Longrider

From “Duncan S” on the NO2ID forum, a variation on Pastor Martin Niemöller’s well known piece:

First they banned hunting, but I said nothing because I live in a town.
Then they banned smoking, but I said nothing because I don’t like the smell.
Then they banned Freedom…….

And the final lines of Dylan Thomas’ Do not go gentle into that good night:

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Sums up how I feel at the moment.

If you want to avoid being registered on the National Identity Register during the “voluntary” phase, then you will need to avoid having to renew your passport during this time. It makes sense, therefore, to renew early before the bill becomes law and the machinery of the state is ready to tag you like cattle and make you a prisoner in your own country.

You don’t need an excuse to renew your passport early – you don’t need to “lose” it or accidentally put it in the washing machine, nor, for that matter, do you need to provide an explanation should they telephone you and ask; as they did with me.

Your new passport will have an extra nine months on it. This means that in the case of myself and Mrs Longrider, our passports are now valid until June 2016 well beyond the “voluntary” phase of the scheme.

So, if you want to avoid being tagged, do it now, do it quickly, don’t delay.

And when 2010 comes around? Well, if enough of us have managed to avoid registration that will provide a headache for the government as they are planning on an 80% take-up by that point, making compulsion easier to enforce on the refusniks. The lower that figure is, the harder it will be for them when people start to refuse.

This all presupposes that they will put their scheme into practice competently and on time. Never underestimate the power of government departments’ incompetence.

Well, the Lords finally capitulated:

The battle over the government’s controversial ID Cards Bill has ended after peers accepted a compromise deal.

No, it is not a “compromise” any more than this insidious scheme is “voluntary”.

Under the compromise, anyone who renews a passport will have their details put on a national ID database - but will not have to get a card until 2010.

That is not a compromise, that is utter capitulation served up as a face saving exercise. The government has not compromised one jot. Not one. We will still be forced onto the stasi database National Identity Register and that was the issue all along. Never mind the cards, bad enough that they are; it is the register that will hold the data, the register that will be hacked, the register that will be compromised by incompetence and corruption. It is the register with its inbuilt audit trail that will be the biggest threat to our personal information and privacy. How, exactly is this a compromise?

So, now the media war will start. Now, only a massive public backlash will force a climb-down. Even then, I can’t feel too optimistic. I renewed my passport early last summer, so I have until 2016 before the threat of compulsion becomes a real problem. By then, hopefully I will no longer be living in this country and if necessary, I will revoke my British citizenship. Frankly, with the current bunch of nasty little scoundrels in government, I’m deeply ashamed of my nationality.

Looks like Mr Toad got lucky after all.

Here’s a little intellectual exercise for you. It’s not too onerous. This, first, from yesterday’s Grauniad following the fifth defeat of the ID cards bill in the Lords:

“I take the view that it is part of being a good citizen, proving who you are, day in day out,”

And this, from the Observer last Sunday:

“ID cards will be used when it is important to verify identity. That is not an everyday occurrence for the majority…”

Notice anything about these two statements? Like, for example, that they are totally contradictory? Now, unless you are schizophrenic, a complete charlatan or we have stepped into a parallel universe where nothing makes sense anymore, they cannot both be true.

Yet… wait for it… they were both made by the same man. Yes, step forward, the mendacious lying little shit; Andy Burnham. Now, I know that an honest politician is an oxymoron, but to lie so blatantly in such short order is unbelievably temerarious. Or is that just plain stupid? It’s difficult to tell with Burnham. Does this imbecile not realise that even a cretin can see that he has contradicted himself in plain sight in a matter of a few days? Even a cretin would not be fooled into believing both statements to be true – it just isn’t possible. Therefore, Andy (bumbling) Burnham is a liar and here we have the evidence before us. That, or he is a schizophrenic or we have stepped into that parallel universe. Frankly, I’m inclined to the more simple and logical explanation that he is a complete charlatan.

It’s not the lies that anger me most, though. It is the cynical disregard for the electorate. The belief that we are as stupid, vacuous and gullible as he is. That we will not see the contradiction and just swallow his dissembling whole without questioning or noticing the lies for what they are.

Incidentally, Burnham, being the mendacious lying little shit that he is, is not someone to lecture anyone about good citizenship. Out in the real world, confidence tricksters are criminals and go to gaol for their efforts. Well, there or the Costa del Sol. :devil:

On the matter of that fifth defeat, I noticed this comment from Baroness Scotland:

“We do not have the right to hold up legislation in a way that’s improper. There will be those who will use this opportunity against this House.”

She said that Lord Armstrong’s amendment would “blow a hole” in the legislation, putting “a coach and four through the Bill”.

It would seem that when they made Burnham, they didn’t break the mould. The Lords do have a right to hold up legislation; that’s why we have a second chamber; to hold up bad law. This gives parliament an opportunity to check and review. It defends us, the electorate, from a series of bad laws. At least, that is what is supposed to happen. Given that the ID cards bill is atrocious law, it is entirely proper for the Lords to hold it up and they should keep doing so. And, yes, Lord Armstong’s amendment would “put a coach and four” through the bill. That, surely, is the general idea? And, did you notice the veiled threat? Pass this bill or the rancorous thug will kick you all out and replace you with Tony’s cronies reform the Lords.

Ah, the rough and tumble of modern politics. Perhaps that’s what the egregious Tony means when he obsesses about modernity?

We’ve had a few warmer days of late. The daffodils are out and the crocuses are almost gone. The pond is full of frog spawn and today, I saw this magnificent chap waiting for a suitable female to come by. Yup, it must be spring.

