In the wake of the government’s utter incompetence – well, the latest manifestation of it – this week, that nasty, ignorant authoritarian arsewipe, Big Blunkett crawls out of the rotten woodwork to peddle his new employer’s wares:
The database is simply about identity — not about the plethora of information that already rests elsewhere. It will actually make it easier to protect your identity, including in circumstances such as these where information has gone missing. This is because it gives an absolutely robust form of identification that stops other people being able to pretend that they are you, simply because they’ve got hold of some of your personal details. It will allow a proper check to be made between your own biometric and that held on the database, giving greater protection.
As Dizzy points out, this is pure bunkum, Gold plated bunkum, but bunkum for all that (which is nothing new from this foul begotten canker on the shit encrusted arse of Westminster). Here, Blunkett merely underlines his utter ignorance of data management and IT systems. That he is deeply stupid and ignorant is bad enough – and he is entitled to tell the world just what a fuckwit he is (free speech and all that), but one would, at least, expect him to express some small mote of honourable behaviour and declare his interest in shackling us all to the state, wouldn’t you? Ah, but honour and a NuLabour politician are not words that sit comfortably in the same sentence. An oxymoron, perhaps, with the emphasis on the final syllable.
Earlier in his epistle, this jackanape engages in a side-swipe at refusniks:
This is simply a diversion by those who have never wanted ID cards anyway, and who do not appear to have ever understood them.
Oh, we understand alright – it is Blunkett and the other unreconstructed communists who do not.
Or perhaps they do…
Think about it, identity cards offer no solutions to any problems that we might have. Desperately looking for a problem to fix, the obvious one is the one that ministers would rather not discuss; that of exerting power over the populace. That is why these evil people want this scheme – because they will benefit, not us. We don’t need them and after the debacle just experienced, people are just waking up to how untrustworthy government can be with personal information, so we don’t want them, either.
As far as my protection is concerned, the only person who should be charged with that is me. I do not require any “secure” management of my identity from these incompetent, corrupt identity thieves. It is not up to Blunkett and the rest of the nest of cockroaches to have access to my information without my consent (and they do not have my consent). It is not up to them to decide what is or is not secure for my data – I will be the judge of that; and the government is not a body in which I would trust anything, let alone anything so valuable as my personal information. The state is subservient to me, not the other way around. I do not and will never consent to this scheme, to the point of open refusal to cooperate.
That so few people understand this is the problem that government faces in persuading people that such a system will be better then any other, precisely because it will be robust, efficient and verifiable.
Words fail me. What a bollockbrain this man is.
Mr Eugenides also picks up on the story.
I don’t think that the ID card thing is particularly about power over the populace.
The key to this is, there will be multi-billion pound contracts up for grabs, with massive profits for the lucky winning bidders, who might just make the rational calculation that a judicious donation of a million pounds or two to Nulab, plus a couple of directorships for ex-Cabinet ministers, could swing things in their favour …
From the point of view of the vultures circling the corpse, yes. From the point of view of ministers and more importantly the control freaks in the civil service, it is all about control.
The fact that it will also be a way of transferring billions of pounds from taxpayers to the corporations is certainly relevant, and provides a motive for the players involved, but I agree with the post. The ID card is primarily about state control.