For your security

Home secretary Jacqui Smith unveiled the first UK identity card on Thursday, reopening the debate about their necessity.

Many campaigners are vehemently opposed to the government's ID card plans, which will begin when the government rolls out its biometric residence permits for foreign nationals in November.

The first ID cards for British citizens are expected to be introduced in 2009 while from 2010 they will be available on a voluntary basis.

Those against them argue they undermine civil liberties by providing the government with unnecessary information. Ms Smith insists they are necessary as a means of allowing legitimate foreign nationals to claim public services.

But cost is also an issue, as their development has already produced a bill of over £100 million.

How much would it cost to put more cops on the street?

Just askin'.

But it's Americans who are stupid and ignorant, right?

More than 50 percent of Britons believe that polygamy is legal in the United States; in fact, it is illegal in all 50 states.

Almost one-third of Britons believe that Americans who have not paid their hospital fees or insurance premiums are not entitled to emergency medical care; in fact, such treatment must be provided by law.

Seventy percent of Britons think the United States has done a worse job than the European Union in reducing carbon emissions since 2000; in fact, America’s rate of growth of carbon emissions has decreased by almost ten percent since 2000, while that of the EU has increased by 2.3 percent.

Relevance

That's the trouble with reality; eventually even the stupidest among us become able to perceive it.

So, the disillusionment of the public with the political culture is so great that even the Parliamentarians are starting to notice, the murmuring of the rabble is loud enough now to penetrate the ten-foot thick walls of their skulls.

What's the response of our Keepers to this lack of faith? Why, to make voting compulsory, and to give a "second vote" so if the first one doesn't turn out well, we can go with the second pick.

Yeah, that's what we need, more irrelevant legislation. That'll help.

Un.

be.

lievable.

EU Referendum summs it up:

What they don't seem to get though is that, having given away most of their powers to the
European Union, with at least 70 percent of our laws made in Brussels – a figure set
to increase – MPs are largely irrelevant...tinkering round the edges and changing
the voting system is not going to increase the relevance, much less the authority of
MPs. They will be seen to be relevant when, as a matter of fact, they *are*
relevant.

A quick lesson on rhetoric

The term "begging the question" is now so often misapplied as to have almost lost its meaning. Despite what semi-literate journalists and politicians seem to believe, it does not mean the same thing as "raise the question".

It means, to assume what you are charged to prove.

As in a court case in which the prosecution must prove that a man beats his wife.

When the prosecutor questions the man, saying, "How long has it been since you stopped beating your wife", he is "begging the question. He has started not with the question at hand, whether the man actually does what he is accused of, but with the assumption of guilt.

Get it?

OK, now a real life example.

Today, Bishop Patrick O'Donohue and colleagues, were called to be questioned by a Parliamentary committee on Schools in response to his issuance last year of a document requiring Catholic schools in the diocese of Lancaster to actually be Catholic, in more than name.

Barry Sheerman, MP for Huddersfield, who claims to be some kind of Christian, is the chairman of the committee began the procedings with the following:

Prefacing his questions with a disclaimer “I suppose you could call me
a Christian”, Sheerman started by assuring that the questions that followed should
not be seen as “hostility” to religious belief but “just a desire to know”.

“Doesn’t that worry you...that your schools are very good at excluding poor and less
fortunate children."

A textbook case.

Well, as long as the government retains control,

So, Gordon, any news on when your train leaves?


I'm sure I will continue to feel "safe and secure."

And after all, it's only going to be used to control organized crime and terrorism. Naturally I wouldn't dream of implying that the government would be ignoring civil rights for no good reason. Or for some reason other than the stated ones.

Prime minister says phone-tap evidence will be allowed in British courts
February 6, 2008
LONDON: British prosecutors will be able to use phone-taps as evidence in courts for the first time under proposals to improve complex investigations into terrorism and organized crime, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Wednesday.

Brown said a seven-month review by former senior civil servant John Chilcot recommended lifting the ban on the use of secretly intercepted private communications for a limited number of cases — despite concerns from intelligence chiefs who fear their techniques could be compromised.

Prosecutors can currently use recordings or transcripts from bugs secretly installed in homes and cars — or covertly recorded face-to-face conversations between suspects and undercover officers.

...

"The use of intercept in evidence characterizes a central dilemma we face as a free society — that of preserving our liberties and the rule of law, while at the same time keeping our nation safe and secure," Brown told lawmakers.

No Student Loans without Gov't ID Card

Home Office documents

leaked to the Conservative party last night, those applying for student loans will be forced to hold identity cards to get the funding from 2010.