Via the NO2ID newsblog; this from Henry Porter writing on the Grauniad’s comment is free:

You can well imagine the army of snoopers, informers and bureaucratic bullies that will grow up around ID cards. And lest you have any doubt about the will to enforce the scheme, just look at the scale of fines proposed. The failure to register will be punished by a maximum fine of £2,500. The failure to apply in a manner prescribed (whatever that means) to renew your ID, or to inform the national identity register of a change of your details, or to surrender the ID card, or to notify the register of an invalid card, will all incur a maximum fine of £1,000.

Hold these rules in your mind and ask yourself whether a government that was merely interested in your being able to identify yourself would enforce ID cards with these enormous fines. Of course it would not. The fines are a measure of the government’s terrifying determination to make your identity its property.

It’s nice to see the mainstream picking up on the civil liberties aspect of this insidious scheme and recognising the authoritarian agenda for what it is. NO2ID has seemed all too often like a lone voice in the wilderness this past couple of years. The British public has appeared unaware and disinterested in the issue. Some, like the taxi driver I rode with in Lincoln last year vaguely think it will be a good idea because it will keep out immigrants, or stop benefit fraud – whatever the bogeyman du jour happens to be. He, like the bumbling Burnham, doesn’t seem to realise that illegals will either slip in under the radar and won’t bother, or the people traffickers will simply supply them with forged cards – an extra service at extra cost, of course. No, they won’t stop illegal immigration, if anything they will enable it. Neither will they, as the cretinous numskulls from the home office would have us believe; improve security, or combat terrorism. No rational person in their right mind would believe such absurdity. Nor, for that matter, would a rational person put so much valuable information in one place, and, in the hands of an agency so notoriously unreliable. You don’t believe that government departments are reliable, do you? :dry: Make no mistake; this bill is all about control and social engineering. Henry Porter makes that point extremely well. Then, too, this:

You only have to consider how easy it will be for a local official to remove your name from electoral roll because of ID card irregularities to understand the truly terrifying potential of the scheme. For one of the many facts that the government has chosen not to publicise about this scheme is that despite the huge costs, both direct and indirect, to the British citizen, the card remains government property and may be withdrawn by the home secretary. Without the card, a person will not be able to function as a citizen of this society.

The state is not your friend. And, if that was not bad enough, think about private enterprise having access to the data. As a comment on the NO2ID entry states:

ID cards will not only be abused by the government; take a look at this article^† for an example of how ID cards will be abused in the UK should they become law:

ABOUT 10,000 people a week go to The Rack, a bar in Boston favored by sports stars, including members of the New England Patriots. One by one, they hand over their driver’s licenses to a doorman, who swipes them through a sleek black machine. If a license is valid and its holder is over 21, a red light blinks and the patron is waved through.

But most of the customers are not aware that it also pulls up the name, address, birth date and other personal details from a data strip on the back of the license. Even height, eye color and sometimes Social Security number are registered.

“You swipe the license, and all of a sudden someone’s whole life as we know it pops up in front of you,” said Paul Barclay, the bar’s owner. “It’s almost voyeuristic.”

Mr. Barclay bought the machine to keep out underage drinkers who use fake ID’s. But he soon found that he could build a database of personal information, providing an intimate perspective on his clientele that can be useful in marketing. “It’s not just an ID check,” he said. “It’s a tool.…”

Any suggestion that this enables citizens to take control of their identities is mere newspeak, where war is peace and slavery is freedom. At one end of the scale we will have the authoritarian state imposing sanctions on refuseniks or “troublemakers”* and at the mundane level, private business will be using the data as a marketing tool – data that otherwise you would probably not willingly volunteer.

^† The NYT requires a subscription, but the salient points are reproduced here.

*People like Brian Haw, for example.

I tend to use off-line blogging tools rather than the native writers supplied by the blog software. This is partly because I can take my time and save for later on my hard drive without worrying about being connected to the net and partly because I can trawl about while writing to link to my sources. I have been using wBloggar – a freeware application that has served me well. If it has a downside, it is that it does not have a WYSIWYG editor. The main input window uses direct coding. Not a problem in itself, but the WYSIWYG display is slow to load for some reason that I’ve never quite determined. Also, if you are using images, there is no ftp capability built in. Again, a minor niggle and as it is free, not worth complaining about. So, if you want to have a go at off-line blogging, wBloggar is worth a try. I’d give it seven or eight out of ten for ease of use and functions.

Since then, however, I’ve come across a shareware application – BlogJet. Not particularly cheap at nearly £30, but it has the two things wBloggar misses; WYSIWYG editing with the facility to go into the code if necessary and ftp is built in. The imaging facility also includes auto-thumbnail. Once the post is ready to upload, the images, including thumbnails are automatically uploaded to the blog’s image folder.

As with wBloggar, it works with all of the major blog platforms. You do need to look carefully at the instructions for your ftp path as it isn’t immediately obvious how to set it. The online instructions include a Flash demo – this helps, but, frankly, I’d rather have text and screenshots so that I can go back easily while I’m filling out the options. Flash tutorials are just a bit too clever, clever for my liking. When you are learning something new, you want time to stop and think without having to rewind an animation.

Like wBloggar, there is a spell checker. This one, however, includes British English along with American English, so you won’t have to keep telling it to ignore the spelling of words like “organise”, “neighbour” and “criticise”. The Americans do like their “zees” don’t they? 

Are there any niggles? Well, while it is well featured, not all of the font formatting is available from the toolbar. Colour, bold, italic and underline is your lot. Anything else and you have to go into the code window and manually code it. Drag and drop of images would be nice. As would the ability to edit things like alignment in the WYSIWYG window once the images have been inserted. Again, you can go into the code window and correct it, but it really should be available from the WYSIWYG window.

However, these are minor niggles and the application is still under development. You get 30 days to try it out. I’m on my fourth day and I’ve decided to shell out and buy it. I guess that means that I like it.