Categories
Papers, please – politicalbetting.com
Papers, please – politicalbetting.com
The case of Willcock v Muckle should be much better known than it is. In 1950 Mr Willcock, stopped by a policeman for speeding, was asked for his ID card. He refused. The case went to the Court of Appeal where the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Goddard, known for his ultra-conservative views, thundered against the idea that the police should be able routinely to demand ID cards for irrelevant reasons. In 1952, 7 years after the end of the war which had necessitated their introduction, they were finally abolished.
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
I do not understand why the government seems to be so keen to introduce this Vaccine Passport/I.D. card scheme before it has been shown to be essential. I understand that under some circumstances it might be necessary, but it is too early to say that yet as the vaccination programme still has a long way to go.
I’m not sure it’s a mercy for cyclefree to have unfettered access to porn. It should be banned, not just licensed, it can be as addictive and damaging to people’s well being as drugs and alcohol. It’s a sin in so many ways.
And just for the avoidance of doubt, I have no use/liking for porn, tobacco or drugs, but I do get through maybe half a bottle of wine a week.
The "Useful Idiots" on here told me I was crazed or mad and that the Blessed Boris was a liberal chap, a champion of the common man no less....
We have erected barriers between us and our nearest neighbours. It is now a crime to leave the country (£5,000 fine IIRC) and soon we will all have "papers". We appear to have a xenophobic Home Secretary and flag waving is required to show your patriotism. I wonder when hanging will be reintroduced?
We are not Singapore-on-Thames as the Brexiteers envisioned. We are Pyongyang-on-Thames.
If so, which way around is it for this issue?
"We can have 100% full sports stadiums + cinemas etc with vaccine passports.
But if we don't have vaccine passports then sports stadiums + cinemas etc will be limited to 25% capacity.
OK everyone, what would you prefer?"
"If you vote against passports, businesses won't be viable with only 25% capacity so many won't be able to reopen. Do you really want to damage business?"
His second argument will be:
"Nobody has to go to football or cinema so nobody has to get a vaccine passport. But surely it's better we allow these businesses to reopen profitably and give people the chance to go if they want"
I suspect Starmer probably then supports Government as he won't want to look as if he's damaging business. IDS/Baker etc will hold out but get outvoted.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/05/horsing-around-australian-man-creates-paper-friend-out-of-lunch-bags-in-hotel-quarantine
I’ve emailed my MP about this nonsense and I’d encourage anyone opposed to this to do the same.
Unfortunately I don’t think we can expect much help from Labour. Psychologically they are wedded to the cautious side of the COVID debate.
Let’s be honest, when cases and sadly deaths start to rise, it’ll be predominantly Labour supporters suffering. Labour’s default mode is to cry about injustice and discrimination. That’s what they’ll do here and I wouldn’t be surprised if this is driving the government’s thinking on this.
On the question of ‘how long is temporary’, the obvious example is the emergency temporary measure of income tax, introduced in 1799.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/05/twice-weekly-lateral-flow-covid-tests-england-lockdown-boris-johnson
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/03/time-discussion-covid-certification/
I think it’s fair to say that the contents of 7,500 comments underneath suggest that the Sunday Telegraph readership is somewhat against the idea.
https://twitter.com/_whitneywebb/status/1378334506093051904
A compulsory government mandated scheme isn't appropriate or acceptable.
Both this government’s ingrained arrogance and the tendency of the British state to turn nasty and authoritarian were obviously present before the pandemic. But Covid has proved to be the perfect pretext for both to balloon.
The UK’s Covid experience has also amounted to a huge trial of people’s willingness to accept mind-boggling extensions of the state’s reach, in which predictions of mass “fatigue” have failed to materialise.
What is already happening actually suggests something even worse: as we saw in the era of the “war on terror”, even as the current panic dies down, powers that were initially presented as temporary look set to endure. As the civil rights pressure group Liberty puts it, the restrictions on protest in the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill amount to a brazen quest to “use this public health crisis as cover to make emergency measures permanent”.
The debate about democracy, the state and civil liberties remains weakened by the decline of the Liberal Democrats, the smallness of the Green party – and, in an age when “liberal” often seems to have become an insult, a broader sense that that element of progressive politics has been mislaid. It needs to return, so we can at last tackle hugely increased state power, and the people at the top who clearly think they can get away with just about anything. The fusion of the two threatens an immediate future that could be grim: ice-creams, picnics and “normality” amid sirens, searches and a model of government that’s devoid of any real checks and restraints.
Whatever we endured the past year for, it was surely not that.
