In a truly free country, people have a right to go where they please and to refuse to identify themselves without fear of detention or punishment, as long is there is no probable cause to suspect them of a crime.

You have a right to be anonymous, at least to the government, and certainly as long as you are acting peacefully toward others. This anonymity is part of your rightful expectation of privacy.

This is common sense to those brought up in (or to revere) liberty. Tyrants and those who would be tyrants of course deny it!

Liberty means you don't have to ask someone else's permission to do something. Already, even without ID cards, citizens of so-called free societies must ask their governments for permission to do a great many things that they (or their ancestors) were once at liberty to do. The ID card is only a means by which to make the government's administration of its permission granting and denial process more "efficient" -- and to provide for the expansion of that process to cover as many activities as possible.

Why are so many seemingly in such a hurry to implement the enabling mechanisms of slavery?

Can the Dissident Frogman make one of his cool graphics out of this?

To think that I was taken to task for calling the 'middle class', bovine....

Blunkett obviously thinks so as well.

Isn't there something in the bible about the devil putting his mark on everyone before the day of reckoning.

(Might have this a bit muddled). Err, OK just got this from Google:

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name." (Revelation 13:16-17)

Can we rouse the evangelists against ID cards?

paul writes:

"Can we rouse the evangelists against ID cards?"

Probably, but then do we want to make the case against ID cards seem like the obsession of some ridiculous religious fringe?

You're about 30 years late, Paul (or 50-something, if you want to count from the rebirth of Israel). Evangelical Christians of the apocalyptic flavor have had the screaming willies about government ID, hand-in-hand with a cashless society (that's how they force you to get the ID, see?), for decades. See The Late, Great Planet Earth.

You want proof, draw a barcode on your forehead with a magic marker and take a road trip through the American south. Lookit Bubba fly!

On a more cheerful note, I believe they fingered the original nations of the EC as The Ten-Headed Beast of Revelations.

The important point to remember here is that we do not need a majority to reject ID cards. All we need is for a small minority (say 10% of the population) to refuse to co-operate and the system becomes unworkable.

Well its not too hard to find Satanic references in EU paraphenalia. Take the EU flag and reverse it, wot you got? 12 Pentagrams or as this person put it .

Tim:

Don't tempt me! Don't tempt me! Don't tem...

Darn. Too late.

Which one am I? Errr.... neither.