Lately it seems that hardly a week goes by that we do not get some new chilling preview of the Police State that many in the political class are trying to bring about . How about this one?
Tens of thousands of people who have failed to pay court fines amounting to more than £487m would be banned from leaving the country under new powers outlined by the Home Office. Ministers are also looking at ways of using the new £1.2bn “e-borders” programme to collect more than £9m owed in health treatment charges by foreign nationals who have left the country without paying.
The programme, to be phased in from October next year, will also allow the creation of a centralised “no-fly” list of air-rage or disruptive passengers which can be circulated to airlines. The e-borders programme requires airlines and ferry companies to submit up to 50 items of data on each passenger between 24 and 48 hours before departure to and from the UK. With 200 million passenger movements in and out of the UK last year to and from 266 overseas airports on 169 airlines, an enormous amount of data is expected to be generated by the programme.
Of course as the government freely admits, it will use this to monitor everyone’s movements for all manner of purposes beyond “air-rage” or people using the NHS. I can only imagine how quickly the list of thing that will get you stopped at the border is going to grow. Sorry, you have an appointment with a ‘social’ worker next week and we need to make sure you turn up. Failed to put your recycling out? BBC tax not paid yet? Outstanding parking tickets? Your carbon ration has been used up? Your kiddies refusing to attend the local educational conscription centre?
You think I am joking?
Nowadays, I think about the merits of the Boston Tea Party more and more.
Of course, leaving or arriving in Britain without the scrutiny of British immigration authorities is not especially hard, given that Britain has and always has had a completely unsecured border with the Republic of Ireland. (For people who don’t know the border, you just drive across. There are no checks at all). It is well known amongst foreign nationals living in Britain that if you have overstayed a visa and wish to leave Britain without the scrutiny of British immigration authorities, what you do is get the ferry to Belfast, and then the bus or train to Dublin. Similarly, if you have previously had immigration trouble with the British and want to go to London none the less, what you do is fly to Dublin, and then proceed to London from there.
I have never crossed the border in Ireland for this reason myself, although I have crossed it for other more important reasons like “Why don’t I go to Belfast and then have a few beers with Dale?”. However, as I say, that it can be crossed for this reason is well known. The British and Irish governments probably do exchange information on terrorist suspects and arrest warrants for major crimes, but they certainly do not for routine immigration violations and people who have not paid medical bills.
Thus, in order to actually prevent people from leaving Britain, the government would have to fence the border in Ireland and enforce immigration checks. Given that this was never done during the Troubles and that doing this might start another Irish Civil War (or it might not, but I cannot imagine a British government wanting to find out) no British government would ever dream of doing such a thing. Therefore, to enforce laws of this kind, a British government would have to get the Irish government to send people attempting to leave Ireland but who had issues with the British back to Britain. Once again, there is no problem getting the Irish to extradite people who are accused of serious crimes, but they are not going to do it for unpaid medical bills.
In short, this kind of proposal is completely unenforceable unless you turn Britain into East Germany. Sensible people in the bureaucracy must be aware of this. As for the government itself, it is either completely deluded as to what it can do (which is quite possible) or it very cynically knows that such a proposal is completely unenforceable but that publicisig and passing these kinds of laws makes a good excuse for exercising its actual agenda. These sorts of laws are useless at stopping anyone who is actually doing anything wrong, but these are not actually the people the government wants to regulate and control. Or if they are, that is not the central aim.
No border can be total. But if the government were to say that no travel tickets, i.e. trains, planes, tunnels, ferries etc could be purchased with cash, and that identification was required to obtain ticket with credit or debit cards, then such a scheme would be pretty effective.
However, I still stick to the maxim that I have a right to move freely, without let or hindrance, both inside my own country and outside with the same words printed clearly in my passport.
I’ve heard of a much bolder proposal by the gov’t here in the US to require permission for just about anybody to leave the country. It probably won’t happen anytime soon and I’m not sure it’s anything more than a rumor, but it does not seem so far-fetched anymore.
Sure about this? (Link)
Michael,
The free movement and settlement area between the UK and Ireland is a fundamental treaty obligation. UKgov is currently skating over this problem, leaning on the Irish government to introduce a compatible ID surveillance system in parallel having failed, means it will not as things stand be able to force the few milion UK-resident Irish citizens – nor the few million more entitled to be Irish by birth or grandparentage, if the idea catches on – to be put on the national register.
Perry,
You’re right of course. I have mentioned before, I think, how the Identity Cards Act 2007 creates a new label that applies both to ID cards and passports: “travel authorisation”. It is of no direct consequence, but is a clear indication of the nature of government thinking.