Opportunity for Starmer. Unless he wishes to cement a reputation as a nodding dog.
The problem is that Starmer and many of his party love the idea of ID cards, and see this as the perfect opportunity to introduce them.
But we have vaccines, not only do we have them but they're very, very effective ones.
So zero Covid restrictions are not only massively illiberal but they're not necessary either.
I can understand why a government would develop these ideas in parallel to others in case vaccines didn't work out. But they did.
Illiberal and unnecessary is not a good combination.
Along with vaxports and the curtailing of judicial review, one can add the banning of “annoying” protests, the explosion in statutory instruments,, and of course the attempt to prorogue Parliament.
I realised with with the Shamima Begum case as well that I’m now effectively a second class citizen. As a dual citizen, I can have my British nationality removed from me by the Home Secretary. I appreciate this seems to have been the case since 2012, but never have we had a Home Sec I’d trust less with that power.
What a shower.
I assume there is a system ready and waiting to be rolled out because given the rate vaccines are being done, if this requires months of work, surely the purpose will have long gone?
While I haven't had much truck with the conspiraloons and lockdown sceptics over the last year, when a so-called liberal freedom loving PM rushes out proposals like this, I can't help but wonder if they had the smidgeon of a point.
The point of Willcock-v-Muckle was that a policeman should not ask for proof of ID without good reason. All citizens can be asked to establish their iD if the police have reasonable cause to believe that you have committed an offence. They can detain you for an initial 24 hours for that purpose and can seek extensions if they can justify that.
What I would be opposed to would be the right of a police officer to demand to see my vaccination certificate. But if it is a condition of getting into a pub or restaurant or football stadium or airplane then I see it as a protection for me that my fellow participants have that same protection; that the staff have that protection and that this is a place where I can relax.
I am really not impressed with this argument that this is some sort of restriction on my liberty. I can see an argument based on utility once vaccination reaches a certain level in society but still think certificates are probably a good idea for at least the next few years. I also think it is important to ensure that refusniks are inconvenienced and don't get a free ride on the back of the rest of us.
Clubcard schemes are a voluntary exchange of data you can leave at any time.
Vaccination is not 100% protection. Its very good but its not that good. 200 vaccinated people in a club are very safe. But if 20 of them are not vaccinated the risks are proportionately much greater and not just for those 20.
The idea that an id card is an intrusion of civil liberties is so last year.
We (well, England, I feel somewhat insulated from your madness now I live in Scotland) stands on the precipice. We have transited very quickly from a "hostile environment" toward British citizens with the wrong colour skin through the removal of citizenship to be made stateless to flag twattery where the mob is being whipped up to hate anyone who doesn't have the mandated number of flags on their social media feed.
Yes I have to show ID for various things and my phone tracks both my movement and my train of thought. I used to think "so what" if that turned into a formal ID card. That was before the joys of modern technology where too many liberties can be taken with our liberties with the twitch of that psychopath Patel's sneer.
We SHOULD have mandatory testing and ID so that people can restart their lives - what kind of Piers Corbyn are you to resist? Our BRITISH ID will have the required 17 union jacks on it (as written by the Romanian development team subcontracted by Gavin WIlliamson's corner shop's owner who was awarded the £390m contract without tender or experience) and will be required to do patriotic things like drinking and flying to Marbelloh.
Or, how about we say no?
Going forward with Covid, there are groups of people that are going to remain a potential sump of re-infection - and a problem for any kitten-loving cuddly collective who always think the best of their fellow man. They include:
a) anti-government (of any hue) anarchists for whom even wearing a mask is a no-no
b) anti-science anti-vaxxers
c) pro-science but still-not-yet-convinced-the-full-risks-are-known anti-vaxxers
d) very wary religious groups
e) very wary ethnic groups
f) those who demand to freely travel to infection hotspots for their holidays or to meet family
g) those libertarians who demand life without government interference
h) those on the edge of society, perhaps in this country illegally, who skirt around any involvement with the state
i) those who the extensive Covid bureaucracy has somehow missed.
Even with a largely vaccinated population and without new variants creeping round our defences, there is still enough of a pool of people there for a limited third wave. Even a limited third wave is going to require some restrictions on our liberty. But worse, it is going to bring the fear of "oh no, not AGAIN...."
The issue then is "Do vaccine passports work with these groups?" Do they nudge people in these groups towards getting vaccinated to reduce the pool of potential reinfection? The best you'd have to concede is "to a limited degree". A sledgehammer to crack not many nuts.
