I find it very difficult to care about the ID card debate. They work well in other countries, some people have a instinctive dislike of them (but can't elaborate a rational reason why), but I don't really see a need for them except for some welcome government efficiency gains.
If Labour really think that this will improve things for people in Britain then credit for taking it on I guess - and I hope the start of a trend. If not, bit confused as to why they are exposing themselves to such a large political risk.
I do find some of the hysteria over ID cards rather strange given how much data the government already holds .
We happily have driving licences , passports etc . Once again No 10 comms have been useless .
You get out there , frame the debate before others do . Starmer should have had an evening news conference, laid out the plans and stressed it isn’t just about the boats .
If Labour wanted to introduce this, it should have said so in its manifesto. It’s a policy for which it should have obtained a democratic mandate, particularly because it has been proposed and scrapped before.
Do you guys want to “stop the boats” or what? I would prefer we didn’t have compulsory ID cards but ultimately we need to do something different and this is one thing to try
No it isn't.
Anyone hiring anyone illegally, cash in hand, already is breaking the existing laws.
Anyone hiring anyone legally, is already taking proof of right to work in the UK.
Stopping the boats by introducing ID cards is about as meaningful as wearing a balaclava to prevent pregnancy.
I mean that’s just factually incorrect - this would provide a validated, quick and cheap way to check
There are already ways to check. Its the law already.
Everything I said is dactually correct. Introducing a new way to check doesn’t do a damned thing to catch those who deliberately aren't checking and are paying cash in hand.
Those who are hiring legally are already checking.
Documents can be forged. This, in theory, would be much harder to fake
Any evidence that people crossing are getting hired via forged documentation, rather than via businesses that pay cash in hand and don't bother to check?
Digital ID can be forged too, people can share a burner phone or impersonate other people's IDs.
Nothing to do with the people crossing specifically but rather to make it a much more hostile environment to working illegally
So no evidence then?
Its already a hostile environment to working illegally. Anyone hiring anyone illegally can already be imprisoned.
Those who do so, are breaking existing laws.
Yeah, but they are not being imprisoned.
Because existing laws aren't being enforced and its easy to get away with it with cash in hand when it suits both parties interests to get away with it.
Not because of ID cards or the lack thereof.
We can do both
But how does it help?
We already have proof of right to work requirements. But cash in hand is very easy to do and very profitable given National Insurance and other taxes aren't payable when you employ someone cash in hand, nor does minimum wage or other laws apply.
Digital ID does nothing to address any of that. Nothing at all.
It literally does, it makes it easier to check somebody’s right to work
It literally does nothing to address any of what I wrote. Try reading what I wrote this time.
We already have proof of right to work requirements. But cash in hand is very easy to do and very profitable given National Insurance and other taxes aren't payable when you employ someone cash in hand, nor does minimum wage or other laws apply.
Making it easier to check somebody's right to work does nothing to address how profitable dodging all taxes and minimum wage laws by hiring illegal workers cash in hand is.
I’m reading what you’re saying, I am just ignoring most of it. You’re the one not reading what I am saying.
I know we have proof of right to work. This makes it easier. That is undeniable. “Do you have a Brit Card?” “No.” “That’s a shame.”
I didn’t say it would solve the other issue.
The other issue is the one you claimed it would solve though.
Do you guys want to “stop the boats” or what? I would prefer we didn’t have compulsory ID cards but ultimately we need to do something different and this is one thing to try
That's a shame.
Nobody is crossing because its hard to check for ID, as is already legally necessary.
Like I said, it’s about making the environment more hostile to illegal working. It’s a nuance you’ve never been capable of.
It's no more hostile, we already are fully hostile to it.
Anyone hiring anyone legally is already checking ID. Every legitimate employer does it.
Crooks don't. This will do nothing to stop people from being crooks.
I didn’t say that it would stop people from being crooks. You’re arguing with yourself.
That isn't always the issue. A good friend of mine an Italian who had a coffee bar restaurant was raided one Saturday night and out of about six staff one was found to have false papers. My friend was fined £15,000 and was forced to close shortly after. The employee was a Venezualan and he was only emplyed as a washer-upper on Saturday night. It was an outrage,
He had not knowingly done anything wrong. How was he supposed to know that the permit was false? I leant him half of it but there was no way out. There was no appeal and if he didn't pay it in a given amount of time it was increased to £25,000
Interesting story. That does seem quite harsh on your friend if there isnt some easy way to check whether a permit is legitimate.
My objection to ID cards is not what the government that introduces them can do, per se (Labour are for the most part incompetent rather than malign, though they do have their moments).
Do you want to gift an ID database to every future government that takes power though? Some of them, particularly the way the world is going, may have much worse intentions.
What’s on this database that the government doesn’t already know? Honestly?
Why make it easier for them and malign actors by collating it in one place?
Because it makes no difference
It absolutely does. Why wouldn’t it? Hacking one definitive source of data on identity is much easier than trying to find it through multiple sources.
The government already has such databases. It’s already in one place. The only difference is an API
No, but on the current foolhardy plans, they could potentially give Peter Thiel, an anti-democratic billionaire and one of the most dangerous people in the world, a huge amount of information on UK citizens
It'sJust madness, really.
I refuse to believe the likes of MI5 and GCHQ do not have such databases already. Almost everyone already gives the likes of Meta and Google more data than this almost every single day. It’s going to make no difference what’s so ever.
We’re tracked on a continuous basis , we have apps on our phones , passports, driving licences , etc and as soon as ID cards are mentioned it seems to set people off .
Apps I can choose whether to install, and delete if I don't want them.
ID cards compulsory by law I can't opt out from.
Apples and radioactive oranges.
You’re a well known libertarian, of course you’re against these. Most people unfortunately value security over liberty
To quote Mr Franklin:
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
I do find some of the hysteria over ID cards rather strange given how much data the government already holds .
We happily have driving licences , passports etc . Once again No 10 comms have been useless .
You get out there , frame the debate before others do . Starmer should have had an evening news conference, laid out the plans and stressed it isn’t just about the boats .
If Labour wanted to introduce this, it should have said so in its manifesto. It’s a policy for which it should have obtained a democratic mandate, particularly because it has been proposed and scrapped before.
Do you guys want to “stop the boats” or what? I would prefer we didn’t have compulsory ID cards but ultimately we need to do something different and this is one thing to try
No it isn't.
Anyone hiring anyone illegally, cash in hand, already is breaking the existing laws.
Anyone hiring anyone legally, is already taking proof of right to work in the UK.
Stopping the boats by introducing ID cards is about as meaningful as wearing a balaclava to prevent pregnancy.
I mean that’s just factually incorrect - this would provide a validated, quick and cheap way to check
There are already ways to check. Its the law already.
Everything I said is dactually correct. Introducing a new way to check doesn’t do a damned thing to catch those who deliberately aren't checking and are paying cash in hand.
Those who are hiring legally are already checking.
Documents can be forged. This, in theory, would be much harder to fake
Any evidence that people crossing are getting hired via forged documentation, rather than via businesses that pay cash in hand and don't bother to check?
Digital ID can be forged too, people can share a burner phone or impersonate other people's IDs.
Nothing to do with the people crossing specifically but rather to make it a much more hostile environment to working illegally
So no evidence then?
Its already a hostile environment to working illegally. Anyone hiring anyone illegally can already be imprisoned.
Those who do so, are breaking existing laws.
Yeah, but they are not being imprisoned.
Because existing laws aren't being enforced and its easy to get away with it with cash in hand when it suits both parties interests to get away with it.
Not because of ID cards or the lack thereof.
We can do both
But how does it help?
We already have proof of right to work requirements. But cash in hand is very easy to do and very profitable given National Insurance and other taxes aren't payable when you employ someone cash in hand, nor does minimum wage or other laws apply.
Digital ID does nothing to address any of that. Nothing at all.
It literally does, it makes it easier to check somebody’s right to work
It literally does nothing to address any of what I wrote. Try reading what I wrote this time.
We already have proof of right to work requirements. But cash in hand is very easy to do and very profitable given National Insurance and other taxes aren't payable when you employ someone cash in hand, nor does minimum wage or other laws apply.
Making it easier to check somebody's right to work does nothing to address how profitable dodging all taxes and minimum wage laws by hiring illegal workers cash in hand is.
I’m reading what you’re saying, I am just ignoring most of it. You’re the one not reading what I am saying.
I know we have proof of right to work. This makes it easier. That is undeniable. “Do you have a Brit Card?” “No.” “That’s a shame.”
I didn’t say it would solve the other issue.
The other issue is the one you claimed it would solve though.
Do you guys want to “stop the boats” or what? I would prefer we didn’t have compulsory ID cards but ultimately we need to do something different and this is one thing to try
That's a shame.
Nobody is crossing because its hard to check for ID, as is already legally necessary.
Like I said, it’s about making the environment more hostile to illegal working. It’s a nuance you’ve never been capable of.
It's no more hostile, we already are fully hostile to it.
Anyone hiring anyone legally is already checking ID. Every legitimate employer does it.
Crooks don't. This will do nothing to stop people from being crooks.
I didn’t say that it would stop people from being crooks. You’re arguing with yourself.
That isn't always the issue. A good friend of mine an Italian who had a coffee bar restaurant was raided one Saturday night and out of about six staff one was found to have false papers. My friend was fined £15,000 and was forced to close shortly after. The employee was a Venezualan and he was only emplyed as a washer-upper on Saturday night. It was an outrage,
He had not knowingly done anything wrong. How was he supposed to know that the permit was false? I leant him half of it but there was no way out. There was no appeal and if he didn't pay it in a given amount of time it was increased to £25,000
Interesting story. That does seem quite harsh on your friend if there isnt some easy way to check whether a permit is legitimate.
It was during Mrs May's time. It was extremely harsh and apart from him there were five other people left without a job. It was particularly sad because my friend was an academic and had decided to try his hand at catering and had turned his place into a great meeting spot. He was a really good guy and his treatment at the hands of the state was pretty awful
My objection to ID cards is not what the government that introduces them can do, per se (Labour are for the most part incompetent rather than malign, though they do have their moments).
Do you want to gift an ID database to every future government that takes power though? Some of them, particularly the way the world is going, may have much worse intentions.
What’s on this database that the government doesn’t already know? Honestly?
Why make it easier for them and malign actors by collating it in one place?
Because it makes no difference
It absolutely does. Why wouldn’t it? Hacking one definitive source of data on identity is much easier than trying to find it through multiple sources.
The government already has such databases. It’s already in one place. The only difference is an API
No, but on the current foolhardy plans, they could potentially give Peter Thiel, an anti-democratic billionaire and one of the most dangerous people in the world, a huge amount of information on UK citizens
It'sJust madness, really.