Additional reasons one can, or it is planned that one could have one’s passport – or “travel authorisation” – seized include being behind in child maintenance payments according to the new Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission, or being suspected of being a football hooligan (Football (Disorder) Act 2000, amended last year 2003 to reduce the courts’ discretion), or in pursuit of an Anti-Social Behaviour Order, a Sexual Offences Prevention Order, or (coming soon) a Serious Crime Prevention Order, none of which requires one to have been convicted or be on bail awaiting trial for anything.
Further, the new Borders and Immigration Agency says:
Bearing in mind the mentality of those who really, deeply want the UK turned into another Honeckerland paradise I would imagine that these proposals are designed to shoehorn us into such a state. I would envisage that soon they will abandon all pretensiousness and make us apply for exit visas in order to visit such decadent Western societies as the USA or Russia.
Sensible and bureacracy in one sentence would seem a bit of a tautology to me.
Very soon UK citizens will be less free to travel than visiting foreign nationals.
Next stop, Exit Visas.
Ugarte: Look Rick, do you know what this is? Something that even you have never seen. Letters of Transit digitally signed by Gordon Brown himself. Cannot be rescinded, not even questioned…
All of the above plus, for some reason what really got my goat was the spin from Byrne:
“It will create a new, offshore line of defence – helping genuine travellers, but stopping those who pose a risk before they travel.”
WTF is a “genuine traveller”? How would such a scheme help such a beast anyway?
We’ve got two and a bit years of cheap fixed rate left on our mortgage. I’m starting to view that as a window in which to establish a business that can be easily ported to Texas.
I think Michael is right: Ireland won’t have it.
In any case you can always swim for it.
Of course this means that future ID card refuseniks will be banned from leaving the country if they haven’t paid the fine for refusing to register and get a card.
And anyone who fails to keep their NIR entry up to date may be fined too…
Yes, James. It is all part of the jigsaw. No ID card, no exit. Welcome to Airstrip One.
So the £1.2 billion e-borders bullshit will enable us to reclaim £9 million in unpaid NHS charges? What complete and utter crap. Only a politician (and I do not mean that in a nice way) would ever think for a second that that was a valid reason to spunk away over a billion of our money, even before the inevitable cost over-runs. I’m sorry, but for these pencil dicked bastards it’s all about control, nothing else but that. They like it, they want it, and they are going to make us pay for it.
Julian Taylor,
I would envisage that soon they will abandon all pretensiousness and make us apply for exit visas in order to visit such decadent Western societies as the USA or Russia.
Nothing as unsubtle. What’s currently – openly – being constructed is a world-wide surveillance scheme for travel and migration. As in the recent Chatham House conference: “Who Goes Where? Identity management and global mobility in the 21st century”. I’ve highlighted the IOM here before.
If you are naughty you won’t be granted a visa, or even if you are, risk having it revoked peremptorily by the country you are going to.
That is the whole point of the new ICAO machine-readable passport standard. It allows passport details to be instantly collected, collated with other information, and transmitted from place to place.
James Hammerton,
Of course this means that future ID card refuseniks will be banned from leaving the country if they haven’t paid the fine for refusing to register and get a card.
Well no, since the punishements for non-compliance with the ID notification regime are civil penalties, not court fines. But in time it is highly unlikely travel without an ID registration would be practically possible, even if technically permitted – rather like flying to an EEA destination from the UK without a passport now.
Michael Jennings – “sensible people in the bureacracy must be aware…..”
It does not work that way.
Just because some people (or indeed everyone) knows a policy is crazy does not mean it is not followed.
This is the same in local government as it is national government.
“But surely people would not draw up a policy they know will do lots of bad things and do no good things”.
Yes they would – it happens all the time.
And they are often not bad people either.
On the American point:
For all the talk of Consititutional principles I suspect that something like this could happen there to.
There is a basic ideological assumption in favour of statism just about everywhere – even among people who know that statism does not work.
Take the example of the Minnesota bridge collapse.
A classic failure of statism. The whole interstate road network is an accident waiting to happen (it was badly designed from the start – even according to people who are in favour of government “free” roads) and proper maintanence was most likely not carried out on this particular bridge (a government owned system will always be more interested in flashy new projects than in maintaining old ones).
However, even people who know the vast bureacracy does not work are saying (knee jerk style) “evil Republican Governor, he should not have vetoed the increase in the gas tax”.
Get one of these people privately and ask them whether they think putting even more money into the hands bureacracy would have prevented the bridge collapse. Even those who work in the burearcracy (in fact, especially those who work in the bureacracy) often know it would not have.
