Renew your passport now!

[Howard]

I don't understand this opinion 'if you've done nothing wrong - you've got nothing to worry about'.

Never done anything legally dubious in your life have you? Never copied software or music? Never smoked/drank underage? Never gone over the speed limit in your car?

I don't see what any of that has to do with an ID card.

[Swafe]

I think ID cards are a good idea. Sort out the scum and the immigrants etc etc.

I hope it will to, but it wont

If ID cards are not compulsory yet, its a complete waste of time, you can't say, ' you havnt got a card, get out' when the majority of british citezens dont have them either

[5lab]

hippy paranoia, in my opinion..

[Splash]

There's also the cost thing - whether you choose to pay for them or not you still end up coughing up. I really don't see how they'll perform many of the quick fixes they're being sold to us for.

Also just on Koolpc's comments - I know of a lot of people who are what I'd deem to be unpleasant people (scum? a tad harsh...) who are British through and through. Don't let the BNP off the hook that easily! Also bear in mind that a lot of immigrants (legal or otherwise) perform a lot of the jobs that nobody here wants to do - cleaning hospitals etc.

[Mike Fishcake]

I don't see what any of that has to do with an ID card.

TBH it doesn't have anything to do with ID cards directly, it's just that the general 'if you're not doing anything wrong, you've not got anything to worry about' argument annoys me.

[Proplus]

I'm originally from Hong Kong, where they've had an ID system ever since I was born (in a time long long ago, in a distant galaxy......)

Over there it's a part of life, police have to power to stop you in the street and check your ID card, and its a nesscesity to carry it with you at all times.

People are worried that the police will have to much power, at first it'll always happen, but it'll fade out to the point where if they see someone dodgy, they'll have a reason to pull them up and ask to see their ID and check their background (or in case of illegal immigrants, the lack of).

Underage drinking is cut dramatically, and youngsters are afraid of going to 18 or over clubs, as police have the power to go in and check IDs.

There are benefits to this system, over in HK, on different days of the week, at certain shops, if your ID card number ends with a specific number, say '9', you can get discounts and free gifts.

[Stoo]

Meh, I don't know if I'll bother to renew my UK one.. I'll probably just use my Canadian one instead..

Dual nationality FTW

[Rave]

Or you could just not get a new passport. Have you read the ID card act 2006? is there not any other ways they can force you to register..

They can make it compulsory to turn up for cataloguing, yes. However, this being the government, I very much doubt that they'll be organised enough to stop you leaving the country after you've told them to stick it where the sun doesn't shine.

Will this affect other forms of ID like driving licences?

That's the idea.

becuase you dont need a passport for everyday life.... and if you want to permenantly leave the country... im sure they would be happy to deport you..

Oh yeah? Perhaps you could put me in touch with the government's voluntary deportation department then, because I seem to have missed that one.

I think ID cards are a good idea. Sort out the scum and the immigrants etc etc.

Oh yes. Immigrants, that no1 cause of all that is wrong with this country. Are you referring to the millions of legal immigrants that were invited here by our government, or the illegal ones? And, if it's the illegal ones, perhaps you'd care to explain exactly how the ID card and the National Identity Register will 'sort them out'? Because I reckon if the government doesn't know you're here, they can't make you register for an ID card. Still, I could be wrong of course, perhaps you know better?

hippy paranoia, in my opinion..

What an elegantly argued and beautifully written post. You must be proud.

People are worried that the police will have to much power, at first it'll always happen, but it'll fade out to the point where if they see someone dodgy, they'll have a reason to pull them up and ask to see their ID and check their background (or in case of illegal immigrants, the lack of).

Well, I was lucky enough not to grow up in Hong Kong, and I still cling to the old fashioned notion that the government and the police answer to me, not the other way round. I don't want to be forced to carry a bit of plastic in case the police decide to make my life difficult because I look a bit 'dodgy'. Nor do I give a toss whether underage kids go out drinking, I did it myself and it never did me any harm.