I refuse to believe the likes of MI5 and GCHQ do not have such databases already. Almost everyone already gives the likes of Meta and Google more data than this almost every single day. It’s going to make no difference what’s so ever.
We’re tracked on a continuous basis , we have apps on our phones , passports, driving licences , etc and as soon as ID cards are mentioned it seems to set people off .
Not everyone has a smart phone or a driving licence. And my passport and driving licence remain at home. Can't remember the last time I used them. So no I am not tracked on a continuous basis by the state.
I used to be absolutely against ID cards until I move to Switzerland. Having the Carte des Etrangers/Ausslander Auschweiz (or something) was brilliant. Because you could only get it if you were an authenticated real person who had the right to live there it was all you needed for many things. It was better than a passport as it cut so many layers of crap when you were opening a bank account, changing your driving licence, proving who you were at the tax office etc it made life amazingly simple.
I never got stopped but had a doc that they trusted if the police and asked for my papers. I look like a typical Scandinavian so was less likely to but I was also part of a wide international group of friends and so, when the horribly racist Geneva police stopped my black or Asian (or frankly darker European friends) their ID card generally stopped it going to the point of them being arrested for looking a bit dark.
You couldn’t get a job without it, you couldn’t do anything technical without it and the only people who would have a problem with it being a requirement would be those whose interests were allied with allowing people who shouldn’t be in the country/ working to scoot around the law.
If you were an employer who employed someone without one then you got your deserts, you were a problem so deserved the punishment.
I can’t think of a reason why, if you are legally allowed to be in a country, working, using the resources, why you shouldn’t have a simple way of proving to anyone that you are ok.
"Because you could only get it if you were an authenticated real person who had the right to live there it was all you needed for many things."
That's potentially a flaw since a faker needs fake one document and the doors are blown wide open?
My objection to ID cards is not what the government that introduces them can do, per se (Labour are for the most part incompetent rather than malign, though they do have their moments).
Do you want to gift an ID database to every future government that takes power though? Some of them, particularly the way the world is going, may have much worse intentions.
What’s on this database that the government doesn’t already know? Honestly?
Why make it easier for them and malign actors by collating it in one place?
Because it makes no difference
It absolutely does. Why wouldn’t it? Hacking one definitive source of data on identity is much easier than trying to find it through multiple sources.
The government already has such databases. It’s already in one place. The only difference is an API
No, but on the current foolhardy plans, they could potentially give Peter Thiel, an anti-democratic billionaire and one of the most dangerous people in the world, a huge amount of information on UK citizens
It'sJust madness, really.
I refuse to believe the likes of MI5 and GCHQ do not have such databases already. Almost everyone already gives the likes of Meta and Google more data than this almost every single day. It’s going to make no difference what’s so ever.
We’re tracked on a continuous basis , we have apps on our phones , passports, driving licences , etc and as soon as ID cards are mentioned it seems to set people off .
Not everyone has a smart phone or a driving licence. And my passport and driving licence remain at home. Can't remember the last time I used them. So no I am not tracked on a continuous basis by the state.
I used to be absolutely against ID cards until I move to Switzerland. Having the Carte des Etrangers/Ausslander Auschweiz (or something) was brilliant. Because you could only get it if you were an authenticated real person who had the right to live there it was all you needed for many things. It was better than a passport as it cut so many layers of crap when you were opening a bank account, changing your driving licence, proving who you were at the tax office etc it made life amazingly simple.
I never got stopped but had a doc that they trusted if the police and asked for my papers. I look like a typical Scandinavian so was less likely to but I was also part of a wide international group of friends and so, when the horribly racist Geneva police stopped my black or Asian (or frankly darker European friends) their ID card generally stopped it going to the point of them being arrested for looking a bit dark.
You couldn’t get a job without it, you couldn’t do anything technical without it and the only people who would have a problem with it being a requirement would be those whose interests were allied with allowing people who shouldn’t be in the country/ working to scoot around the law.
If you were an employer who employed someone without one then you got your deserts, you were a problem so deserved the punishment.
I can’t think of a reason why, if you are legally allowed to be in a country, working, using the resources, why you shouldn’t have a simple way of proving to anyone that you are ok.
Because I didn't ask to be born here, and shouldn't have to prove it to anyone. Natural law, as it were.
Perhaps this is excessively nativist, but there we are.
But you do have to prove it, if you want a new phone line, bank account, rent a house, buy a house, you have to prove it. It’s not about whether you are native, it’s about whether you are allowed the benefits of living in a country that you need to protect against those who maybe weren’t born here who want to skim off your hard earned etc.
It’s fine if you and I believe that everyone is a good egg and plays by the rules but they don’t.
Meanwhile, I can report from within the Labour Party that Burnham's naked ambition is going down like a lead balloon. Even his fans, who are significant but fewer in number than he thinks, are critical of his timing. There's a pretty unanimous view that, having been in power only just over a year, Starmer and his team should be given longer. If there is to be a challenge, by Burnham or anybody else, most agree that the earliest this should happen is after the May 2026 elections.
It doesn't seem unreasonable to me, or other members, that Starmer should be allowed two years to demonstrate that he needs to be replaced, or not, as the case may be,
I find it very difficult to care about the ID card debate. They work well in other countries, some people have a instinctive dislike of them (but can't elaborate a rational reason why), but I don't really see a need for them except for some welcome government efficiency gains.
If Labour really think that this will improve things for people in Britain then credit for taking it on I guess - and I hope the start of a trend. If not, bit confused as to why they are exposing themselves to such a large political risk.
It’s one of the Lib Dem positions - objection to ID cards on principle - that I can sort of understand but don’t agree with.
Why not start with a MVP that keeps the civil liberties issues in check. A simple proof of ID tied to, say, NI number and passport or visa status.
Then add functionality that is purely optional. Driving licence, NHS patient data, tax records, DBS. And so on. Most people will signup if it makes life easier.
Oh, wait, it's BBC QT and guess who they have on tonight. Amazingly not Farage but Tice.
Maybe they think that equates to not having Farage on and so doesn't count as to the endless support for Reform.
Why would Reform not be on? They have a panel of politicians and like it or not, Reform got the third-most amount of votes at the last election and are topping the opinion polls.
20 years ago when I regularly watched QT the Lib Dems who were polling considerably less than Reform are polling were on every single week too.
My objection to ID cards is not what the government that introduces them can do, per se (Labour are for the most part incompetent rather than malign, though they do have their moments).
Do you want to gift an ID database to every future government that takes power though? Some of them, particularly the way the world is going, may have much worse intentions.
What’s on this database that the government doesn’t already know? Honestly?
Why make it easier for them and malign actors by collating it in one place?
Because it makes no difference
It absolutely does. Why wouldn’t it? Hacking one definitive source of data on identity is much easier than trying to find it through multiple sources.
The government already has such databases. It’s already in one place. The only difference is an API
No, but on the current foolhardy plans, they could potentially give Peter Thiel, an anti-democratic billionaire and one of the most dangerous people in the world, a huge amount of information on UK citizens
It'sJust madness, really.
I refuse to believe the likes of MI5 and GCHQ do not have such databases already. Almost everyone already gives the likes of Meta and Google more data than this almost every single day. It’s going to make no difference what’s so ever.
We’re tracked on a continuous basis , we have apps on our phones , passports, driving licences , etc and as soon as ID cards are mentioned it seems to set people off .
Not everyone has a smart phone or a driving licence. And my passport and driving licence remain at home. Can't remember the last time I used them. So no I am not tracked on a continuous basis by the state.
I used to be absolutely against ID cards until I move to Switzerland. Having the Carte des Etrangers/Ausslander Auschweiz (or something) was brilliant. Because you could only get it if you were an authenticated real person who had the right to live there it was all you needed for many things. It was better than a passport as it cut so many layers of crap when you were opening a bank account, changing your driving licence, proving who you were at the tax office etc it made life amazingly simple.
I never got stopped but had a doc that they trusted if the police and asked for my papers. I look like a typical Scandinavian so was less likely to but I was also part of a wide international group of friends and so, when the horribly racist Geneva police stopped my black or Asian (or frankly darker European friends) their ID card generally stopped it going to the point of them being arrested for looking a bit dark.
You couldn’t get a job without it, you couldn’t do anything technical without it and the only people who would have a problem with it being a requirement would be those whose interests were allied with allowing people who shouldn’t be in the country/ working to scoot around the law.
If you were an employer who employed someone without one then you got your deserts, you were a problem so deserved the punishment.
I can’t think of a reason why, if you are legally allowed to be in a country, working, using the resources, why you shouldn’t have a simple way of proving to anyone that you are ok.
"Because you could only get it if you were an authenticated real person who had the right to live there it was all you needed for many things."
That's potentially a flaw since a faker needs fake one document and the doors are blown wide open?
No, it was based on the fact that your company etc provided a load of info before applying for your right to work etc. you had to have provided a load of proof, passport, bank statements, tax records from previous home, to get to the point of getting your id.
I do find some of the hysteria over ID cards rather strange given how much data the government already holds .
We happily have driving licences , passports etc . Once again No 10 comms have been useless .
You get out there , frame the debate before others do . Starmer should have had an evening news conference, laid out the plans and stressed it isn’t just about the boats .
If Labour wanted to introduce this, it should have said so in its manifesto. It’s a policy for which it should have obtained a democratic mandate, particularly because it has been proposed and scrapped before.
Do you guys want to “stop the boats” or what? I would prefer we didn’t have compulsory ID cards but ultimately we need to do something different and this is one thing to try
No it isn't.
Anyone hiring anyone illegally, cash in hand, already is breaking the existing laws.
Anyone hiring anyone legally, is already taking proof of right to work in the UK.
Stopping the boats by introducing ID cards is about as meaningful as wearing a balaclava to prevent pregnancy.
I mean that’s just factually incorrect - this would provide a validated, quick and cheap way to check
There are already ways to check. Its the law already.
Everything I said is dactually correct. Introducing a new way to check doesn’t do a damned thing to catch those who deliberately aren't checking and are paying cash in hand.
Those who are hiring legally are already checking.
Documents can be forged. This, in theory, would be much harder to fake
Any evidence that people crossing are getting hired via forged documentation, rather than via businesses that pay cash in hand and don't bother to check?
Digital ID can be forged too, people can share a burner phone or impersonate other people's IDs.
Nothing to do with the people crossing specifically but rather to make it a much more hostile environment to working illegally
So no evidence then?
Its already a hostile environment to working illegally. Anyone hiring anyone illegally can already be imprisoned.