But just about everyone comes out with the same statist nonsense – even though they often do not really believe it.
It will be the same with people not be allowed to leave the country without the permission of their social worker (or whatever).
Making the assumption that the UK government does not put out bulletins to foreign governments officially voiding the validity of currently held passports of people whose exit visas have been denied; I submit that the UK-Ireland route is a first step, with tickets purchased there for flights from Ireland to either Canada or Mexico. At least for the short term future [until the first major terrorist attack across them], the US borders of both countries will be wide open and unguarded. At worst,you may have to take a short stroll in the woods or across a shallow stretch of water. Nothing too difficult. Converting assets to a more portable form, ready for instant movement is also a good thought. Once here; well, we need as many believers in Liberty as we can gather in, and here you can fight on with the protection of something that you do not have in Britain – a Bill of Rights that cannot be voided by Congress on a whim.
The State gave itself the power to take away peoples passports (and therefore ability to travel) on suspicion of maybe having been in the same area as people doing naughty things back in 2000 under the Football (Disorder) Act 2000. Though in the 19th century the British where famous for never carrying passports at all when they travelled.
When I first started reading Samizdata a couple of years back the strapline about it being a shadowy group of freedom-lovers was a funny but not totally serious idea. Having just read this report, I’ve realised just how far down the line we’ve stumbled towards a police state. I don’t entirely blame the UK government since I sincerely believe that the USA is the engine behind much of this following 9/11. All sorts of joining up between governments has taken place. Anti money laundering legislation, the anti-tax avoidance measures of the OECD and the like have joined the ruling political classes in an international alliance. You have a situation now where politicians, civil servants and other bureaucrats around the world find they have more in common with each other than with their fellow countrymen. For instance, a tax inspector in the UK and his counterpart in Portugal will find they have more purpose in common with each other than they do with their compatriots. The world is splitting on horizontal divisions of functions rather than the vertical divisions of nation states. It is the march of communications such as the internet and databases that are breaking down national barriers and bringing about a dictatorship of technocrats who will rule us all. I honestly believe the game is up. While the soviet union still existed our freedom in the west was guaranteed. Take away the threat of communism and there’s no longer any need to keep us sweet. The Soviet Union didn’t collapse, it merely became the default state.
Sorry for the rambling post but I find this so depressing and am still trying to rationalise threat to our civil liberties.
When I first started reading Samizdata a couple of years back the strapline about it being a shadowy group of freedom-lovers was a funny but not totally serious idea. Having just read this report, I’ve realised just how far down the line we’ve stumbled towards a police state. I don’t entirely blame the UK government since I sincerely believe that the USA is the engine behind much of this following 9/11. All sorts of joining up between governments has taken place. Anti money laundering legislation, the anti-tax avoidance measures of the OECD and the like have joined the ruling political classes in an international alliance. You have a situation now where politicians, civil servants and other bureaucrats around the world find they have more in common with each other than with their fellow countrymen. For instance, a tax inspector in the UK and his counterpart in Portugal will find they have more purpose in common with each other than they do with their compatriots. The world is splitting on horizontal divisions of functions rather than the vertical divisions of nation states. It is the march of communications such as the internet and databases that are breaking down national barriers and bringing about a dictatorship of technocrats who will rule us all. I honestly believe the game is up. While the soviet union still existed our freedom in the west was guaranteed. Take away the threat of communism and there’s no longer any need to keep us sweet. The Soviet Union didn’t collapse, it merely became the default state.
Sorry for the rambling post but I find this so depressing and am still trying to rationalise threat to our civil liberties.
We need our Sparta. Or a new Rhodesia, since Mugabe isn’t doing anything useful with the place.
Actually, if we all move to Wyoming or Idaho…ISTR the Free State Project looked at Wyoming before settling on New Hampshire. Sure, the NH-Mass border might be easier to defend, but there are fewer Massholes likely to sneak across through Fort Collins.
This whole thing makes me so mad, I want to brew ONE HUNDRED AND ONE gallons of beer this year without paying the seventeen bucks to BATFE! Or go fishing and keep a trout one centimeter too short! Or even use live bait! I’m so damn angry I might drive 33MPH in a 30 on my way to work!
“I have a dream, my friends, that one day, Gordon Brown and Alberto Gonzales will be found by police, together in a motel room in Jersey City. And they will be wearing feather boas and shiny studded black pleather assless chaps! And they will be surrounded by child pornography and expended amyl nitrates! And the cameraman from ‘Cops’ will be there to document this in its full glory!”
These people deserve no better.
Mark Sparrow – you understant the reasons why whenever I hear the words “international cooperation” I am filled with horror and despair.
