John Kirby is one of the early adopters of the ID card scheme and he thinks it is wonderful.
My identity card is the same size and almost the same colour as a driving licence, and I can carry it in my wallet. It’s got my photograph, my name and my citizenship on it – and it works well.
Works well, eh? For what, precisely? The usual reasoning being that it helps with things like buying alcohol, opening a bank account and buying age related goods in a supermarket. But what idiots like Kirby forget is that these things are all needed because the Labour government made them necessary. In other words, an ID card is a solution to a problem that was artificially created. Remove the artificial constructs and the need for a card vanishes. Even then, I have not needed to prove my identity for as long as I can remember, so it isn’t that necessary, and therefore I take Kirby’s assertion that it works well with a bucketful of salt. Besides, Kirby is a class one weapons grade bell end as his next statement demonstrates so well.
I’ve been interested in the identity card since it was first mooted. I pre-registered for a card on the Identity and Passport Service website before they started the roll-out in Manchester last autumn.
I am interested in my identity. That is why I have opposed this scheme from the outset – it is my identity and I neither need nor want the government to get involved. Of course, if inadequates like Kirby need the comfort blanket of a card that tells them who they are, that’s fine by me, providing any such arrangement is entirely voluntary.
It is his inadequacy in needing the ID cards scheme as designed that I object to; the database that was intended to create an audit trail of our lives and the eventual compulsion for all of us. People like Kirby are the useful idiots that gave the Labour control freaks a toe in the door. This is why I despise Kirby and all those of his ilk.
And very useful it is too. Previously, I was in the nightclub business and identity was an important issue because, with alcohol, I had to look out for people’s ages to protect my licence.
Er, Kirby’s card doesn’t help one jot here, does it? The man is clearly a cretin.
In the eight weeks since I’ve had it, I have travelled with it and used it to open bank accounts. I’ve used it on internal flights in the UK because you must have some form of photo ID. The identity card is accepted here and is accepted as a travel document across Europe.
I have a passport, which works well for travel – as it is designed to do. I didn’t have to go onto the NIR to get it. That I need it for domestic flights is a disgrace, but see my comments above on that one.
When I turned up at the airport, the identity card was recognised straight away. There were absolutely no qualms at all. They took it, put it through the machine reader, the same as they would with your passport. It was all set up, ready for it.
Oh, wow! So does my passport. My passport does not require entry on the NIR.
I’m not worried by the civil liberties arguments.
Then you are a fuckwit.
I believe the state already has all the same details on me – they’ve got my photograph and the details on my driving licence. So the only extra thing I’ve given over is my fingerprints – and that’s fine by me. I’ve got no big secrets.
Ah, yes, sooner or later we get the argument put forward by the intellectually challenged, the nothing to hide, nothing to fear cockwaffle. Whether I have anything to hide is neither here nor there – I should not have to demonstrate it to the government. My life is not an open book and nor should it be. Anyone who uses this stupid, stupid argument loses all rights to be taken seriously.
Most European countries have got an identity card…
Not like the one planned for the UK – not even close, you cretin.
…and we implement technology quite well in this country.
Yes, indeed, of course. Pillock! Watch the cognitive dissonance kick in with the next statement.
There are, of course, big failures when they lose data. But given the number of data sources there are in the world, you don’t hear of that many losses taking place, so I’m quite comfortable with it.
Er… This man is straight out of 1984 – the fellow who was happy to have his children report him for thought crimes. Although in Kirby’s case, thought crime would be impossible, as one has to be able to think in the first place.
I think it’s definitely a backward step for the government to do away with the identity card.
Fortunately, you are part of a weak-minded insecure minority of Labour drones who are incapable of independent thought. The rest of us are sufficiently independently minded and self-assured to be able to manage without the card and its database.
I’d have liked to have seen a situation where every time you got issued with a new passport, you got an identity card with it. It would give you a choice of which document to use in daily life.
Why not just change the way a passport looks, so that it fits in a wallet? That said, mine isn’t a problem and I do not use any ID documents in daily life, so Kirby is proposing a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.
I paid £30 for this identity card and I certainly would have paid £75 for it because of the advantages it has given me.
It hasn’t given you any advantages – certainly nothing in this risible piece lists any advantages. And you are an idiot.
The new government says that it’s costly, unwanted and unneeded.