Those who do so, are breaking existing laws.
Yeah, but they are not being imprisoned.
Because existing laws aren't being enforced and its easy to get away with it with cash in hand when it suits both parties interests to get away with it.
Not because of ID cards or the lack thereof.
We can do both
But how does it help?
We already have proof of right to work requirements. But cash in hand is very easy to do and very profitable given National Insurance and other taxes aren't payable when you employ someone cash in hand, nor does minimum wage or other laws apply.
Digital ID does nothing to address any of that. Nothing at all.
It literally does, it makes it easier to check somebody’s right to work
It literally does nothing to address any of what I wrote. Try reading what I wrote this time.
We already have proof of right to work requirements. But cash in hand is very easy to do and very profitable given National Insurance and other taxes aren't payable when you employ someone cash in hand, nor does minimum wage or other laws apply.
Making it easier to check somebody's right to work does nothing to address how profitable dodging all taxes and minimum wage laws by hiring illegal workers cash in hand is.
I’m reading what you’re saying, I am just ignoring most of it. You’re the one not reading what I am saying.
I know we have proof of right to work. This makes it easier. That is undeniable. “Do you have a Brit Card?” “No.” “That’s a shame.”
I didn’t say it would solve the other issue.
The other issue is the one you claimed it would solve though.
Do you guys want to “stop the boats” or what? I would prefer we didn’t have compulsory ID cards but ultimately we need to do something different and this is one thing to try
That's a shame.
Nobody is crossing because its hard to check for ID, as is already legally necessary.
Difficulty in checking ID isn't the issue. The other one is the issue and this does nothing to address it.
Allows easy checking if right to work. It works for companies that want to check.
The issue is the large number of companies that want to employ illegal labour.
Not ID cards
Part of the problem is that (as is often the case) the system is inflexible. Up until three years ago (when I obtained, relatively painlessly, a passport) I wouldn't have passed the checklist the government gives - I've just tried it tonight (I was born in Australia to two British parents, came into the UK on my mother passport aged 6 month. I have no right to Australian citizenship):
1. Is the worker a British citizen. Yes.
3. Does the worker have a current or expired passport showing that they are a British citizen? No
3. Does the worker have a birth or adoption certificate from the UK, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man? No
4. Does the worker have a certificate of registration or naturalisation as a British citizen? No
So I, a British citizen, wouldn't have been be able to get a new job because I didn't hold the relevant paperwork.
Oh, wait, it's BBC QT and guess who they have on tonight. Amazingly not Farage but Tice.
Maybe they think that equates to not having Farage on and so doesn't count as to the endless support for Reform.
Reform are 30% in the polls, have been in the lead for ages and are on track* to be the next government. Why shouldn’t they have someone on the BBCs flagship politics show?
My objection to ID cards is not what the government that introduces them can do, per se (Labour are for the most part incompetent rather than malign, though they do have their moments).
Do you want to gift an ID database to every future government that takes power though? Some of them, particularly the way the world is going, may have much worse intentions.
What’s on this database that the government doesn’t already know? Honestly?
Why make it easier for them and malign actors by collating it in one place?
Because it makes no difference
It absolutely does. Why wouldn’t it? Hacking one definitive source of data on identity is much easier than trying to find it through multiple sources.
The government already has such databases. It’s already in one place. The only difference is an API
No, but on the current foolhardy plans, they could potentially give Peter Thiel, an anti-democratic billionaire and one of the most dangerous people in the world, a huge amount of information on UK citizens
It'sJust madness, really.
I refuse to believe the likes of MI5 and GCHQ do not have such databases already. Almost everyone already gives the likes of Meta and Google more data than this almost every single day. It’s going to make no difference what’s so ever.
We’re tracked on a continuous basis , we have apps on our phones , passports, driving licences , etc and as soon as ID cards are mentioned it seems to set people off .
Not everyone has a smart phone or a driving licence. And my passport and driving licence remain at home. Can't remember the last time I used them. So no I am not tracked on a continuous basis by the state.
I used to be absolutely against ID cards until I move to Switzerland. Having the Carte des Etrangers/Ausslander Auschweiz (or something) was brilliant. Because you could only get it if you were an authenticated real person who had the right to live there it was all you needed for many things. It was better than a passport as it cut so many layers of crap when you were opening a bank account, changing your driving licence, proving who you were at the tax office etc it made life amazingly simple.
I never got stopped but had a doc that they trusted if the police and asked for my papers. I look like a typical Scandinavian so was less likely to but I was also part of a wide international group of friends and so, when the horribly racist Geneva police stopped my black or Asian (or frankly darker European friends) their ID card generally stopped it going to the point of them being arrested for looking a bit dark.
You couldn’t get a job without it, you couldn’t do anything technical without it and the only people who would have a problem with it being a requirement would be those whose interests were allied with allowing people who shouldn’t be in the country/ working to scoot around the law.
If you were an employer who employed someone without one then you got your deserts, you were a problem so deserved the punishment.
I can’t think of a reason why, if you are legally allowed to be in a country, working, using the resources, why you shouldn’t have a simple way of proving to anyone that you are ok.
Ask not what an ID card can do for you in the best of times, under a benevolent government. Ask what it could be used for in the worst of times, under a despotic government. IBM's well-documented role in the holocaust springs to mind.
Even if not appearing directly on the card, centrally collected and 'verifiable' metadata tied to your ID containing information about your ethnicity, religion, sexual identity and so forth, could be used against you in times to come, as governments have used it against undesirables in the past.
No.
Just no. Full stop. I have no faith in the state remaining, in perpetuity, a benevolent actor.
I find it very difficult to care about the ID card debate. They work well in other countries, some people have a instinctive dislike of them (but can't elaborate a rational reason why), but I don't really see a need for them except for some welcome government efficiency gains.
If Labour really think that this will improve things for people in Britain then credit for taking it on I guess - and I hope the start of a trend. If not, bit confused as to why they are exposing themselves to such a large political risk.
It’s one of the Lib Dem positions - objection to ID cards on principle - that I can sort of understand but don’t agree with.
Why not start with a MVP that keeps the civil liberties issues in check. A simple proof of ID tied to, say, NI number and passport or visa status.
Then add functionality that is purely optional. Driving licence, NHS patient data, tax records, DBS. And so on. Most people will signup if it makes life easier.
I persomally wouldn't sign up to those, now that Palantir has a contract to handle information from these databases. There's the principle, and then also the current custodians of the data.
I do find some of the hysteria over ID cards rather strange given how much data the government already holds .
We happily have driving licences , passports etc . Once again No 10 comms have been useless .
You get out there , frame the debate before others do . Starmer should have had an evening news conference, laid out the plans and stressed it isn’t just about the boats .
If Labour wanted to introduce this, it should have said so in its manifesto. It’s a policy for which it should have obtained a democratic mandate, particularly because it has been proposed and scrapped before.
Do you guys want to “stop the boats” or what? I would prefer we didn’t have compulsory ID cards but ultimately we need to do something different and this is one thing to try
No it isn't.
Anyone hiring anyone illegally, cash in hand, already is breaking the existing laws.
Anyone hiring anyone legally, is already taking proof of right to work in the UK.
Stopping the boats by introducing ID cards is about as meaningful as wearing a balaclava to prevent pregnancy.
I mean that’s just factually incorrect - this would provide a validated, quick and cheap way to check
There are already ways to check. Its the law already.
Everything I said is dactually correct. Introducing a new way to check doesn’t do a damned thing to catch those who deliberately aren't checking and are paying cash in hand.
Those who are hiring legally are already checking.
Documents can be forged. This, in theory, would be much harder to fake
Any evidence that people crossing are getting hired via forged documentation, rather than via businesses that pay cash in hand and don't bother to check?
Digital ID can be forged too, people can share a burner phone or impersonate other people's IDs.
Nothing to do with the people crossing specifically but rather to make it a much more hostile environment to working illegally
So no evidence then?
Its already a hostile environment to working illegally. Anyone hiring anyone illegally can already be imprisoned.
Those who do so, are breaking existing laws.
Yeah, but they are not being imprisoned.
Because existing laws aren't being enforced and its easy to get away with it with cash in hand when it suits both parties interests to get away with it.
Not because of ID cards or the lack thereof.
We can do both
But how does it help?
We already have proof of right to work requirements. But cash in hand is very easy to do and very profitable given National Insurance and other taxes aren't payable when you employ someone cash in hand, nor does minimum wage or other laws apply.
Digital ID does nothing to address any of that. Nothing at all.
It literally does, it makes it easier to check somebody’s right to work
It literally does nothing to address any of what I wrote. Try reading what I wrote this time.
We already have proof of right to work requirements. But cash in hand is very easy to do and very profitable given National Insurance and other taxes aren't payable when you employ someone cash in hand, nor does minimum wage or other laws apply.
Making it easier to check somebody's right to work does nothing to address how profitable dodging all taxes and minimum wage laws by hiring illegal workers cash in hand is.
I’m reading what you’re saying, I am just ignoring most of it. You’re the one not reading what I am saying.
I know we have proof of right to work. This makes it easier. That is undeniable. “Do you have a Brit Card?” “No.” “That’s a shame.”
I didn’t say it would solve the other issue.
The other issue is the one you claimed it would solve though.
Do you guys want to “stop the boats” or what? I would prefer we didn’t have compulsory ID cards but ultimately we need to do something different and this is one thing to try
That's a shame.
Nobody is crossing because its hard to check for ID, as is already legally necessary.
Like I said, it’s about making the environment more hostile to illegal working. It’s a nuance you’ve never been capable of.
It's no more hostile, we already are fully hostile to it.
Anyone hiring anyone legally is already checking ID. Every legitimate employer does it.
Crooks don't. This will do nothing to stop people from being crooks.
I didn’t say that it would stop people from being crooks. You’re arguing with yourself.
That isn't always the issue. A good friend of mine an Italian who had a coffee bar restaurant was raided one Saturday night and out of about six staff one was found to have false papers. My friend was fined £15,000 and was forced to close shortly after. The employee was a Venezualan and he was only emplyed as a washer-upper on Saturday night. It was an outrage,
He had not knowingly done anything wrong. How was he supposed to know that the permit was false? I leant him half of it but there was no way out. There was no appeal and if he didn't pay it in a given amount of time it was increased to £25,000
Interesting story. That does seem quite harsh on your friend if there isnt some easy way to check whether a permit is legitimate.
It was during Mrs May's time. It was extremely harsh and apart from him there were five other people left without a job. It was particularly sad because my friend was an academic and had decided to try his hand at catering and had turned his place into a great meeting spot. He was a really good guy and his treatment at the hands of the state was pretty awful
That particular law was voted in under Gordon Brown. The unions were getting upset at illegal staff being used to undercut union negotiated pay rates.