Anyone aged 16 or over will be expected to obtain a card - costing up to £100 - to open a bank account or apply for a student loan.

The document says: "We should issue ID cards to young people to assist them as they open their first bank account, take out a student loan, etc."

The government had planned to start issuing the ID cards to people applying for a passport from 2010, but confidential documents confirm that the scheme will be delayed to at least 2012.

The biometric cards are due to be introduced for foreign nationals later this year, with the first expected to be issued to UK citizens on a voluntary basis from 2009.

From next year, they will also be issued to people in "positions of trust" such as airport workers.

The revelations have led to concerns that the government is planning to collect the fingerprints and other biometric details of more than two million young people entering higher education each year by stealth.

Shadow immigration minister Damian Green called the plans "straightforward blackmail" to bolster "a failing policy".

"This is an outrageous plan. The government has seen its ID cards proposals stagger from shambles to shambles. They are clearly trying to introduce them by stealth."

I guess it's really true

that wonders never ever cease:

The Guardian has come out against Livingstone.

To understand why Ken Livingstone is unfit to be the Labour candidate for mayor of London, you have to grasp that he has never moved away from the grimy conspirators of the totalitarian left, who have always despised the democratic traditions of the Labour movement. There is a queasiness about dragging them into the light because so many of the baby boomers now in power wasted their youth in Marxist-Leninist politics. But it is better to overcome queasiness than fail to treat a sickness and Ken Livingstone began by travelling with the sickest sect of them all: the Workers' Revolutionary party....

I remember the shock and awe when the Globe and Mail dumped the Liberals and supported Harper. Like the day it stopped raining in Vancouver and this big weird scary bright yellow thing appeared in the sky where the cloud roof is supposed to be and all the pastey-faced bug eyed Vancouverites ran around in a panic thinking it was the end of the world. Lotta lattes spilled that day.

wellwellwell...

Hmp.

Whether we like it or not...

Apparently, the Police Federation doesn't like democracy...

Well, are we surprised?

Police Federation officials claimed they were powerless to prevent Mr Barnbrook from marching. Spokesman Metin Enver said he was not invited specifically but police officers recognised him when he turned up. He said: "Some of my colleagues saw we had the BNP Mayoral candidate with us. The one thing we want to make clear is we didn't invite him. It wasn't a closed march. He chose to attend by his own accord which is his right in a democracy. It is disappointing if anyone chose to join the march for their own agenda.

"We didn't ask him to leave because whether we like it or not we live in a democracy."

Gordon Brown Loses Personal Data of Millions of Britons

I thought I'd share a little personal annecdote in reference to the headline above that has filled the Google News Alerts for the keywords "Gordon," "Brown's", "Incredible", "Shrinking", "Political", and "Career".

I was looking through the adverts in the Daily Mail (which paper has become indispensable, and not only for lighting fires) looking for a company that would give me a better deal than BT on broadband internet.

At each one I called, I was informed that the only "option" available was to pay by "direct debit" and could they please have my bank account number. (That the word "option" didn't mean that, seemed to go over the heads of most of the people I spoke to, no matter how hard I tried to explain it.)

When I said that I did not want anyone dipping their grubby little paws into my bank accounts, I was told that the company was "very sorry" but that "everyone does it that way."

"Well," said I to the twelfth company representative in the phone centre in Bangalore, "I've observed through my travels that most people are extremely stupid. I shall have to revise that assessment to include 'everyone' from now on."

As you have observed, I did manage at last to find a company who would take my money. But I thought that in the light of recent revelations in the news, the fact that it was close to impossible to get a basic service, necessary to my continued employment, without giving out banking details, was illustrative of the problem.

Not everyone can live in a little rural cottage in West Cheshire, snare their own food and collect firewood every day. Most people have to have ordinary services that are considered normal for people in this admittedly incredibly technologically bloated culture.

People need phones. They need the net. They need all sorts of things and the way things are set up, it has become nearly impossible to protect oneself or one's family from the state.

The fact that we are all, either consciously or unconsciously thinking in terms of "protecting" ourselves from the state, says everything that needs to be said I think.

...but comrade, if you've committed no crimes, what have you to worry about?

Confidential personal data is being shared at unprecedented levels, the
information watchdog will warn today.

Data from sources as diverse as store loyalty cards, electronic travel
cards and driving licences is being used without people's knowledge as
never before.

People have "almost zero awareness" of how the information is being
passed around because the web of public and private organisations storing
it has become so complex.

Experts fear it will soon be impossible to stop the "information
sharing juggernaut".