Monday
(7)There is a sense in which I pity this government. No, really I do. When someone is prepared to exploit any sort of human tragedy in order to get what they want, one is forced to conclude that they have very little left in the way of self-respect or decency.
I don't think any of us truly appreciate just how badly our Home Secretary, David Blunkett, wants a national ID card system but the desire must be intense enough to burn a hole in his soul. It has now got to the stage where there is no bad news too pathetic enough not to be manipulated into a ID card propoganda opportunity, be it a shooting in Shropshire, a murder in Manchester or a child-abduction in Cheltenham.
The latest ghastly incident to be turned into a government rhetorical tool is the 19 illegal Chinese immigrants who were drowned off the coast of Lancashire over the weekend:
A coroner has set up a commission to identify all the mainly Chinese cockle pickers who died after being caught by high tides - but none have been named.A group of more than 30 cocklers were trapped by rising water in the Hest Bank area of the Lancashire bay on Thursday night.
Alongside the calls for 'more regulation' (the chief reflexive response), Mr Blunkett popped up on the late evening news (sorry, no link) in a laughable attempt to persuade everyone that a national ID card would prevent this sort of thing happening again.
Complete and utter rubbish, of course. But that does not matter. What matters is the drip-drip propoganda required to facilitate 'acculturation'.
Mr Blunkett and his underlings must trawl through the daily news bulletins desperately seeking the kind of heartstring-tugging stories that they use to piggy-back their pet project into the public realm. Like teenage crack-whores, there is no part of their dignity these people will not sacrifice in order to get their fix. How sad, how pathetic.
Since many of the corpses recovered at Morecambe were naked, an ID card would be of little use, since it would be in the pocket of the discarded clothing. A much better scheme would be a tag rivetted through the ear. This would not be lost as easily, how about it Mr Blunket?
Posted by zmollusc at February 10, 2004 01:07 AM
A bar code tattooed on the temple would allow the police to hold a scanner-gun to your head and save time. The computer could then automatically shoot anyone whose bar-code wasn't right with no danger of human error (or inefficient concepts of fair trial).
Posted by Guy Herbert at February 10, 2004 06:10 AM
Ah, but if they had had ID cards, they could have clung to them like little life-rafts...
Posted by Peter at February 10, 2004 07:39 AM
I'm pretty much on record as being amused by all this. Frankly I don't think a national ID system, even here in America, is all that big a deal.
I suppose the REAL fireworks will begin when the government declares the Internet to be a part of the national infrastructure, nationalizes it and requires proper ID to access it.
And yes, I can see that coming too. South Korea has pretty much done this, and gone completely fiber-optic to boot. A number of small towns or counties here in America have made highspeed broadband a part of the town's infrastructure services. It's not that big a step to state or federal level programs. It can be argued that doing so is in the best interests of both business and citizens.
*shrug* Now let the lividity begin.
ed
Posted by ed at February 10, 2004 09:08 PM