The new government is correct.
I totally disagree.
You are entitled to do so. That’s what free speech is all about. You are not entitled to expect the rest of us to be tagged just because you are an insecure inadequate.
I certainly know of three people who have gone out and applied for one because they have seen mine.
Three! Wow! That makes four insecure inadequates.
Some people do want it.
Some people are morons. You are one of them.
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Update: I see that this post has been picked up elsewhere. As I’m not going to join a forum merely to enlarge on some of the points I’ve made here – I’ll respond to those points here and if those people concerned wish to comment below, that’s fine.
Firstly, a quickie from “Puddington”:
I’d rather read something that wasn’t a personal attack on someone else. So would I. However, after nine years of hearing this tripe put out by people like John Kirby, the time for polite discourse has long passed. He and the others who signed up to this scheme were enabling one of the most pernicious examples of the database state. Their selfishness would, had Labour been reelected, have led to all of us being forced to carry one of these cards and be entered on the database. Personal abuse is the very least such people deserve.
Moving on to “Chrisull”:
Read the article. I’m fuming… “Labour government” – This was one of John Major’s babies mooted by Michael Howard (along with the road traffic cone hotline) and last time I looked that was a Tory administration. It was introduced in 1995 in a Home Office Green Paper – you can find a brief history of what happened then – Link to www.privacyinternational.org
I’m not quite sure why Blair chose to resurrect them, but both party Labour and Tories have been complicit in their introduction. And as for the rest of the thrust of teh article, blaming the Labour government for the current problems in supermarkets and them not vending alcohol to mums with teenagers etc etc, can I suggest that it’s the litigation culture leading corporations to be ultra-cautious about doing anything, so that they avoid expensive lawsuits, and I might suggest again that this is a symptom of unfettered free market interests, lawyers feathering their own nests, making a buck anytime anyone slips on a pavement, and that’s what happens with deregulation, rather than too much regulation.
I am well aware that the Major government looked at ID cards. However, they did not enact the Identity Cards Act, Labour did. It was Labour that brought about the insane, paranoid money laundering legislation that led to ordinary bank customers being asked for photo ID when they want to draw £500 out of their account, despite the teller knowing them by sight because they are regular visitors to the branch. The teller is not afraid of being sued, he is afraid of being prosecuted.
It was a Labour government that brought about the entirely unnecessary and absurd age limit of 21 for people buying alcohol despite the legal age for drinking it being 18. It was a Labour government that bombarded us with propaganda about binge drinking and it was under a Labour administration that shopkeepers became subjected to entrapment sting operations by government agencies. Retailers are not asking for ID because they are afraid of being sued, they are afraid of being prosecuted. It has nothing to do with unregulated market forces (that do not exist anyway) or litigation, it has to do with a government that became out of control with its obsession for micro-managing our lives.
My comments about a Labour government may make you fume. They are, however, observations of fact – and I say this as someone who in 1997 was not only a Labour voter, but an active member of the party. Okay?
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“Ah, yes, sooner or later we get the argument put forward by the intellectually challenged, the nothing to hide, nothing to fear cockwaffle. “
Which leads to stuff like this.
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He certainly is a total ball bag, isn’t he?
Yeah, that alcohol thing is a nuisance. It leads to the ridiculous scenario of having to take my passport out with me when I want to buy some beer. I mean, has this ever really been necessary pre-2002-2003? It’s a fucking irritant and the LDs would do well to bring this to the ground.
The local supermarket that I use actually stopped asking me once I made a stand after being asked multiple times.
I’m 22 and look several years older. Let’s just use common sense at the point of sale with age-related products. You know, like we used to do.
Oh, and while we’re at it can we restore the Common Travel Area please? I shouldn’t need to prove who I am so I can travel from Blackpool to Belfast.
that’s fine by me, providing any such arrangement is entirely voluntary.
let’s be absolutely clear here; he does NOT have the ‘right’ to volunteer for an ID card provided by the state, as they steal money to provide this service to him from others. Also, once a few morons are on the system the state can change tack and make them compulsory overnight.
This is why ID cards for foreigners must be abolished along with the citizens Id card. It is a foot in the door, and logically compulsion for all non foreigners must follow.
This is not over by a longshot.