Oh, wait, it's BBC QT and guess who they have on tonight. Amazingly not Farage but Tice.
Maybe they think that equates to not having Farage on and so doesn't count as to the endless support for Reform.
They are leading in the polls by ten fecking points. They are on course to win the General Election outright. What is your problem??
Most on here loath Farage and Reform (not your good self). But the way to beat them is exposure not marginalising them. Give them the Nick Griffen approach. His grift was destroyed by QT. You cannot on one hand want reform scrutinised and on the other deny them a place on QT.
Meanwhile, I can report from within the Labour Party that Burnham's naked ambition is going down like a lead balloon. Even his fans, who are significant but fewer in number than he thinks, are critical of his timing. There's a pretty unanimous view that, having been in power only just over a year, Starmer and his team should be given longer. If there is to be a challenge, by Burnham or anybody else, most agree that the earliest this should happen is after the May 2026 elections.
It doesn't seem unreasonable to me, or other members, that Starmer should be allowed two years to demonstrate that he needs to be replaced, or not, as the case may be,
My objection to ID cards is not what the government that introduces them can do, per se (Labour are for the most part incompetent rather than malign, though they do have their moments).
Do you want to gift an ID database to every future government that takes power though? Some of them, particularly the way the world is going, may have much worse intentions.
What’s on this database that the government doesn’t already know? Honestly?
Why make it easier for them and malign actors by collating it in one place?
Because it makes no difference
It absolutely does. Why wouldn’t it? Hacking one definitive source of data on identity is much easier than trying to find it through multiple sources.
The government already has such databases. It’s already in one place. The only difference is an API
No, but on the current foolhardy plans, they could potentially give Peter Thiel, an anti-democratic billionaire and one of the most dangerous people in the world, a huge amount of information on UK citizens
It'sJust madness, really.
I refuse to believe the likes of MI5 and GCHQ do not have such databases already. Almost everyone already gives the likes of Meta and Google more data than this almost every single day. It’s going to make no difference what’s so ever.
We’re tracked on a continuous basis , we have apps on our phones , passports, driving licences , etc and as soon as ID cards are mentioned it seems to set people off .
Not everyone has a smart phone or a driving licence. And my passport and driving licence remain at home. Can't remember the last time I used them. So no I am not tracked on a continuous basis by the state.
I used to be absolutely against ID cards until I move to Switzerland. Having the Carte des Etrangers/Ausslander Auschweiz (or something) was brilliant. Because you could only get it if you were an authenticated real person who had the right to live there it was all you needed for many things. It was better than a passport as it cut so many layers of crap when you were opening a bank account, changing your driving licence, proving who you were at the tax office etc it made life amazingly simple.
I never got stopped but had a doc that they trusted if the police and asked for my papers. I look like a typical Scandinavian so was less likely to but I was also part of a wide international group of friends and so, when the horribly racist Geneva police stopped my black or Asian (or frankly darker European friends) their ID card generally stopped it going to the point of them being arrested for looking a bit dark.
You couldn’t get a job without it, you couldn’t do anything technical without it and the only people who would have a problem with it being a requirement would be those whose interests were allied with allowing people who shouldn’t be in the country/ working to scoot around the law.
If you were an employer who employed someone without one then you got your deserts, you were a problem so deserved the punishment.
I can’t think of a reason why, if you are legally allowed to be in a country, working, using the resources, why you shouldn’t have a simple way of proving to anyone that you are ok.
Ask not what an ID card can do for you in the best of times, under a benevolent government. Ask what it could be used for in the worst of times, under a despotic government. IBM's well-documented role in the holocaust springs to mind.
Even if not appearing directly on the card, centrally collected and 'verifiable' metadata tied to your ID containing information about your ethnicity, religion, sexual identity and so forth, could be used against you in times to come, as governments have used it against undesirables in the past.
No.
Just no. Full stop. I have no faith in the state remaining, in perpetuity, a benevolent actor.
Less power in the hands of the state, not more.
I don’t think we are in Kansas now when the state can grab more info on you now than they have ever been able to at any point in history. If we get a bad gov then you should be worrying about everything you’ve already given them in Terms of your internet trawling, where your phone has been etc. The genie is out of the bottle already.
If someone wanted to, you and I have already exposed multiple things about our beliefs and views on this one site.
If you are as afeared as you seem to be about our future freedom then you should find a way to scrub your presence here, as should most of us.
My objection to ID cards is not what the government that introduces them can do, per se (Labour are for the most part incompetent rather than malign, though they do have their moments).
Do you want to gift an ID database to every future government that takes power though? Some of them, particularly the way the world is going, may have much worse intentions.
What’s on this database that the government doesn’t already know? Honestly?
Why make it easier for them and malign actors by collating it in one place?
Because it makes no difference
It absolutely does. Why wouldn’t it? Hacking one definitive source of data on identity is much easier than trying to find it through multiple sources.
The government already has such databases. It’s already in one place. The only difference is an API
No, but on the current foolhardy plans, they could potentially give Peter Thiel, an anti-democratic billionaire and one of the most dangerous people in the world, a huge amount of information on UK citizens
It'sJust madness, really.
I refuse to believe the likes of MI5 and GCHQ do not have such databases already. Almost everyone already gives the likes of Meta and Google more data than this almost every single day. It’s going to make no difference what’s so ever.
We’re tracked on a continuous basis , we have apps on our phones , passports, driving licences , etc and as soon as ID cards are mentioned it seems to set people off .
Not everyone has a smart phone or a driving licence. And my passport and driving licence remain at home. Can't remember the last time I used them. So no I am not tracked on a continuous basis by the state.
I used to be absolutely against ID cards until I move to Switzerland. Having the Carte des Etrangers/Ausslander Auschweiz (or something) was brilliant. Because you could only get it if you were an authenticated real person who had the right to live there it was all you needed for many things. It was better than a passport as it cut so many layers of crap when you were opening a bank account, changing your driving licence, proving who you were at the tax office etc it made life amazingly simple.
I never got stopped but had a doc that they trusted if the police and asked for my papers. I look like a typical Scandinavian so was less likely to but I was also part of a wide international group of friends and so, when the horribly racist Geneva police stopped my black or Asian (or frankly darker European friends) their ID card generally stopped it going to the point of them being arrested for looking a bit dark.
You couldn’t get a job without it, you couldn’t do anything technical without it and the only people who would have a problem with it being a requirement would be those whose interests were allied with allowing people who shouldn’t be in the country/ working to scoot around the law.
If you were an employer who employed someone without one then you got your deserts, you were a problem so deserved the punishment.
I can’t think of a reason why, if you are legally allowed to be in a country, working, using the resources, why you shouldn’t have a simple way of proving to anyone that you are ok.
Ask not what an ID card can do for you in the best of times, under a benevolent government. Ask what it could be used for in the worst of times, under a despotic government. IBM's well-documented role in the holocaust springs to mind.
Even if not appearing directly on the card, centrally collected and 'verifiable' metadata tied to your ID containing information about your ethnicity, religion, sexual identity and so forth, could be used against you in times to come, as governments have used it against undesirables in the past.
No.
Just no. Full stop. I have no faith in the state remaining, in perpetuity, a benevolent actor.
Less power in the hands of the state, not more.
Under a despotic government, horrible things will happen, and it's not obvious that the presence or absence of ID cards/databases would make that much difference.
The best way to prevent the evils of despotism is not to allow the despots into power.
My objection to ID cards is not what the government that introduces them can do, per se (Labour are for the most part incompetent rather than malign, though they do have their moments).
Do you want to gift an ID database to every future government that takes power though? Some of them, particularly the way the world is going, may have much worse intentions.
What’s on this database that the government doesn’t already know? Honestly?
Why make it easier for them and malign actors by collating it in one place?
Because it makes no difference
It absolutely does. Why wouldn’t it? Hacking one definitive source of data on identity is much easier than trying to find it through multiple sources.
The government already has such databases. It’s already in one place. The only difference is an API
No, but on the current foolhardy plans, they could potentially give Peter Thiel, an anti-democratic billionaire and one of the most dangerous people in the world, a huge amount of information on UK citizens
It'sJust madness, really.
I refuse to believe the likes of MI5 and GCHQ do not have such databases already. Almost everyone already gives the likes of Meta and Google more data than this almost every single day. It’s going to make no difference what’s so ever.
We’re tracked on a continuous basis , we have apps on our phones , passports, driving licences , etc and as soon as ID cards are mentioned it seems to set people off .
Not everyone has a smart phone or a driving licence. And my passport and driving licence remain at home. Can't remember the last time I used them. So no I am not tracked on a continuous basis by the state.
I used to be absolutely against ID cards until I move to Switzerland. Having the Carte des Etrangers/Ausslander Auschweiz (or something) was brilliant. Because you could only get it if you were an authenticated real person who had the right to live there it was all you needed for many things. It was better than a passport as it cut so many layers of crap when you were opening a bank account, changing your driving licence, proving who you were at the tax office etc it made life amazingly simple.
I never got stopped but had a doc that they trusted if the police and asked for my papers. I look like a typical Scandinavian so was less likely to but I was also part of a wide international group of friends and so, when the horribly racist Geneva police stopped my black or Asian (or frankly darker European friends) their ID card generally stopped it going to the point of them being arrested for looking a bit dark.
You couldn’t get a job without it, you couldn’t do anything technical without it and the only people who would have a problem with it being a requirement would be those whose interests were allied with allowing people who shouldn’t be in the country/ working to scoot around the law.
If you were an employer who employed someone without one then you got your deserts, you were a problem so deserved the punishment.
I can’t think of a reason why, if you are legally allowed to be in a country, working, using the resources, why you shouldn’t have a simple way of proving to anyone that you are ok.
Ask not what an ID card can do for you in the best of times, under a benevolent government. Ask what it could be used for in the worst of times, under a despotic government. IBM's well-documented role in the holocaust springs to mind.
Even if not appearing directly on the card, centrally collected and 'verifiable' metadata tied to your ID containing information about your ethnicity, religion, sexual identity and so forth, could be used against you in times to come, as governments have used it against undesirables in the past.
No.
Just no. Full stop. I have no faith in the state remaining, in perpetuity, a benevolent actor.
Less power in the hands of the state, not more.
Under a despotic government, horrible things will happen, and it's not obvious that the presence or absence of ID cards/databases would make that much difference.
The best way to prevent the evils of despotism is not to allow the despots into power.
Agreed, but we don't have to make it easier for them
Opposition to ever-greater integration of personal information is often characterised in terms of fear.