It is the movement towards world tyranny.
And let us not forget that tyranny is not the opposite of chaos – they are akin (as they a based on force – the denial of private property). Indeed tyranny eventually leads to chaos – as civil society (in the long term) breaks down, and with it falls the mega government itself.
Sunfish.
I have not read the novel. But I am not a great fan of the historical Sparta (although it had its good points – such as the respect for the property rights of free women).
I am not a great fan of Athens either – especially as time went on. Athens became more restrictive towards citizen women, it plunded its allies (by moving the treasury of the Delian league to Athens and then using the money for the benefit of Athens) and politicians (such a the supposedly great Pericles – the man who moved the treasury of the Delian league) started to win votes by promising the poor money at the expense of the rich.
And (the risk of sounding like a bleeding heart) just as I can not think of Sparta without thinking of the Helots, I can not think of Athens without thinking of the slaves working in the state silver mines.
If I had to pick a long lasting city state in Classical Greece I think it would either be Corinth (known for its manufacturing and trading, but a bit decadent for my taste) or Argos.
Some of the events in the history of Argos appeal to me, and some of its traditions fit me rather well. Even my baldness would be fine – Argives cut their hair very short (as a memorial to the dead in the great war with Sparta – a war in which Argos was only saved by the women taking up the defence of the wall, led by a poetess).
Of course the most libertarian part of classical Greece was not a city at all.
It was the hill country of Arcadia – where such things as slavery did not pay a role.
There is also the question of how Greek civilization would have developed had the cities of Ionia (now part of Turkey) not fallen to the Persians.
It is often forgotten that the Ionia cities were more advanced than the main land Greek cities. Both in commerce and in scietific and philosophical thought.
Indeed it has often been claimed that the fall of Ionia led much of Greek thought on to the wrong path.
Whatever the ostensible reasons, it may happen sooner than you think for economic (negative effect on tax
spoilsrevenue) reasons.Mid: that link is truly depressing – I had no idea it is that bad.
Truth be said, Alisa, I didn’t either. I just read that link today courtesy of Instapundit I think, and thought to myself, ‘Oh crap. It’s not just the Samizdatistas that are getting while the getting’s good.’
The pillars holding off the weight of total oppression are leaving. I wonder what the failure mode will be. And how long it will take the survivors to remove what is left by (and of) the politburo.
It’s a different Sparta. The Sparta I referenced is the setting in a science fiction novel.
It’s a planet settled by intellectuals, mostly appearing to be economists of a free-market tendency. They have a number of sayings about “separation of state and economy.”
No slavery. There is a division between Citizens and non-citizens, with examination and public service required for citizenship, an elected Senate holding most of the cards and two monarchs who share executive duties…
Anyway, it’s not what it must have looked like.
The restricted citizenship reminds me of “Starship Troopers” (which, of course, is only “Fascist” to people who do not know what the word “Fascist” means).
The are some points in common with the historical Sparta.
At least before the Spartan conquest of Messenia (whose population became the Helots). Not perhaps the first war (730 – 720 B.C.) but the second war (650 – 620 B.C.).
Sparta had been know for its high culture in poetry and other things. But it became (certainly after the second great war to hold down the Helots – although, technically the Ephors declared war on the Helots every year for centuries, till Messenia was finally freed by the intervention of Thebes) a rather different place.
Still there were two Kings and 5 Ephors (I think 5 is a good number for a council – any more and meetings tend to degenerate) elected by the assembly (full male citizens over 30). So the novel and the historical Sparta have some points of contact.
The two Kings (indeed the Royal families in general) were not subject to the famous (or infamous) “education” that full citizen male citizens were subjected to from the age of 7. An education that made them good heavy infantry – but normally uselss for anything else. But the Royal families could not support a high culture on their own.
Sparta continued for centuries because of the resident aliens (free but non citizens) who lived there and the ancient alliance with the “dwellers round about” (offically Sparta was the head of a small league of its own) who were not only vital for the economy – they also provided light infantry (and slingers, archers and so on).
Of course the Spartans sometimes tried using the Helots for troops – but then there was the question of what to do with them after the campaign was over.
The Romans would not have had a problem – make them Romans (the promise of this will ensure their loyality during the campaign as well).
But the Spartans tended to murder them instead – which led to morale problems.
It could be worse. Australia’s a great place, but sometimes…
I’ve been told that I have to divorce if I am ever to be granted a passport.
There is a petition to try to get this changed. I’m not the only one affected. We had more Human Rights 3 months ago than we do today, more a year ago than 3 months ago, and far more 30 years ago.