[JPreston]

I'd also like to be put in touch with the govt's voluntary deportation dept please, I'd like to volunteer to be deported to the Bahamas please.

Some really stupid posts made above about deporting undocumented immigrants . As usual.

[herulach]

Oh yeah? Perhaps you could put me in touch with the government's voluntary deportation department then, because I seem to have missed that one.

Vote BNP, then youll get one

Oh yes. Immigrants, that no1 cause of all that is wrong with this country. Are you referring to the millions of legal immigrants that were invited here by our government, or the illegal ones? And, if it's the illegal ones, perhaps you'd care to explain exactly how the ID card and the National Identity Register will 'sort them out'? Because I reckon if the government doesn't know you're here, they can't make you register for an ID card. Still, I could be wrong of course, perhaps you know better?

if youre challenged in the street and cant produce one (unless theres mitigating circumstances), then youre dodgy and need to be investigated.

Well, I was lucky enough not to grow up in Hong Kong, and I still cling to the old fashioned notion that the government and the police answer to me, not the other way round. I don't want to be forced to carry a bit of plastic in case the police decide to make my life difficult because I look a bit 'dodgy'. Nor do I give a toss whether underage kids go out drinking, I did it myself and it never did me any harm.

Why not? the main objection there seems to be you dont want to carry a card, which weighs what, 10g? how many cards are in your wallet right now? And how often do you go anywhere without it? It isnt an inconvenience in the slightest.

Thanks to whatever the terrorism act was called the police can already stop and search you if they want, and frankly i dont see anything wrong with it. If 20000 people a day are asked for ID, even if only 10 of them turn out to be illegal immigrants that are subsequently deported, its no bad thing imo.

[Proplus]

Well, I was lucky enough not to grow up in Hong Kong, and I still cling to the old fashioned notion that the government and the police answer to me, not the other way round. I don't want to be forced to carry a bit of plastic in case the police decide to make my life difficult because I look a bit 'dodgy'. Nor do I give a toss whether underage kids go out drinking, I did it myself and it never did me any harm.

Yes, Rave, think only for yourself and not for other people of this country. The government and its police force does not answer to you, it answers to the people of this country and the needs of the people and their society, its this change that is needed, being stuck with an old fashioned thinking like yourself has only increased the rate of decay of the society we live in. Sitting back, only think for yourself, criticising methods of systems trying to help sort out problems within this society.....yeah, so constructive.

Some people have the idea that we live in this perfect 'free' system, they can do/say whatever they wish, and fight for this right. Well, I'm sorry, try standing in Picadilly Circus or Heathrow Airport and shout out "I've got a bomb" and see what we happen. Sure you have the 'freedom' and 'right' to say it, but you also have the consequences of it to face.

Yes, underage drinking didn't affect you (debateable), but it still affects a certain percentage of this country. Its like saying bombs on planes are OK, as 99.99% of the population are not affected by it.

Hopefully, by having a central ID database with all your information on it will lead to less hassle with 'paperwork' in life. Its like applying fore a mortgage, you need to go to this so and so institute to prove this and that, another company to get info to prove another thing, and another company to prove another detail.

[Spud1]

First before anyone jumps on me - my opinions on this have changed. You will find many posts with me saying things like 'if you have nothing to hide whats the problem' etc etc, but now I see the real issue I think Also I apologise in advance for the relativly poor structure of this post, was done fairly quickly lol

This isn't about 'carrying an ID card'. Carrying another card would make no difference to our lives this is true - whats 10g extra weight?

It's the fact that we are being FORCED to do it that I have a problem with. By the time the scheme is fully implemented every UK citizen will have to carry an ID card if they want a passport (afaik, please correct me if I am wrong on this). Now the UK isn't america, and most of its citizens need and want a passport if they want the freedom to travel. No passport means you can't travel out of the UK (can't even use your driving licence to travel round the EU like the rest of europe can because Tony Blair and his cronies didn't like the idea).