But I would just characteristise it more in terms of realism ; new types of opportunities for abuse are always taken, historically, and in the case of figures like Thiel, long-term abuse of information is even part of his publlicly declared point.
I find it very difficult to care about the ID card debate. They work well in other countries, some people have a instinctive dislike of them (but can't elaborate a rational reason why), but I don't really see a need for them except for some welcome government efficiency gains.
If Labour really think that this will improve things for people in Britain then credit for taking it on I guess - and I hope the start of a trend. If not, bit confused as to why they are exposing themselves to such a large political risk.
It’s one of the Lib Dem positions - objection to ID cards on principle - that I can sort of understand but don’t agree with.
Why not start with a MVP that keeps the civil liberties issues in check. A simple proof of ID tied to, say, NI number and passport or visa status.
Then add functionality that is purely optional. Driving licence, NHS patient data, tax records, DBS. And so on. Most people will signup if it makes life easier.
Look, a minimum viable product is one thing. But there's no way it'd stop there. UK governments of left and right are simply too centralising for that to be the case once the infrastructure is in place.
Simple proof of ID that replaces drivers' license as an optional form of ID? Sure.
Compulsory for everyone to have regardless of whether the have other perfectly legitimate forms of ID? We're already into completely new territory.
Compulsory to carry with you and show on request for X, Y and Z every day tasks? GP appointment, traffic stop, to enter an event with some security measures in place, etc. We're in a completely different world now in terms of balance of rights between citizen and state.
Oh and, after all, it's not stopping illegal migration or the black market as people continue to get fake IDs and dodgy employers turn a blind eye? Better add biometric data to the database to make sure.
No one believes the minimum viable product is the end state here. So best to kill it before it's born.
My objection to ID cards is not what the government that introduces them can do, per se (Labour are for the most part incompetent rather than malign, though they do have their moments).
Do you want to gift an ID database to every future government that takes power though? Some of them, particularly the way the world is going, may have much worse intentions.
What’s on this database that the government doesn’t already know? Honestly?
Why make it easier for them and malign actors by collating it in one place?
Because it makes no difference
It absolutely does. Why wouldn’t it? Hacking one definitive source of data on identity is much easier than trying to find it through multiple sources.
The government already has such databases. It’s already in one place. The only difference is an API
No, but on the current foolhardy plans, they could potentially give Peter Thiel, an anti-democratic billionaire and one of the most dangerous people in the world, a huge amount of information on UK citizens
It'sJust madness, really.
I refuse to believe the likes of MI5 and GCHQ do not have such databases already. Almost everyone already gives the likes of Meta and Google more data than this almost every single day. It’s going to make no difference what’s so ever.
We’re tracked on a continuous basis , we have apps on our phones , passports, driving licences , etc and as soon as ID cards are mentioned it seems to set people off .
Not everyone has a smart phone or a driving licence. And my passport and driving licence remain at home. Can't remember the last time I used them. So no I am not tracked on a continuous basis by the state.
I used to be absolutely against ID cards until I move to Switzerland. Having the Carte des Etrangers/Ausslander Auschweiz (or something) was brilliant. Because you could only get it if you were an authenticated real person who had the right to live there it was all you needed for many things. It was better than a passport as it cut so many layers of crap when you were opening a bank account, changing your driving licence, proving who you were at the tax office etc it made life amazingly simple.
I never got stopped but had a doc that they trusted if the police and asked for my papers. I look like a typical Scandinavian so was less likely to but I was also part of a wide international group of friends and so, when the horribly racist Geneva police stopped my black or Asian (or frankly darker European friends) their ID card generally stopped it going to the point of them being arrested for looking a bit dark.
You couldn’t get a job without it, you couldn’t do anything technical without it and the only people who would have a problem with it being a requirement would be those whose interests were allied with allowing people who shouldn’t be in the country/ working to scoot around the law.
If you were an employer who employed someone without one then you got your deserts, you were a problem so deserved the punishment.
I can’t think of a reason why, if you are legally allowed to be in a country, working, using the resources, why you shouldn’t have a simple way of proving to anyone that you are ok.
Ask not what an ID card can do for you in the best of times, under a benevolent government. Ask what it could be used for in the worst of times, under a despotic government. IBM's well-documented role in the holocaust springs to mind.
Even if not appearing directly on the card, centrally collected and 'verifiable' metadata tied to your ID containing information about your ethnicity, religion, sexual identity and so forth, could be used against you in times to come, as governments have used it against undesirables in the past.
No.
Just no. Full stop. I have no faith in the state remaining, in perpetuity, a benevolent actor.
Less power in the hands of the state, not more.
I don’t think we are in Kansas now when the state can grab more info on you now than they have ever been able to at any point in history. If we get a bad gov then you should be worrying about everything you’ve already given them in Terms of your internet trawling, where your phone has been etc. The genie is out of the bottle already.
If someone wanted to, you and I have already exposed multiple things about our beliefs and views on this one site.
If you are as afeared as you seem to be about our future freedom then you should find a way to scrub your presence here, as should most of us.
I dare say the state could figure out who I am from my posts here, my whatsapps, my gmail account. And if I belonged to a minority group that was persecuted by that state - say on ethnic, religious or other grounds - they could find me.
I find no reason to make it easier by tying it all to a card with my name on that I have to carry at all times and present whenever a copper forces me to.
We all leave a digital footprint, that's undeniable. But at present we have pseudonymity and plausible deniability and it's a bloody hard job for the state to, say, target all of us of [e.g. religious identity] at the same time. I see no reason, in the name of comfort or convenience, to make the state's job easier, in a potential 'papers please' society where pseudonymity no longer exists and everything is tied to a single centralized database.
I find it very difficult to care about the ID card debate. They work well in other countries, some people have a instinctive dislike of them (but can't elaborate a rational reason why), but I don't really see a need for them except for some welcome government efficiency gains.
If Labour really think that this will improve things for people in Britain then credit for taking it on I guess - and I hope the start of a trend. If not, bit confused as to why they are exposing themselves to such a large political risk.
It’s one of the Lib Dem positions - objection to ID cards on principle - that I can sort of understand but don’t agree with.
Why not start with a MVP that keeps the civil liberties issues in check. A simple proof of ID tied to, say, NI number and passport or visa status.
Then add functionality that is purely optional. Driving licence, NHS patient data, tax records, DBS. And so on. Most people will signup if it makes life easier.
Look, a minimum viable product is one thing. But there's no way it'd stop there. UK governments of left and right are simply too centralising for that to be the case once the infrastructure is in place.
Simple proof of ID that replaces drivers' license as an optional form of ID? Sure.
Compulsory for everyone to have regardless of whether the have other perfectly legitimate forms of ID? We're already into completely new territory.
Compulsory to carry with you and show on request for X, Y and Z every day tasks? GP appointment, traffic stop, to enter an event with some security measures in place, etc. We're in a completely different world now in terms of balance of rights between citizen and state.
Oh and, after all, it's not stopping illegal migration or the black market as people continue to get fake IDs and dodgy employers turn a blind eye? Better add biometric data to the database to make sure.
No one believes the minimum viable product is the end state here. So best to kill it before it's born.
Is the UK so singularly awful that we will become Nazi Germany overnight with ID cards? Is France some sort of distopian Fascist State? Switzerland Black Shirts with toblerones?
If we are so bad that this would happen if we introduce something that most of civilised Europe has then it says more about us as a nation than ID cards in themselves.
Oh, wait, it's BBC QT and guess who they have on tonight. Amazingly not Farage but Tice.
Maybe they think that equates to not having Farage on and so doesn't count as to the endless support for Reform.
They are leading in the polls by ten fecking points. They are on course to win the General Election outright. What is your problem??
It was the same when they were on 4%.
Well, now they're on 33%,
A QT that was WITHOUT them would be absurd. They are the most popular party in the country by a distance, Farage is the favourite to be next PM. Moreover the polling is reinforced by the 2025 elex. Pipe down
Chris Mason has just been asked if his phone has been burning with this Andy Burnham news. 'Yes' he said 'It's been burning with MPs and Party member's saying they wish he'd shut the f*** up!'
I think we can put this down as another leadership bid. Which makes him a three time loser.
Its 2025. We have to prove our ID 704 times a day to buy stuff etc etc etc. So in practice an ID card to pull everything together is a Great Idea.
In reality? Imagine the fun they* could have. Prove your ID to access services. To travel. To eat. Sorry, we've withdrawn your privileges because of this tweet you posted...
I find it very difficult to care about the ID card debate. They work well in other countries, some people have a instinctive dislike of them (but can't elaborate a rational reason why), but I don't really see a need for them except for some welcome government efficiency gains.
If Labour really think that this will improve things for people in Britain then credit for taking it on I guess - and I hope the start of a trend. If not, bit confused as to why they are exposing themselves to such a large political risk.
It’s one of the Lib Dem positions - objection to ID cards on principle - that I can sort of understand but don’t agree with.
Why not start with a MVP that keeps the civil liberties issues in check. A simple proof of ID tied to, say, NI number and passport or visa status.
Then add functionality that is purely optional. Driving licence, NHS patient data, tax records, DBS. And so on. Most people will signup if it makes life easier.
Look, a minimum viable product is one thing. But there's no way it'd stop there. UK governments of left and right are simply too centralising for that to be the case once the infrastructure is in place.
Simple proof of ID that replaces drivers' license as an optional form of ID? Sure.
Compulsory for everyone to have regardless of whether the have other perfectly legitimate forms of ID? We're already into completely new territory.
Compulsory to carry with you and show on request for X, Y and Z every day tasks? GP appointment, traffic stop, to enter an event with some security measures in place, etc. We're in a completely different world now in terms of balance of rights between citizen and state.
Oh and, after all, it's not stopping illegal migration or the black market as people continue to get fake IDs and dodgy employers turn a blind eye? Better add biometric data to the database to make sure.
No one believes the minimum viable product is the end state here. So best to kill it before it's born.
Is the UK so singularly awful that we will become Nazi Germany overnight with ID cards? Is France some sort of distopian Fascist State? Switzerland Black Shirts with toblerones?
If we are so bad that this would happen if we introduce something that most of civilised Europe has then it says more about us as a nation than ID cards in themselves.
It says more about the toxic culture of the Home Office, than anything else. It always chooses options for ID cards that are more comprehensive and authoritarian than what it is operating on the European mainland, and this time round, it has added Palantir, too.
So as a result of this consistent authoritarian over-reach of the Home Office over many decades, the dangers this time are actually not only to personal liberty, but also in terms of espionage and international geo-politics, too.
