mrs Wilkinson” suffered cheque fraud. The tricksters forged her signature on a cheque and the bank was too lazy to take a proper look. Much as Barclays did when my wife accidentally wrote a cheque for the milk bill on my account. This is not identity theft; it is cheque fraud. And, significantly, the £1.3Bn is itself a fraud. I know I’ve said it before but as the big lie is being repeated ad nauseam, I have to constantly refute it in the vain hope that people will realise that both government and media are lying to us. Identity theft - and there is no such offense on the statute book - consists of masquerading as another person; taking on aspects of their identity and passing oneself off as them over a period of time in order to carry out other forms of fraud or criminal activity - one of which may well be cheque fraud. However, it is not necessary to carry out the former in order to achieve the latter. A simple forged signature will suffice.

What is happening here is a classic misinformation exercise, softening us up for identity cards and the database state. MPs assure us that handing our identities over to them and franchising them back will in some way “protect” us from this type of theft. That, too, is a fraud. Identity theft will indeed become an offence under the act - it will also be much simpler to execute with all that valuable information on everybody in one insecure place. Insecure? It will be a government agency managing it; of course it will be insecure, whatever made you think otherwise?

Anyone else getting a spate of referrer SPAM today? I’ve just had to clear masses of it out. I’ll probably switch off the referrer portal this evening and clear it out again tomorrow.

Bastards!

Much as I dislike this time of the year; the interminable forced jollity of the countdown to Christmas, the fireworks going off incessantly for weeks on end, the dreadful trick or treat and the long, dark nights, there is always the beauty of nature.
This morning, the light was too inviting. I threw my clothes on and grabbed the camera. During a half an hour or so. I rattled off these shots. All were taken within a five minute walk of my home.
Enjoy.

A C Grayling, writing in the Times, makes the case against the ID Cards Bill that is about to receive its third reading in the house this week. Despite my writing to my MP, he voted in favour last time and provided me with the same weak excuses trotted out by the home office. I was mildly surprised at his response. I’ve written to him again, but fully expect him to vote in favour for a third time. Disappointingly, this is a man who has been prepared to rebel against the government on other occasions, yet when faced with its increasingly authoritarian stance, simply repeats the dogma as he trots obediently into the "aye" lobby. Hopefully, he will read - and take note of - the article in the Times.

"TOMORROW the ID cards Bill returns to Parliament for its report stage. It is surprising that this profoundly ill-conceived measure has got this far, so unanimous has been the opposition to it from every qualified organisation in the country, apart from the police and the biometric data companies who stand to make billions of pounds if it becomes law - anything from £5 billion (the Government’s estimate) to £18 billion (The Financial Times’s estimate), all to be borne by the public."

Even those people who are not concerned unduly by the privacy arguments should be worried by this. I am inclined to place more faith in the Financial Times’ estimate than that of the government. Government have been proved to lie, so why should I believe them now? The cost - whatever it turns out to be - will be a staggering waste of taxpayers’ money that could (and should) be better spent on health, education or policing.

Then of course there are the shifting sands of purpose:

"Arguments against the scheme relate both to practical matter, and to principle. Consider the practicalities first. At various times since David Blunkett first introduced the idea, different reasons for ID cards have been suggested: chiefly, that they will help to catch illegal immigrants, that they will reduce identity fraud, and that in some unspecified way they will reduce crime and prevent terrorism. This last claim has since been dropped by the Government, which acknowledges that ID cards would not have stopped either the 9/11 or 7/7 atrocities."

Terrorism, benefit fraud, immigration, identity theft… All are trotted out without an ounce of thought. If there was thought, it would demolish all of these as the bunkum that they are. In response to my letters, my MP trotted out the identity fraud argument, citing cases that have occurred to his constituents as a rationale. Except that government does not seem clear about what constitutes identity theft in the first place. They produced a figure; £1.3bn lost every year on identity fraud. Yet this figure is itself a fraud and most of it has nothing to do with identity fraud, rather, it is credit card fraud. More precisely, cardholder not present fraud - which is not identity fraud. And, significantly, identity cards would have no effect on this whatsoever. My MP has chosen not to respond to this point.

Grayling goes on:

"The objection of principle, which is that ID cards are a gross violation of civil liberties, is related to the lazy argument that people use when they say, “I have credit cards, store cards, a passport, a driving licence - why would one more card make any difference?” But the difference is great. All those other documents are voluntary; you do not have to have them, even though they are very convenient. Moreover, they each represent a relationship with just one other body - your bank, a retail outlet, or the vehicle licensing authority.

ID cards are wholly different. They carry comprehensive information about you, stored on a microchip connected to an Orwellianly-named “National Identity Register”. This changes your relationship with the State entirely. You are no longer a private citizen, but in effect a number-plated unit who can be monitored by the authorities for any purpose. In fact, ID cards would be better named “surveillance cards”, because they provide central authority with a means for monitoring all your activities, and give it permanent access to all your personal details."

Herein is the big objection. The one people decry as being nothing more than airy fairy civil libertarians whining about concepts that are theoretical rather than real. They change the relationship between citizen and state - that, is the significance. The state exists to serve us, the electors, not the elected. We, the electors are the masters and the elected are the servants. The government seeks to reverse that relationship. We own our identities, the government seeks to franchise them back to us. Those who choose to think little of these things, presuming that we live in a liberal democracy and that "it couldn’t happen here" will do well to ponder upon the words of Karl Jaspers immediately after the second world war:

"What has happened is a warning from history. To forget it is guilt. It has been possible for this to happen. It remains possible for it to happen again at any minute."

To suppose that it couldn’t happen here is to indulge in naivete to the point of gross negligence.