Arguably, a more effective route to prevent a third wave would be a rigid border control, meshed with an amnesty for those already here in the UK by last Monday - as long as they register with a doctor (and no doubt also get a new national insurance number and acquire no rights to bring family members here). Although I'm not sure any government would take the risk of trying to sell that amnesty to the voters. Especially when there is a widespread buy-in to vaccine passports.
Right?
Meanwhile Rachel Reeves was just on R4. "We're not against them [vaccine passports] but we have many reservations"
It was the "temporary" reintroduction in 1842 that has lasted ever since.
Bansturbators have been going after 'porn' for many decades, and as far as I can see *still* can't argue a convincing, evidence based case - beyond "Ugh".
Back under New Labour at one stage the trainee-moral-dictators had set their sights on written erotica as well as image-based. We ended up with the dog's breakfast which is the "Extreme Pornography Act".
This is not the 1950s or the 1930s, even if some people would like it to be so.
Even at the outside, the most I would give them for a formal scheme would be until the sunset clause in the Corona legislation. And then under huge protest.
I'd be far happier with it linked to my national passport.
https://twitter.com/jm_stout/status/1378952594660409345?s=21
To be clear I am not suggesting that they are mandatory because I do not believe vaccination should be mandatory. I do not believe that they should be used for any other purpose other than gaining access to places you can choose not to go. Live without one if you wish. But don't inflict your breath on the rest of us inside if you haven't been vaccinated.
An icing sugar sprinkling. Reminds me that I need to finish off the Christmas Cake. Fortunately, the Blue Stilton is in the fridge.
Anyone else?
We somehow managed with that without ushering in a surveillance state.
I don't think anyone would have predicted a landslide just after 2017 and yet that happened just two years later.
Things change, things happen. Maybe it will be as simple as many think, BoJo will be elected again and Labour will get another leader. But it seems extraordinary that so many can be so sure. I know how I got burned when I made a prediction for 2019, despite beforehand having a pretty solid track record.
My prediction is, I don't have a clue!
On civil servants, the precise quotation is:
‘ in the case of nutrition and health, just as in the case of education, the gentleman in Whitehall really does know better what is good for people than the people know themselves.’
Douglas Jay, The Socialist Case, 1937
(Ironically Jay was later sacked by Wilson for attempting, very incompetently, to disperse his department’s functions around the UK.)
One thing this pandemic has shown, with truly brutal clarity, is just how weak and ineffective our government and civil service are. At almost every turn they have made the wrong choices for the wrong reasons. Just to take the example of education, they refused to countenance alternatives to pressing ahead with exams even though it was painfully obvious to anyone with a brain that they couldn’t go ahead as long ago as last autumn. They also forced schools to remain open even when nearly a quarter of secondary students were unable to attend, including falsifying figures to justify this. (That figure would incidentally have been higher had schools not been told various COVID restrictions didn’t apply to them.) Most bizarrely of all, they continued to insist OFSTED carry out onsite inspections even under lockdown. Infected inspectors caused the closure of multiple schools because all the staff had to isolate.
This tale of woe is redolent of an organisation that cares for itself and sees everything in terms of its own powers, prestige and security, rather than what would be the best solution. And we see it in, say, the treatment of local authorities by the DCLG, the Windrush scandal, Brexit negotiations...which suggests the entire Civil Service has a problem.
And that on its own is a very good reason to oppose ID cards/vax passports. Because whatever the official reason for their introduction, the current crop of admin staff would undoubtedly find a way to retain and extend them to justify keeping their jobs.
Depressing.
“Willcock v Muckle” sounds very Private Eye, Have they used it?
@DavidL, the passports may not in themselves be a restriction of liberty. Their abuse by certain Police Officers and other jobsworths, e.g. in local councils, will be the cause of a potential restriction of liberty. Which brings us back to Willcock v Muckle.
Go figure. The dealers would if they could.
This one may well be a teething trouble, since the French sellers may encourage Mons. Macaron to get down off his high donkey and do something.
The idea that he is a liberal has been comprehensively debunked.
As far as I know (and I'd really like someone to describe an exception) they all end up unpleasantly authoritarian, led by a sleazy clique, and eventually running out of money.
It's a potent brew to win power, but it fails as a way to run a country.
I suspect answers will be very different to a piece of paper stuck in your regular passport that you flash at the club bouncer, as opposed to an app that you have to log in and out of every venue you visit.
All under penalty of large fines for non compliance?
Or is it just that we should have vaxports for some mass gatherings but not others?
I believe snow at Easter is more likely, on average, than snow at Christmas in the UK
You have to work somewhat harder to catch HIV in a nightclub than Covid.