This may be a relativly small thing, but it's just one of the many steps towards losing control. The ID card scheme gives the government more information about you on their files. What's the next step, GPS in cars giving the governement information about where you are/what roads/how fast you are going..this has been discussed has it not? I think it will eventually be put in place, voluntary at first but eventually compulsory - maybe you will need a device in your car to be allowed on certian roads?

Sure you can look at it from the point of view that if you are a law abiding citizen, who never does ANYTHING wrong, then what's the problem? This is a flawed arguement though, as you have to think what is right and what is wrong? What about mistakes/accidents? Everyone has slightly different ideas on right and wrong, and i'm fairly sure that the majority of the uk population does not know every law in detail, and so will make mistakes, which could be picked up on.

It is a step closer to a society that isn't free. True we don't have a totally free society at the moment, and in reality a totally free society wouldn't work, but what we have at the moment is a careful balance between the two. It's by no means perfect, but introducing ID cards is not the way to fix our problems.

What we really need to do is educate the uk population on what a government is - and what the differences between the parties are. I know lot's of people who vote based on family tradition, or if they like the party leader or not...and this is unbelievable. The idea of voting is that everyone has an informed, fair say in who runs our country. This just does not happen at the moment. Then we have the problem that some of those who are informed don't want to vote either - because there is no party that will do what they want, so you end up having to choose between 3 (2 really) parties, none of which you really want in power. You could vote for a smaller party that better reflects your ideals, but because the majority of the population votes for the big 2 parties, that also makes no real difference.

Oh and don't even get me started on this "anti-terrorism" act, I have personal experience with that retarded act..

*sigh*

Sorry to rant at and I went OT, but to answer the main topic question - I am not renewing my passport, purely because I don't plan on staying in the UK after I finish university. There are plenty of jobs in the rest of the world

[nichomach]

Yes, Rave, think only for yourself.....yeah, so constructive.

Actually, Rave isn't just speaking for himself, he's speaking for all of us that think that this is a massive and unwarranted extension of the powers of the state into the lives of ordinary law-abiding people. Rave is one of the people of this country, as am I. Being concerned about state intrusion into our lives is not "old-fashioned thinking", it's actually bothering to pay attention. Rave wasn't arguing that the police and other law enforcement agencies should answer to him personally, he was arguing that they answer to the citizens of this country, not the other way around, and frankly you'd have to be dense enough to have your own event horizon not to see that.

ID cards aren't going to "sort out the problems of this country"; firstly, even if they work properly when/if implemented, undocumented aliens will still be, guess what, UNDOCUMENTED.

Secondly, they will not prevent terrorism; under the current proposals, every single one of the people involved in the July 7th bombings would have had an ID card, so they wouldn't have beedn detained on that basis beforehand, and detaining the bits left over afterward would have been a little pointless.

Thirdly, the only people that will be registered are people that abide by the law and troop along baa-ing to the local STASI^H^H^H^H^H Home Office registration centre.

Fourthly, even assuming that people register en masse, the suggestion that Electronic Disasters Supplied, or whoever the primary contractor is for the scheme, are even capable of implementing a system as massive as this without utterly ****ing it up is frankly fatuous; if you don't believe me, look at the utter cluster**** that is the courts system's IT, or, hey, look at the Child Support Agency, where the end users can spend ages taking details and adding them to records, make detailed notes, save them, and then watch as they disappear into the ether (my mother actually works for them, and the staff really like the abuse that they get when yet again the systems cock up).

Some people have the idea that we live in this perfect 'free' system, they can do/say whatever they wish, and fight for this right. Well, I'm sorry, try standing in Picadilly Circus or Heathrow Airport and shout out "I've got a bomb" and see what we happen. Sure you have the 'freedom' and 'right' to say it, but you also have the consequences of it to face.

Ah, the familiar straw man argument. "I say that you believe in a completely unrestricted society, so if I defeat THAT idea, I don't actually have to face your objections at all". Rave doesn't believe in a completely lawless society any more than I do; but if our privacy is going to be invaded by the state, and our freedoms curtailed further, we'd like there to be a good reason for it, which, with ID cards, there patently is not. Regarding your man shouting "bomb" example, you should really familiarise yourself with the difference between speech as expression and speech as conduct. In fact, such a person would be quite rightly arrested and at least charged with behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace. And it's got naff all to do with ID cards.