I fully expect this bill will pass its third reading. I hope, as do those who share my concerns for our liberties, that the government’s war on liberty will receive a setback in the Lords.
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It’s an old adage, but true nonetheless. This picture has been doing the rounds of the Internet for some months and I have no idea of the original source. Thanks to Kat for reminding me of it. As the house of commons gives the ID cards Bill its third reading in the latest chapter of Neu Labour’s war on liberty, this picture remains as powerful as the first time I saw it. And it serves as a reminder of why we should resist this pernicious bill with every fibre of our beings.

It had to happen, I suppose. Following a natural disaster such as the one last week in Pakistan, someone comes up with the punishment from God explanation. This time it is the Mullah of Battal.

”Allah has sent this great punishment on account of our misdeeds," he said, jabbing a finger at the open sky. "We must now end our rebellion against the orders of Allah and submit ourselves again to his ways."

In the 21st Century we have an advantage over primitive societies that blamed natural disasters on supernatural beings. We know how the Earth works. It is a matter of scientific fact that the tectonic plate upon which the Indian sub continent sits is moving against the Himalaya mountain range, gradually pushing it skywards. This is because it in turn is being pushed by the Pacific plate. It is perfectly natural. There are no mythical supernatural deities manipulating this in order to punish people for imagined misdeeds.

The people who tragically died last week did not die because they strayed from the path of Allah, they died because they lived on a fault line. It is as simple as that. It is insensitive and crass to then try to blame it on the victims in an attempt to coerce them into subservient obedience. Outrageous it may be, but this is the politics of fear. Fear is a powerful tool with which these people maintain a grip of iron on the obedience of their followers, for without followers, they are nothing.

But then, religious leaders have been doing it for millennia, so why expect a change? Evidence and proof mean nothing when compared against faith. Their grip on reality may be weak, but the grip with which they maintain control over their acolytes remains as strong as ever.

I’ve talked about temporary working before. It has been drawn to my attention again by reports of the trades unions likening temps’ working conditions to those of the dark ages. This might seem a little exaggerated, but is worthy of a closer look, because they make some interesting points. The TUC has delivered a dossier of their findings to ministers.

“The dossier included instances of temps being denied training, having to pay for work clothing and receiving lower wages than permanent staff.”

Having been a temp on and off over the last twenty years or so, I can empathize with some of these points. Indeed, recently when applying for temporary work, I was asked if I had my own protective boots. Yet this is the responsibility of the employer - our health and safety legislation specifically states that personal protective equipment must be provided and paid for by the employer. Yet temps must provide their own.

“The dossier contains sometimes harrowing depictions of life as a temp worker. One temporary factory worker said her life was filled with insecurity and she felt treated as a second-class citizen.”

Again, I know how this person feels. Recently when working at a warehouse, I was told to sweep the floor. This was not because it desperately wanted doing, but because none of the permanent workers wanted to do it and none of them had the wit to plan the working day effectively in order to maximize the use of my time.

All of this is underpinned by the agency charging around £500 per week for my time and barely paying me less than a half of that. For little over the minimum wage, I am effectively on-call 24 hours a day. I can be expected to go anywhere and pretty much do anything. Of course, I could say “no”. However, doing that too often simply means no offers of work. It’s a viscous circle.

The article also gives the employers’ reactions to the TUC claims.

“However, employers said the TUC’s case studies were not representative of how temps are treated generally.”

Really? How come every time I have taken on a temporary job in the past twenty years, the TUC’s picture is rather more realistic than the employers’ one? It is in the employers’ interests to have a body of peripatetic employees to pick up and put down at will; not having to worry about employment rights, leave, sickness or even getting to know them. As one of the correspondents to the piece points out,

“The temps themselves are just human units to be shifted around and jammed into whichever job is available, regardless of suitability.”

How true that is.

It isn’t all bad, of course. If the temp is contracting in a specialized field, the pay will be that much higher, making it a chosen pursuit for many. The IT industry is particularly lucrative for those who operate in it. So, too, is the rail industry for the right people. For those who have no particular skill, it is an uncertain and thankless existence. Consequently, I am somewhat dismissive of employers’ organizations that make comments such as this:

“We are not condoning poor treatment, but to talk about dark age treatment just isn’t right,” said REC deputy chief executive Marcia Roberts.

“Our research suggests that temp working suits the employer, the lifestyle of the worker and boosts the UK economy.”

Of course it boosts the economy. It is cheap, hire-and-fire labour. What more could an employer want? To suggest that temps choose this lifestyle is using far too broad a brush. Many do, that’s true enough. Many, though, are forced through no fault of their own into this lifestyle. Certainly as soon as my own business picks up, I’ll be off the temporary register. In the meantime, it helps a little, but not much. Would I recommend it? What do you think?
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There’s a row brewing between the treasury and the home office over plans to sneak in introduce cheap identity cards for the less well off.

“Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, was expected to announce proposals for a “low-tech” £30 ID card that, unlike the £93 version, could not be used as a driving licence or passport.”

I guess this comes as no great surprise as there always was a hint of it in the rhetoric. It does rather underline how low the home secretary will stoop to get public acceptance of the scheme. Buy off the poor. That the treasury should tell the home office that it hasn’t thought through the cost of the scheme properly is priceless. The LSE told them this earlier this year. At that time, the home secretary rejected the findings out of hand with the usual dismissive, contemptuous arrogance that has come to epitomize this administration. Will he reject the treasury in a similar manner?

Still, the article does hold a tiny glimmer of hope:

“The Conservatives say they would scrap ID cards. David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said they were “illiberal, impractical, expensive and unworkable”.”

This always presumes that they become electable, get elected and keep their promises…
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