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ID numbers and Hidden Europe

Our government is determined that we shall be numbered and identity carded no matter how long it takes or how much opposition has to be ground down, and if they can’t do it by persuading adults, they’ll do it by habituating (and I can think of ruder words than that) children.

Every child in England is to be given a credit card-style ID number in reforms aimed at preventing a repeat of the murder of Victoria Climbie, the Government has announced.

The long-awaited Green Paper on children’s services also included a proposal to create a Children’s Commissioner for England, whose job it will be to speak up for under-18s and ensure their views are “fed into” Government policy.

It set out a large number of changes to the structure of children’s services, which will see education, health and social care combined and dispensed from neighbourhood schools.

Tony Blair said the proposals were a “significant step” towards ensuring there was no repeat of the Climbie case.

One thing is very certain about this new ID numbered world which they are determined to create. It will still contain outbursts of evil like Victoria Climbie’s murder. ID numbers won’t stop that. This is but one more example of what the Telegraph’s Christopher Booker has described as the “Hidden Europe” effect. What this means is that every major political decision in Britain these days is (a) aimed at bringing our institutions and legal procedures in line with those of the rest of the European Union, but (b) never justified as being done for that reason.

It has reached the point where, if you are puzzled by any item of political behaviour, you simply ask yourself: how does this fix Britain more firmly to Europe? Usually there is an answer. And if there is such an answer, that’s why they’re doing it.

I get the definite impression that about a month or two ago, the pro-EUnionists in Britain decided that they had had enough of Mr Blair’s simultaneous apparent enthusiasm for their cause with his demonstrated enthusiasm for continuing close ties between Britain and the USA, and they decided that they would dump him. I further believe that Mr Blair is now doing as much for the EUro-cause as he can, in order to try keep his job. Things like this ID numbering system for children, which is just the sort of thing that politicians normally steer clear of because it could prove so very unpopular and unwieldy and expensive and pointless, are, I believe part of this kind of process.

If you read “Christopher Booker’s Notebook” (just type “Christopher Booker” in the Telegraph search engine) you are bombarded with a steady stream of this kind of stuff. I can’t read Booker too often, because I find what he reveals too depressing.

As for the idea of having a Children’s Commissioner, if the government is so keen to be influenced by the opinions of children, why don’t they just give children the vote? Well, no, that wouldn’t be good, because it might get out of control. What might they vote for? What if they were not pro-EU in sufficient numbers? Best to have a Commissioner, to “feed” children’s ideas into government, in the desired manner. Besides, EUro-kids don’t have votes, so ours shouldn’t either.

9 comments to ID numbers and Hidden Europe

  • R.C. Dean

    Is there even the faintest effort at an argument that having a child tote around a plastic ID card will somehow reduce the risk that said child will the victim of violence?

  • ditariel

    As an American, I the idea of forced representation is tantamount to evil. I feel sorry for British schoolchildren.

  • G Cooper

    Victoria Climbie would (most probably) be alive today had her parents not exported her to England to be ‘cared for’ by her villainous relative.

    I suppose preventing this sort of stealth immigration is too easy an option, compared with the terribly convenient tagging and herding of us like so many cattle.

  • The ‘Hidden Europe’ phenomenon is something I have noticed myself and I’ll definately be keeping a closer eye on Christopher Booker’s Notebook from now on.

    The most recent example of ‘Hidden Europe’ that I have come across is the changes to the British driving licence test, which now requires those taking the test to answer a couple of questions on the maintenance of the vehicle. All major media outlets seem to have reported that the changes to the test were made by the government exclusively to ‘make our roads safer’ and other such things and I didn’t see a single report mention that these changes to the test were actually introduced at the Europe-wide level by an EU standardising (‘harmonising’, in EU-speak) procedure designed to bring British test requirements closer to those of other European governments. The implication of the reports I saw and read was that this was a British government initiative when it was nothing of the sort.

  • Apparently that “I D Card” is held up rather like a cross in front of a vampire to stop harm to a child right in its tracks.

  • Ron

    The Rally for a Referendum will be held on
    Friday 7 November 2003 at Church House, Westminster. Its purpose is to examine and publicise the constitutional and legal significance of the EU Constitutional Treaty and to press for a referendum of the British people on its ratification.

    http://www.congressfordemocracy.org.uk/rally.htm

  • Rich

    Now if given a credit card sized ID thing, my kids would play with it and very quickly lose it.
    Maybe they could tatoo a number somewhere easy to see, lower arm/wrist maybe. This would serve their purpose far better I think.

  • mrs s

    tattoos, yes – though I’m waiting for them to suggest tiny microchips embedded in kids’ arms, so their movements could be tracked………

  • Katherine

    I think that tattoos with a serial number backed up with a Infrared ID chips should do it. Also let’s make sure that removal of either is a felony punishable by life sentence-preferably in a concentration camp.

    Why anybody should object? It is, after all, for The Children(TM)! And we all know that the government only wants us to be happy, safe, productive drones… sorry, I mean: comrades.. damn, sorry again, I mean citizens.