What is this dangerous environment you refer to, and in what way do “millions” of children represent a lethal threat?
OK, the vaccine passport is not currently proposed to be used to access supermarkets and trains but instead "just" cinemas, pubs and stadia, but am I really going to trust that a government who thinks it sufficiently important for the latter won't ultimately decide it's needed for the former too?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/jun/30/ukcrime.immigrationandpublicservices1
However, in one way it differs from Cyclefree’s thread header - it says Howard was privately opposed to ID cards.
Think of it another way. If your local somehow opts out of such restrictions would you still go? I don't think I would. As we saw with earlier lockdowns there is a natural business incentive to show that your establishment is safe.
Thanks for the header, @Cyclefree .
Distinctly chilly though.
Indeed I would prefer to go to the sort of pub that didn’t bother with such pettifogging crap.
If you accept a permanent national security surveillance system that monitors everyone's movements, controls them at the whim of civil servants and gives police and all manner of other bureaucrats the right to ask to see your credentials whenever they feel like it - on the basis that there is, somehow, a desperate need to stamp on a disease that poses a theoretical risk to a small number of people - then you can justify anything else. We have an obesity crisis - ban alcohol, and any food or drink that contains above a certain percentage of fat and sugar. Indeed, the fat are overloading Our Beloved NHS - lock them up in special facilities, make them work out and starve them until they are thin. Too many people are dying on the roads - raise the minimum age for a driving licence to 30, and hold a lottery to decide which half of the population is to have its cars confiscated to make the roads less busy. My neighbours children annoy me with their noise - no matter, the new nuisance laws mean I can contact the local council and have them taken into care. What's that? You don't want that nuclear waste dump built half-a-mile down the road? It's for the good of the community - quit complaining or we'll have you dragged off to prison for ten years.
You can justify almost anything on the basis of upholding "security" and "safety" - especially in the climate of fear that presently exists. Yet the case for widespread use of vaccine passports ID cards fails even on its own alleged terms. We can see the direction of travel of the vaccination project: the Government's target is to offer every adult the jab by the end of July and, based on the experience with the medically vulnerable and over 50s, there is no reason to suppose that take-up won't be somewhere above 90%. There will, at that stage, be so few vulnerable people left that chains of transmission will inevitably break down and large outbreaks will become impossible, which in turn removes any possible argument for intrusive ongoing countermeasures. The emergency will be over. After that Covid will keep on killing small numbers of people, but we must live with that the same way as we live with flu deaths, road traffic deaths and deaths from falling down the stairs.
After that, if there's still a substantial fraction of the population that is desperate to walk around everywhere in masks, be pestered and directed by Covid marshals and be told to present its papers for inspection twenty times a day, then we could always consider getting them all to move to one part of the country and fencing it off for a few decades. They'll eventually die off - most of them would be old to begin with, and regardless terror of contagion will prevent them from having sex - and then we can repopulate the ceded territory.
There is a lot of hysteria on here this morning, there really is. We live in a country where the government conspired to get someone locked up and nearly half the people are still going to vote for it, including you AIUI. And you claim to worry about the civil liberties of this?
To cover off one potential answer in advance, young children aren't at school getting tested, nor will any be during summer holidays.
It is deeply concerning to think that an 18 year old school cleaner on their first job knows more about basic child protection than the head of OFSTED, but that is the situation we’re in. That’s completely unacceptable and unsustainable.
And I’ve no doubt it could be replicated in many sectors (I’m sure @Foxy will have views on Health).
Equally, of course, you can get a similar groupthink in the sectors concerned which needs to be challenged (that is certainly an issue in Education) but that would be better than the groupthink afflicting our current Whitehall overseers.
I don’t suppose anyone will - certainly not me, as they make me throw up - but that is the government’s policy.
On your substantive point though, I agree. Why vaccine passports for restaurants and not for schools?
The headline polling does not tell the full picture here. It is a bit like private schools and charitable status, most people may think private schools should not have charitable status but there are virtually zero votes to be shifted from that group, whereas for the much smaller group who favour the status quo it is a key issue.
Why should hotel bar staff get some sort of special protection? Protection that they don’t get when serving at breakfast? And if it’s about the staff why is it restricted to bars? Why not shops etc?
I should also point out that the burdens you are placing on businesses is incredible. Staff manning every entrance. Not to mention the fact that these will need to be additional staff trained in dealing with recaltitrant customers.
As I have repeatedly said the public are very risk averse and on this poll opposition is a minority view