My objection to ID cards is not what the government that introduces them can do, per se (Labour are for the most part incompetent rather than malign, though they do have their moments).
Do you want to gift an ID database to every future government that takes power though? Some of them, particularly the way the world is going, may have much worse intentions.
What’s on this database that the government doesn’t already know? Honestly?
Why make it easier for them and malign actors by collating it in one place?
Because it makes no difference
It absolutely does. Why wouldn’t it? Hacking one definitive source of data on identity is much easier than trying to find it through multiple sources.
The government already has such databases. It’s already in one place. The only difference is an API
No, but on the current foolhardy plans, they could potentially give Peter Thiel, an anti-democratic billionaire and one of the most dangerous people in the world, a huge amount of information on UK citizens
It'sJust madness, really.
I refuse to believe the likes of MI5 and GCHQ do not have such databases already. Almost everyone already gives the likes of Meta and Google more data than this almost every single day. It’s going to make no difference what’s so ever.
We’re tracked on a continuous basis , we have apps on our phones , passports, driving licences , etc and as soon as ID cards are mentioned it seems to set people off .
Not everyone has a smart phone or a driving licence. And my passport and driving licence remain at home. Can't remember the last time I used them. So no I am not tracked on a continuous basis by the state.
I used to be absolutely against ID cards until I move to Switzerland. Having the Carte des Etrangers/Ausslander Auschweiz (or something) was brilliant. Because you could only get it if you were an authenticated real person who had the right to live there it was all you needed for many things. It was better than a passport as it cut so many layers of crap when you were opening a bank account, changing your driving licence, proving who you were at the tax office etc it made life amazingly simple.
I never got stopped but had a doc that they trusted if the police and asked for my papers. I look like a typical Scandinavian so was less likely to but I was also part of a wide international group of friends and so, when the horribly racist Geneva police stopped my black or Asian (or frankly darker European friends) their ID card generally stopped it going to the point of them being arrested for looking a bit dark.
You couldn’t get a job without it, you couldn’t do anything technical without it and the only people who would have a problem with it being a requirement would be those whose interests were allied with allowing people who shouldn’t be in the country/ working to scoot around the law.
If you were an employer who employed someone without one then you got your deserts, you were a problem so deserved the punishment.
I can’t think of a reason why, if you are legally allowed to be in a country, working, using the resources, why you shouldn’t have a simple way of proving to anyone that you are ok.
Ask not what an ID card can do for you in the best of times, under a benevolent government. Ask what it could be used for in the worst of times, under a despotic government. IBM's well-documented role in the holocaust springs to mind.
Even if not appearing directly on the card, centrally collected and 'verifiable' metadata tied to your ID containing information about your ethnicity, religion, sexual identity and so forth, could be used against you in times to come, as governments have used it against undesirables in the past.
No.
Just no. Full stop. I have no faith in the state remaining, in perpetuity, a benevolent actor.
Less power in the hands of the state, not more.
I don’t think we are in Kansas now when the state can grab more info on you now than they have ever been able to at any point in history. If we get a bad gov then you should be worrying about everything you’ve already given them in Terms of your internet trawling, where your phone has been etc. The genie is out of the bottle already.
If someone wanted to, you and I have already exposed multiple things about our beliefs and views on this one site.
If you are as afeared as you seem to be about our future freedom then you should find a way to scrub your presence here, as should most of us.
I dare say the state could figure out who I am from my posts here, my whatsapps, my gmail account. And if I belonged to a minority group that was persecuted by that state - say on ethnic, religious or other grounds - they could find me.
I find no reason to make it easier by tying it all to a card with my name on that I have to carry at all times and present whenever a copper forces me to.
We all leave a digital footprint, that's undeniable. But at present we have pseudonymity and plausible deniability and it's a bloody hard job for the state to, say, target all of us of [e.g. religious identity] at the same time. I see no reason, in the name of comfort or convenience, to make the state's job easier, in a potential 'papers please' society where pseudonymity no longer exists and everything is tied to a single centralized database.
Have you ever watched any of the latest true crime docs where the police go through your mobiles etc. there is no such thing as pseudonymity and plausible deniability when it comes to your digital footprint. An ID card is pulling together info such as birth certificate, passport, tax records to provide you with an easy doc/card that cuts through crap. Everything else is already accessible if the police or authorities decide to dive into your life.
I find it very difficult to care about the ID card debate. They work well in other countries, some people have a instinctive dislike of them (but can't elaborate a rational reason why), but I don't really see a need for them except for some welcome government efficiency gains.
If Labour really think that this will improve things for people in Britain then credit for taking it on I guess - and I hope the start of a trend. If not, bit confused as to why they are exposing themselves to such a large political risk.
It’s one of the Lib Dem positions - objection to ID cards on principle - that I can sort of understand but don’t agree with.
Why not start with a MVP that keeps the civil liberties issues in check. A simple proof of ID tied to, say, NI number and passport or visa status.
Then add functionality that is purely optional. Driving licence, NHS patient data, tax records, DBS. And so on. Most people will signup if it makes life easier.
Look, a minimum viable product is one thing. But there's no way it'd stop there. UK governments of left and right are simply too centralising for that to be the case once the infrastructure is in place.
Simple proof of ID that replaces drivers' license as an optional form of ID? Sure.
Compulsory for everyone to have regardless of whether the have other perfectly legitimate forms of ID? We're already into completely new territory.
Compulsory to carry with you and show on request for X, Y and Z every day tasks? GP appointment, traffic stop, to enter an event with some security measures in place, etc. We're in a completely different world now in terms of balance of rights between citizen and state.
Oh and, after all, it's not stopping illegal migration or the black market as people continue to get fake IDs and dodgy employers turn a blind eye? Better add biometric data to the database to make sure.
No one believes the minimum viable product is the end state here. So best to kill it before it's born.
Is the UK so singularly awful that we will become Nazi Germany overnight with ID cards? Is France some sort of distopian Fascist State? Switzerland Black Shirts with toblerones?
If we are so bad that this would happen if we introduce something that most of civilised Europe has then it says more about us as a nation than ID cards in themselves.
The same UK that, in 2020, turned overnight into a nation of curtain twitchers reporting on anyone who had a mate over to their house for a drink? The same UK that sent coppers to arrest everyone at a kid's christening party during Covid? Or flew drones over the moors, looking for walkers who'd dared stray more than 5 miles from their house?
No, the UK could never descend into authoritarianism or become a police state at the drop of a hat. There's simply no historical precedent for it.
Its 2025. We have to prove our ID 704 times a day to buy stuff etc etc etc. So in practice an ID card to pull everything together is a Great Idea.
In reality? Imagine the fun they* could have. Prove your ID to access services. To travel. To eat. Sorry, we've withdrawn your privileges because of this tweet you posted...
China. Social Credit.
This is what I mean by giving the authoritarian loons the tools they need.
Its 2025. We have to prove our ID 704 times a day to buy stuff etc etc etc. So in practice an ID card to pull everything together is a Great Idea.
In reality? Imagine the fun they* could have. Prove your ID to access services. To travel. To eat. Sorry, we've withdrawn your privileges because of this tweet you posted...
China. Social Credit.
This is what I mean by giving the authoritarian loons the tools they need.
This is the insidious nature of the proposal. I even made one off the cuff - just get DVLA to issue a driving license to non-drivers which has no approved categories. No problem!
Then you remember who this will be run by. Once you get it so that the machinery of state needs your ID, you are sunk. And of course we would have Tesco etc doing the same - a replacement for Clubcard.
I find it very difficult to care about the ID card debate. They work well in other countries, some people have a instinctive dislike of them (but can't elaborate a rational reason why), but I don't really see a need for them except for some welcome government efficiency gains.
If Labour really think that this will improve things for people in Britain then credit for taking it on I guess - and I hope the start of a trend. If not, bit confused as to why they are exposing themselves to such a large political risk.
It’s one of the Lib Dem positions - objection to ID cards on principle - that I can sort of understand but don’t agree with.
Why not start with a MVP that keeps the civil liberties issues in check. A simple proof of ID tied to, say, NI number and passport or visa status.
Then add functionality that is purely optional. Driving licence, NHS patient data, tax records, DBS. And so on. Most people will signup if it makes life easier.
Look, a minimum viable product is one thing. But there's no way it'd stop there. UK governments of left and right are simply too centralising for that to be the case once the infrastructure is in place.
Simple proof of ID that replaces drivers' license as an optional form of ID? Sure.
Compulsory for everyone to have regardless of whether the have other perfectly legitimate forms of ID? We're already into completely new territory.
Compulsory to carry with you and show on request for X, Y and Z every day tasks? GP appointment, traffic stop, to enter an event with some security measures in place, etc. We're in a completely different world now in terms of balance of rights between citizen and state.
Oh and, after all, it's not stopping illegal migration or the black market as people continue to get fake IDs and dodgy employers turn a blind eye? Better add biometric data to the database to make sure.
No one believes the minimum viable product is the end state here. So best to kill it before it's born.
Is the UK so singularly awful that we will become Nazi Germany overnight with ID cards? Is France some sort of distopian Fascist State? Switzerland Black Shirts with toblerones?
If we are so bad that this would happen if we introduce something that most of civilised Europe has then it says more about us as a nation than ID cards in themselves.
The same UK that, in 2020, turned overnight into a nation of curtain twitchers reporting on anyone who had a mate over to their house for a drink? The same UK that sent coppers to arrest everyone at a kid's christening party during Covid? Or flew drones over the moors, looking for walkers who'd dared stray more than 5 miles from their house?
No, the UK could never descend into authoritarianism or become a police state at the drop of a hat. There's simply no historical precedent for it.
Then if you are worried you really need to relocate because they already have access, if they want, especially under a fascist regime or similar, to your spending, movements, internet activity.
Maybe better to question why there isn’t a massive libertarian party in the UK who stands against this kind of thing, maybe Brits just secretly love it? Or are uniquely thick.
Its 2025. We have to prove our ID 704 times a day to buy stuff etc etc etc. So in practice an ID card to pull everything together is a Great Idea.
In reality? Imagine the fun they* could have. Prove your ID to access services. To travel. To eat. Sorry, we've withdrawn your privileges because of this tweet you posted...
Why do we need to prove our identity in 2025? I don't get it at all.
Everybody is fraught tonight, so here's something that's nice. As you know I went up on the Caledonian Sleeper from London to Edinburgh. It was great. Here is a video of somebody else's journey.
Its 2025. We have to prove our ID 704 times a day to buy stuff etc etc etc. So in practice an ID card to pull everything together is a Great Idea.
In reality? Imagine the fun they* could have. Prove your ID to access services. To travel. To eat. Sorry, we've withdrawn your privileges because of this tweet you posted...
