THE DIARY OF A GEEK IN OXFORDSHIRE


Solving the World's problems with common sense and a flamethrower.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

ID Cards: Are They Taxing, Or Lying?


The last 24 hours has seen reason for The Wrath of Dungeekin over two of my personal bugbears - ID Cards and the misuse of language in order to mislead. Sometimes both together.

We now have written proof, if proof were needed, as to the true hypocrisy behind ID Cards.

Leaving aside all the dishonest 'reasons' for needing them - we don't need them, we managed perfectly well during The Troubles without them and haven't needed them since WWII - the bottom line is that if you read the Home Office spiel, they're a tax. They're an Identity Tax.

The quote from the Home Office website* finally makes this clear.

It will be compulsory to own an ID card - but not compulsory to carry one. Which clearly makes no sense whatsoever, unless the object is to create a revenue stream. You will be paying your Identity Tax for the Government to put your details onto a database. No doubt there will be additional costs payable should you do something they don't like - such as move house, grow a beard or get older.

Of course, the really scary point is that Big Brother is probably just going to change the law as time progresses. Initially it will be compulsory for people to pay their Identity Tax; then, once everyone's got one, it will become compulsory to carry it. Your papers, Citizen?

Which means that their words are dishonest.

Hmm. So they're lying or they're taxing. Wonder which it is?**

*Thanks to Danacea and sconsult for the link
**Both. Did you even need to ask?

2 comments:

sconsult said...

How I came to find that link is also of interest. Tweeples_Mark was not sure how ID cards would affect him as an ex-pat, so I did a quick search and found the Home Office link and tweeted the information back. I saw the retweet by Danacea and from the Dungeekin response knew a blog post was in the offing.

So why is any of that important? Firstly, I was only prompted to go looking for a link as a result of an interaction on Twitter. Secondly, I was not already aware that those instructions existed. This is a massive failure by the Government and traditional media. For a topic of such national and historic importance to have received so little meaningful coverage is a disgrace, but hardly a surprise.

Anonymous said...

im placing my personal details under license and defining the terms of that license. I said it before and will say it again. We should copyright our identities and unique creations. We should be charging licensing fees to anyone that wants to store and use it !

see http://www.loudmouthman.com/agreement