Yes, underage drinking didn't affect you (debateable), but it still affects a certain percentage of this country. Its like saying bombs on planes are OK, as 99.99% of the population are not affected by it.

And we have laws and schemes already in place to address that; of course, they won't touch the cases of people buying booze for underage drinkers, or establishments that don't check the age of someone that they serve, but then neither will ID cards. Null point.

Hopefully, by having a central ID database with all your information on it will lead to less hassle with 'paperwork' in life. Its like applying fore a mortgage, you need to go to this so and so institute to prove this and that, another company to get info to prove another thing, and another company to prove another detail.

That assumes that the scheme will be implemented correctly. It won't. Like any other massive government IT project, it will be screwed up. Secondly, an ID card just purports to prove that you are who you say you are (I say purports, because that assumes that it doesn't say I'm Mrs Gladys Philpott, aged 83 of Sudbury). It doesn't give your financial status, evidence of ownership of property, in other words, you'll STILL need to go around other agencies to provide all that information.

We're being sold a £40,000,000,000 pup; it won't accomplish what it's sold as being able to - after telling us that it would prevent crime and terrorism and all that crap, even the government have had to withdraw some of the more ludicrous claims made for it. In exchange for this pup, we're being told that we will have a massive increase in the amount of data held on us, and no control over its use. Look at the government's use of census data; we're legally obliged to provide it, but successive governments have coined money selling it on to direct marketers and cold callers. Now imagine what hay they'll make with the data that we'll be forced to give them.

Worse yet, because the governemnt trumpets this as absolute proof of identity, when (not if, when) it screws up, it will be a nightmare to try to correct errors in the information, or to explain that yes, for example, it says I'm Gladys Philpott, but the magic box is wrong.

But fundamentally, and above all else, I loathe this enforced licensing and tagging of ordinary people, this imposition of a license that I will have to pay for to be allowed to exist. Anyone who doesn't see that as a fundamental shift in the relationship of the state with the individual really must have achieved full cranio-rectal lock.

It's a useless, expensive and morally opprobrious boondoggle. If you're going to spend those billions on security, spend them where it matters; on the police, on the security services, on things that actually DO something.

[Spud1]

Nice post nichomach, you put it much better than I managed

[ACiD303]

I'm originally from Hong Kong, where they've had an ID system ever since I was born (in a time long long ago, in a distant galaxy......)

Over there it's a part of life, police have to power to stop you in the street and check your ID card, and its a nesscesity to carry it with you at all times.

People are worried that the police will have to much power, at first it'll always happen, but it'll fade out to the point where if they see someone dodgy, they'll have a reason to pull them up and ask to see their ID and check their background (or in case of illegal immigrants, the lack of).

My family's in Hong Kong, I had the opporunity to stay there (permanently) a few times, but each time I opted to come back here - though it wasnt because of ID cards or anything, but I was certainly glad not having to worry about having my passport on me all the time.

What did happen was that I was asked to present ID at least 3 or 4 times a week by policemen - when I was told I could be arrested for not presenting some form of ID upon demand, I kinda made it a point to remember my passport over my keys or travel pass, or even wallet. What made things worse was sometimes they didn't believe my "british passport" and asked why I didn't have the HKID.

Thing is I dont want to live in a society, where things move fast enough as they already are, without some pig asking for ID - I dont really care about the the other civil rights stuff (as much anyway) coz I know Im one of those people that authorities like to bother. Oh well, at least maybe this'll get round the problem of me not getting let into somewhere because Ive not "upgraded" my paper driving license

[nichomach]

Nice post nichomach, you put it much better than I managed

Hell, no, I loved your post; you hit the nail on the head reagrding both your own objections to the ID card scheme, and the general malaise gripping politics.