China. Social Credit.
This is what I mean by giving the authoritarian loons the tools they need.
It's not even what our government will do with data, as we see on an almost weekly basis now large organisations are getting turned over by hackers and their data is taken for ransom or other purposes. The government should assume that any dataset about the entire UK population is a target, and one good way of avoid problems is to not create the target in the first place. Or if you must do so then only include the minimal information required for a single or few purposes. I'll be amazed if that's the plan, previously the ID card plans have had ridiculously large scopes and use by bodies that really have no business accessing our personal data.
I find it very difficult to care about the ID card debate. They work well in other countries, some people have a instinctive dislike of them (but can't elaborate a rational reason why), but I don't really see a need for them except for some welcome government efficiency gains.
If Labour really think that this will improve things for people in Britain then credit for taking it on I guess - and I hope the start of a trend. If not, bit confused as to why they are exposing themselves to such a large political risk.
It’s one of the Lib Dem positions - objection to ID cards on principle - that I can sort of understand but don’t agree with.
Why not start with a MVP that keeps the civil liberties issues in check. A simple proof of ID tied to, say, NI number and passport or visa status.
Then add functionality that is purely optional. Driving licence, NHS patient data, tax records, DBS. And so on. Most people will signup if it makes life easier.
Look, a minimum viable product is one thing. But there's no way it'd stop there. UK governments of left and right are simply too centralising for that to be the case once the infrastructure is in place.
Simple proof of ID that replaces drivers' license as an optional form of ID? Sure.
Compulsory for everyone to have regardless of whether the have other perfectly legitimate forms of ID? We're already into completely new territory.
Compulsory to carry with you and show on request for X, Y and Z every day tasks? GP appointment, traffic stop, to enter an event with some security measures in place, etc. We're in a completely different world now in terms of balance of rights between citizen and state.
Oh and, after all, it's not stopping illegal migration or the black market as people continue to get fake IDs and dodgy employers turn a blind eye? Better add biometric data to the database to make sure.
No one believes the minimum viable product is the end state here. So best to kill it before it's born.
Is the UK so singularly awful that we will become Nazi Germany overnight with ID cards? Is France some sort of distopian Fascist State? Switzerland Black Shirts with toblerones?
If we are so bad that this would happen if we introduce something that most of civilised Europe has then it says more about us as a nation than ID cards in themselves.
France and Switzerland are both republics. France and Switzerland drive on the wrong side of the road.
Its 2025. We have to prove our ID 704 times a day to buy stuff etc etc etc. So in practice an ID card to pull everything together is a Great Idea.
In reality? Imagine the fun they* could have. Prove your ID to access services. To travel. To eat. Sorry, we've withdrawn your privileges because of this tweet you posted...
China. Social Credit.
This is what I mean by giving the authoritarian loons the tools they need.
It's not even what our government will do with data, as we see on an almost weekly basis now large organisations are getting turned over by hackers and their data is taken for ransom or other purposes. The government should assume that any dataset about the entire UK population is a target, and one good way of avoid problems is to not create the target in the first place. Or if you must do so then only include the minimal information required for a single or few purposes. I'll be amazed if that's the plan, previously the ID card plans have had ridiculously large scopes and use by bodies that really have no business accessing our personal data.
You should be allowed to go to a central authority where you show your passport, birth certificate and other docs and get a singular ID with a photo, signature and digital component that is perfect proof that you are who you are, are entitled to work, get health care etc without having to provide a ton of documentation. A gold standard ID. Reduces paperwork, effort, confusion and cuts fraud.
Its 2025. We have to prove our ID 704 times a day to buy stuff etc etc etc. So in practice an ID card to pull everything together is a Great Idea.
In reality? Imagine the fun they* could have. Prove your ID to access services. To travel. To eat. Sorry, we've withdrawn your privileges because of this tweet you posted...
Why do we need to prove our identity in 2025? I don't get it at all.
Are you kidding? Every single purchase online. Every single login online. Every single cookie online.
Its 2025. We have to prove our ID 704 times a day to buy stuff etc etc etc. So in practice an ID card to pull everything together is a Great Idea.
In reality? Imagine the fun they* could have. Prove your ID to access services. To travel. To eat. Sorry, we've withdrawn your privileges because of this tweet you posted...
China. Social Credit.
This is what I mean by giving the authoritarian loons the tools they need.
It's not even what our government will do with data, as we see on an almost weekly basis now large organisations are getting turned over by hackers and their data is taken for ransom or other purposes. The government should assume that any dataset about the entire UK population is a target, and one good way of avoid problems is to not create the target in the first place. Or if you must do so then only include the minimal information required for a single or few purposes. I'll be amazed if that's the plan, previously the ID card plans have had ridiculously large scopes and use by bodies that really have no business accessing our personal data.
The French aren’t well known for lying down and taking it if the liberté is threatened and yet they use their ID cards. We even allow, despite the UK’s concern, French nationals to come here on a time limited basis (we are trying to increase the timescale) purely on their French National ID cards because we accept that they are stand up identifiers as the holder having French nationality and rights so perfectly as good as passports, they also use those IDs when getting jobs etc.
Again, is the problem with us as British if we cannot apply an ID card system without turning into Nazis? If our politicians can’t see the difference between ID cards and fascist control? Maybe it’s not ID cards that are the problem but our politicians and Civil Service.
Been at the hospital most of the day as sadly my wife has had a stillbirth. So not been the best of days for us
Christ. I'm sorry. I wish you both strength.
Thanks and for all your kind comments below. Won't be commentating tomorrow and over the weekend as I will obviously be supporting my wife but hope to drop in a bit next week
"Conservative former minister Sir David Davis, who campaigned against their introduction during Sir Tony Blair’s Labour government, said: “While digital IDs and ID cards sound like modern and efficient solutions to problems like illegal immigration, such claims are misleading at best.
“The systems involved are profoundly dangerous to the privacy and fundamental freedoms of the British people."
Another by-election in David Davis's constituency?
Been at the hospital most of the day as sadly my wife has had a stillbirth. So not been the best of days for us
Christ. I'm sorry. I wish you both strength.
Thanks and for all your kind comments below. Won't be commentating tomorrow and over the weekend as I will obviously be supporting my wife but hope to drop in a bit next week
Im deeply sorry HYUFD, take care of yourself and your wife
Been at the hospital most of the day as sadly my wife has had a stillbirth. So not been the best of days for us
Christ. I'm sorry. I wish you both strength.
Thanks and for all your kind comments below. Won't be commentating tomorrow and over the weekend as I will obviously be supporting my wife but hope to drop in a bit next week
We await your temperature-taking of the grass roots Tory opinion on ID cards.
Its 2025. We have to prove our ID 704 times a day to buy stuff etc etc etc. So in practice an ID card to pull everything together is a Great Idea.
In reality? Imagine the fun they* could have. Prove your ID to access services. To travel. To eat. Sorry, we've withdrawn your privileges because of this tweet you posted...
Why do we need to prove our identity in 2025? I don't get it at all.
Just being able to prove you are human on the Internet is a massive advantage. Secure digital ID saves a fortune in public service costs.
Its 2025. We have to prove our ID 704 times a day to buy stuff etc etc etc. So in practice an ID card to pull everything together is a Great Idea.
In reality? Imagine the fun they* could have. Prove your ID to access services. To travel. To eat. Sorry, we've withdrawn your privileges because of this tweet you posted...
Why do we need to prove our identity in 2025? I don't get it at all.
Just being able to prove you are human on the Internet is a massive advantage. Secure digital ID saves a fortune in public service costs.
"The crown court backlog in England and Wales has risen by 10% to a new record of almost 80,000 cases, while wait times for trial dates have reached up to four years.
Figures from the Ministry of Justice showed the open caseload was 78,329 at the end of June, up 2% from 76,957 at the end of March, the first time the backlog passed 75,000. It is also up 10% from 70,893 a year earlier, the figures show. ... There is also a new record backlog in magistrates’ courts of 361,027 cases, up 25% on 289,595 a year earlier."
This is a big problem, but is it even in the top five big problems for the government?
Reason 697 why cutting public services, and investment/spending on them, is entirely the wrong thing to do.
In view of @HYUFD terribly sad news I am retiring from this forum early tonight with this upsetting news sending all the love in the world to all the family
It would be a fair criticism of me that I get a lot of my opinions from The Spectator, because it's really the one bit of the media I read the most. And I think the first thing I read about a topic, if it reads convincingly, usually becomes my opinion till something else comes along.
So I am now officially against Northern Powerhouse Rail. I was all for it, till I read this fairly damning account of it, which is basically that it's not going to do anything for the North, because it's basically more of the HS2 project, just gussied up by Obsborne to look like his own genius levelling up scheme.
Osborne did that a lot. The OBR for example was meant to be a great way to ensure Tory style fiscal rectitude, but it wasn't - it was actually a quango designed to ready us for monetary union. Northern Powerhouse Rail sounds brilliant, but it turns out:
Called Northern Powerhouse Rail, this section alone will cost a claimed £17 billion (in reality, perhaps £30 billion). It will be a high-speed railway on which trains can never reach high speeds, because the stations are too close together. It will leave Manchester via a vastly expensive new eight-mile tunnel in the wrong direction – roughly south, only then turning west towards Liverpool, hence the longer journey time. The official reason for doing it like this is to serve Manchester Airport. But the ‘airport’ station would be almost a mile away from the airport. You’d have to transfer by bus.
So until another, better take comes along, I'm adopting Gilligan's view that NPR is shite and we should do a Queen Elizabeth line for Northern England instead. We're out of the EU now, we can do what the populace actually needs, not continue with their ludicrous grand projets and have to pretend they're working for people.
Unusually, this is a subject I'm actually reasonably well-informed on (and I've read the Gilligan report). I think the below is a fair view - obviously I want the best outcome for GM and the North, so it is biased by that, but not, I hope, by anything else.
1) The Gilligan reiterates the old chestnut about journey times. NPR isn't primarily about journey times: it's about frequency and reliability. And a holistic network. Yes, you can get in 31 minutes from Lime Street to Victoria - but not desperately reliably, and at the expense of suburban services on the line. 2) The report says there are already two lines from Liverpool to Manchester (three if you include Headbolt Lane - which you can, but seems a stretch, because you'd need to reinstate a short bit of track for that to count). But that's normal between adjacent big cities - I think there are five routes between Glasgow and Edinburgh. 3) Prioritise local services, says Gilligan. But then suggests filling up the existing network with city to city links, which can only be done at the expense of local services. 4) But actually, better local services are what we all want. And that's the point of new high speed alignments: we provide new capacity, run the high speed services on that, and you can therefore run far more local services on the old network. A moment's thought will demonstrate this: with a mix of fast and slow trains, you need to leave a massive gap after the slow train leaves before you set the fast train off. If all your trains are of the same speed, you can run 15tph along a route, assuming sufficient capacity at stations. If it's a mix of fast and slow, it might be half that or less. NPR allows much better suburban services to run. This is the outcome Gilligan claims to want. ...(cont)...