Agree with the sentiment, and love the wording “a class one weapons grade bell end” will henceforth be in my pet phrases
Daniel, such a scheme does not need to involve government and it can be entirely self funding. As such, I would have no objection.
James, much as I’d love to claim the credit, I wasn’t the first to coin that phrase. It was Obnoxio the Clown.
A somewhat harsh analysis, but entirely reasonable. 😉
As well as the “NTH, NTF” idiocy, there is another fallacy which needs nailing (repeatedly): it’s this nonsense about “all the ID card does is add my fingerprints to information ‘they’ already have”.
Sure. And the only difference between paintballing and war is the colour of the splats.
Anyone whose risk assessment is that facile is, by definition, too dense or too ill-informed to make an adult decision.
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Robin, I’ve noticed that this post is doing the rounds somewhat and I’ve been accused of harshness elsewhere, too. When people trot out the tired, discredited arguments first put forward by David Blunkett back in 2002 – or even Michael Howard in 1995 – despite them having no basis in fact and their subsequent engagement in this scheme being encouragement for the totalitarian mindset of government, then they deserve contempt.
If one says something as stupid as Kirby did, it is perhaps reasonable to draw the conclusion that he is stupid. If however, he puts his money into a scheme close to an election where both opposition parties are openly promising to scrap it, then by his actions he has demonstrated his stupidity beyond all doubt.
The guy is quite obviously a stooge. I have no doubt that he would have had no problems with my being fined £2,500 for non-registration on the scheme so why should anyone care about him? I do wonder about this ‘huge inconvenience’ that he and his fellow travellers see in a passport. Passports are quite small and light nowadays. Kirby should blame the Labour Party for the failure of the ID Cards programme. It would certainly have been possible to implement a plastic credit card sized passport, which could have been called, say, a European Passport, simply for travel in Europe, that would have been entirely voluntary, would have had one function and would not have had a surveillance aspect. Labour CHOSE not to do this, because, whatever knob ends like Kirby think, the card was not what it was all about. The card was an excuse to set up the National Identity Register and use it as a master index to all state and financial records. This had fuck all to do with proving identity and it is typically dishonest for Labour Party stooges like Kirby to dissemble on that point.
Actually, I’d have signed up for one of those.
The Coalition has announced that anyone who purchased a National Identity Card will be entitled to a free Citizen Card which according to the blurb “CitizenCards are recognised as valid ID by the new Government, the police and trading standards. UK retailers, airlines, banks and many other organisations will continue to need to identify their customers”. So in other words, will do what an ID Card does without the intrusive database and are entirely voluntary. Of course that offer won’t shut up Labourite shills like Kirby. If Kirby wants to travel abroad then he can use a passport like any normal person.
I don’t think people like John Kirby should get a replacement at all. If he couldn’t see the massive writing on the wall then it’s his own fault. The man is a fool.
Most people looked at the ID card situation and could see this happening for a good year or so.
Most shops have set the age to ask for “ID” (really proof-of-age) as high as 25 rather than 21.
Indeed so. When I was 25, no one asked to see my ID if I bought alcoholic products and funnily enough, the world didn’t implode.
I don’t think people like John Kirby should get a replacement at all
I don’t see any problem with giving him a CitizenCard. Anyway that is the published policy of the Coalition and I agree with it. I see no purpose in pursuing a vindictive policy against the people who bought into Labour’s scheme. It is enough for me that we won and that the scheme is going. There’s enough other bad law to campaign against without wasting one’s time rowing about this. It’s bad politics and simply gives Labour a propaganda tool to use against the Coalition.
Most shops have set the age to ask for “ID” (really proof-of-age) as high as 25 rather than 21
Because a large number of morons get on their high horse every time a teenager has a bit too much to drink. Let’s remember. One of the reasons Labour was able to get away with pushing its anti-freedom agenda is because a large proportion of the population are interfering freedom hating scum that would sooner push other people around than live their own lives.
I heard a woman on BBC radio spouting very similar garbage about her being one of the first to get an ID card and how great it was. I just assumed she was some BBC stooge, someone put up by labour or more likely an employee of one of the companies involved in ID card implementation. Surely even in todays Britain people aren’t actually that stupid. Oh gosh what am I saying? Of course they are that stupid.
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That was meant to be abolished since it is not that effective as a national identity card. The worst thing is- there would be no reimbursement for those who applied for it. What a waste!