4) Dig a shorter east-west tunnel, with branches off, says Gilligan. But actually tunnelling itself is not THAT expensive. What is expensive is undgerground grade separated junctions. And Gilligan appears to be proposing at least five. 5) You CAN'T get 30tph on a two-track underground railway. You just can't. The Castlefield corridor is creaking at 13-14. Thameslink gets no more than 18. 6) Yes, the Airport station is a short distance from the Airport - this is normal, Airports are large - but you don't need a bus link, there are already powers for extending the tram. (cf the Piccadilly line at Heathrow). This is a better outcome for those travelling from further afield eg Liverpool, Leeds, N. Wales than changing at Piccadilly. 6) All that said, actually, the SE-W tunnel Gilligan proposes, along with the regular radial routes out of Manchester, would be welcome. Indeed, rumour has it Network Rail are considering a similar (albeit smaller scale) thing as a potential solution to the Central Manchester rail bottleneck. But the thing to note is that this wouldn't be a cheap solution: all the good stuff which Gilligan lists as 'do instead' is likely to add up to far more than NPR. Less tunnelling, sure - but underground junctions, electrification, grade separated junctions, four-tracking and work on operational railways will be far more complex and expensive than a new alignment. That's why the 'use the Chat Moss' option kept getting filtered out when NPR has considered it in the past.
Gilligan clearly knows a bit. But it is amazing what he either doesn't know or pretends not to know.
As it happens I saw a presentation today by Dame Sarah Storey explaining the history of the Bee Network, and how it has developed from a Walking/Wheeling and Cycling initiative a decade ago to being about developing an integrated system including public transport.
She had an interesting focus on disabled - pointing out that if design was for them, then everything else was covered because disabled people have the most varied requirements.
There seems to be an emphasis developing around accessible "multi-modal" journeys across places which are leading edge now.
If I can offer any consoling thoughts to @HYUFD and his wife, it is this
Remember, my friend, that you are blessed with faith. That is a great gift. Atheists say "faith is a crutch" - and, thing is, they are right. It is a crutch, and man is a broken animal that often needs a crutch. Lean on your faith, tonight. Use it, thankfully, amidst the sadness
It surely doesn't take the pain away, but maybe it makes the healing a little easier
I've been quasi-religious almost all of my adult life, but I grow increasingly and purely religious as I age. And no, I don't think it is mere decrepitude and fear of death, it is more the realisation that God is Obviously Out There. All life has serious purpose: none of this is random
Been at the hospital most of the day as sadly my wife has had a stillbirth. So not been the best of days for us
Christ. I'm sorry. I wish you both strength.
Thanks and for all your kind comments below. Won't be commentating tomorrow and over the weekend as I will obviously be supporting my wife but hope to drop in a bit next week
Best wishes to you both. As others have said, curious the extent to which that sad news has affected me.
Again, is the problem with us as British if we cannot apply an ID card system without turning into Nazis? If our politicians can’t see the difference between ID cards and fascist control? Maybe it’s not ID cards that are the problem but our politicians and Civil Service.
There's undoubtedly an authoritarian tendency among British politicians and large parts of the civil service. That's why comparisons the pro-ID card faction make with places like Estonia are worthless. I'd mostly trust the Estonian government not to use ID cards as a weapon to control their population.
But give the UK government a way to exert more control over people's lives and they'll use it with gleeful abandon.
Comments
Maybe they think that equates to not having Farage on and so doesn't count as to the endless support for Reform.
If Labour really think that this will improve things for people in Britain then credit for taking it on I guess - and I hope the start of a trend. If not, bit confused as to why they are exposing themselves to such a large political risk.
https://www.gov.uk/view-right-to-work
https://www.gov.uk/legal-right-work-uk
Employers who want to check. Those that don’t, don’t.
That's potentially a flaw since a faker needs fake one document and the doors are blown wide open?
It’s fine if you and I believe that everyone is a good egg and plays by the rules but they don’t.
It doesn't seem unreasonable to me, or other members, that Starmer should be allowed two years to demonstrate that he needs to be replaced, or not, as the case may be,
Why not start with a MVP that keeps the civil liberties issues in check. A simple proof of ID tied to, say, NI number and passport or visa status.
Then add functionality that is purely optional. Driving licence, NHS patient data, tax records, DBS. And so on. Most people will signup if it makes life easier.
20 years ago when I regularly watched QT the Lib Dems who were polling considerably less than Reform are polling were on every single week too.
1. Is the worker a British citizen.
Yes.
3. Does the worker have a current or expired passport showing that they are a British citizen?
No
3. Does the worker have a birth or adoption certificate from the UK, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man?
No
4. Does the worker have a certificate of registration or naturalisation as a British citizen?
No
So I, a British citizen, wouldn't have been be able to get a new job because I didn't hold the relevant paperwork.
"We need to talk about the judge who spared a Muslim man prison time after he attacked someone with a knife...
Turns out, he has an interesting history.
Thread 🧵"
These people all have to be purged. Sent to the backbenches of life, many of them must face a courtroom
https://x.com/StarkNakedBrief/status/1971249396454129804
They are leading in the polls by ten fecking points. They are on course to win the General Election outright. What is your problem??
*Long way to go
Even if not appearing directly on the card, centrally collected and 'verifiable' metadata tied to your ID containing information about your ethnicity, religion, sexual identity and so forth, could be used against you in times to come, as governments have used it against undesirables in the past.
No.
Just no. Full stop. I have no faith in the state remaining, in perpetuity, a benevolent actor.
Less power in the hands of the state, not more.
You cannot on one hand want reform scrutinised and on the other deny them a place on QT.
Perhaps Burnham will lose his ventures?
If someone wanted to, you and I have already exposed multiple things about our beliefs and views on this one site.
If you are as afeared as you seem to be about our future freedom then you should find a way to scrub your presence here, as should most of us.
The best way to prevent the evils of despotism is not to allow the despots into power.
But I would just characteristise it more in terms of realism ; new types of opportunities for abuse are always taken, historically, and in the case of figures like Thiel, long-term abuse of information is even part of his publlicly declared point.
Simple proof of ID that replaces drivers' license as an optional form of ID? Sure.
Compulsory for everyone to have regardless of whether the have other perfectly legitimate forms of ID? We're already into completely new territory.
Compulsory to carry with you and show on request for X, Y and Z every day tasks? GP appointment, traffic stop, to enter an event with some security measures in place, etc. We're in a completely different world now in terms of balance of rights between citizen and state.
Oh and, after all, it's not stopping illegal migration or the black market as people continue to get fake IDs and dodgy employers turn a blind eye? Better add biometric data to the database to make sure.
No one believes the minimum viable product is the end state here. So best to kill it before it's born.
I find no reason to make it easier by tying it all to a card with my name on that I have to carry at all times and present whenever a copper forces me to.
We all leave a digital footprint, that's undeniable. But at present we have pseudonymity and plausible deniability and it's a bloody hard job for the state to, say, target all of us of [e.g. religious identity] at the same time. I see no reason, in the name of comfort or convenience, to make the state's job easier, in a potential 'papers please' society where pseudonymity no longer exists and everything is tied to a single centralized database.
If we are so bad that this would happen if we introduce something that most of civilised Europe has then it says more about us as a nation than ID cards in themselves.
A QT that was WITHOUT them would be absurd. They are the most popular party in the country by a distance, Farage is the favourite to be next PM. Moreover the polling is reinforced by the 2025 elex. Pipe down
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8ieN10lX40
I think we can put this down as another leadership bid. Which makes him a three time loser.
Time to give it up Andy!
In reality? Imagine the fun they* could have. Prove your ID to access services. To travel. To eat. Sorry, we've withdrawn your privileges because of this tweet you posted...
So as a result of this consistent authoritarian over-reach of the Home Office over many decades, the dangers this time are actually not only to personal liberty, but also in terms of espionage and international geo-politics, too.
No, the UK could never descend into authoritarianism or become a police state at the drop of a hat. There's simply no historical precedent for it.
This is what I mean by giving the authoritarian loons the tools they need.
Then you remember who this will be run by. Once you get it so that the machinery of state needs your ID, you are sunk. And of course we would have Tesco etc doing the same - a replacement for Clubcard.
Maybe better to question why there isn’t a massive libertarian party in the UK who stands against this kind of thing, maybe Brits just secretly love it? Or are uniquely thick.
Though they could still form a government with Tory support
France and Switzerland drive on the wrong side of the road.
All manner of things shall be well, even if it rightly doesn't feel that way.
Many commiserations to both of you.
Again, is the problem with us as British if we cannot apply an ID card system without turning into Nazis? If our politicians can’t see the difference between ID cards and fascist control? Maybe it’s not ID cards that are the problem but our politicians and Civil Service.
“The systems involved are profoundly dangerous to the privacy and fundamental freedoms of the British people."
Another by-election in David Davis's constituency?
You have many friends here on PB. Lean on us and vent, if it helps
x
May you find happiness.
I am sure the whole forum will want to send their love and thoughts to you all at this sad and difficult time
May the 'Good Lord' give you all the comfort that comes from being Christian
God bless
It's a measure of how close you can get online that @HYUFD telling me that is almost akin to a "normal real life friend" telling me the same
Wired: Digital ID.
All the parties seem to be against. Burnham should lead against it if he wants to oust Keith quicker.
God bless
She had an interesting focus on disabled - pointing out that if design was for them, then everything else was covered because disabled people have the most varied requirements.
There seems to be an emphasis developing around accessible "multi-modal" journeys across places which are leading edge now.
Remember, my friend, that you are blessed with faith. That is a great gift. Atheists say "faith is a crutch" - and, thing is, they are right. It is a crutch, and man is a broken animal that often needs a crutch. Lean on your faith, tonight. Use it, thankfully, amidst the sadness
It surely doesn't take the pain away, but maybe it makes the healing a little easier
I've been quasi-religious almost all of my adult life, but I grow increasingly and purely religious as I age. And no, I don't think it is mere decrepitude and fear of death, it is more the realisation that God is Obviously Out There. All life has serious purpose: none of this is random
But give the UK government a way to exert more control over people's lives and they'll use it with gleeful abandon.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/730194