BrightonRegencyLabour ... twat
There is apparently a blogger that supports ID Cards BrightonRegencyLabour. He is an idot, apparently:
"Because the Tories have popularised being anti-ID card from a right wing perspective, it has been very easy for the liberal bloggers to find voice and support for liberty issues that otherwise would be killed off by the right wing media. This combination in right/left motivation coupled with support from the centrist Lib Dems has led to an unstoppable orthodoxy amongst political bloggers. It also fits nicely with popular perception of the govt as being illiberal."New Labour is percieved as being illiberal because New Labour is illiberal, it is the most illiberal government that this country has had to endure for decades. Fascist even.
They got rid of the right to trial (and want to go further with summary justice delivered on the streets), and should you get a trial they got rid of the presumption of innocence. New Labour let your accusors repeat gossip as if it where evidence. New Labour have been constantly snipping against jurry trial and judical independence. New Labour ministers have lied to Parliment, repeatedly. Then when one of their lies got them into a war with no public support they banned a minority pastime (banning being their instinctive reaction to just about everything) to scrape together enough political capital to get a debate on it dropped. When members of the public refused to accept their lies and evation they banned all protest in parliment square, over the protest of one man (still there, great man). When this issue still refused to die (unlike british soldiers who are dieing quite regularly) and a Nazi refugee had the temidity to heckle a New Labour minister over it he was arrested as a terrorist, along with 600 others. However he should probably be greatful that New Labour where not in power when he was fleeing Nazi tryany, since New Labour would probably have wanted to deport him back. Like the black africans they deport back to Sudan or Zimbabwe (now thankfully stopped), or the gay men they deport back to Iran so they can produce a set of statistics that look good on TV.
Also
There will be no compulsion to carry the ID card.Of course it will be compulory, they are only starting it off as voluntary because it would cause to much of a revolt otherwise. New Labours own plans call for it to be compulsory by
The police will have no new powers to ask you to prove your identity.No they will just use the ones they have already got, but since they where drawn up in the days before ID Cards there application will radically alter. The police already have the power to arrest somebody if they do not give an identity to their satisfaction, without an ID Card this does not mean much but with it it will morph into hte power to arrest anyone that does not produce their papers on demand.
it is all very well the government giving all these guarantees now, but how do we stop future govts adding all these extra details to the cards gradually and without our consent.Which they will do, they have lied to parliment and the public repeatedly. They have already lied over this one:
The govt have stated that the cards and NIR will carry only the information your passport does. It would need primary legislation through parliament to add to this.Wrong, the ID Card database contains biometrics. These are not required for current passports. Even as the passports get upgraded the only required passport is a digital copy of the photo already there, not finger prints, iris scans, and face patterns. And where is this extra data stored, yes in the NIR. So it does contain more data than is currently held for passports. Another New Labour lie, but they are now so common as to stop even being noted.
[update]
And lets not forget that New Labour also decided that torture is right so long as they don't directly get their hands dirty. Blood is obviously a bitch to get out of an expensive suit. Or the Civil Contingencies Act that New Labour passed to allow it to do, well, just about anything in case of emergency, rather like the emergency clause in the Soviet constitution, or Hitler's Enabling Act. Emergency being defined as pretty well whatever Tony says it is. And if they cannot get you the first time with their extraordinarily broad anti-terrorism laws they can always just keep on repeating the trial until the 'correct' answer is extracted.
posted by chris at 10/24/2005 12:29:00 pm
7 Comments:
You mean that you've never come across our Neil Harding before? He is the man who is never right...
He tends to prove his idiocy over at The Sharpener quite a lot.
DK
No never found him before. Probably a good thing, since I dought that my keyboard can take that kind of hammering very often.
Labour have not got rid of Jury trial. They have proposed it for minor criminal trials to save money (and been blocked).
The current legislation will make ID cards compulsory by 2013, they are being introduced voluntarily from 2008. It will not be compulsory to carry one.
The new passports will contain face recognition and fingerprinting biometrics. This is the 2006 standard throughout the EU and complies with regulation required to travel to the US. So it is true to say, the ID cards and NIR will hold no more information than a passport.
To accuse this govt of being illiberal is comical especially if it comes from a Tory supporter. If you think of the last Tory administration and how they emasculated local govt and centralised power in Westminster, Labour by comparison look totally consensual. Labour have devolved power to Scotland, Wales and London and introduced PR both there and for Euro elections. They have more plans to devolve more power to the regions and neighbourhoods with elected mayors, etc. This illiberal badge is thrown at Labour by a totally illiberal media and is totally undeserved.
I didn't say they got rid of jury trial, I said "New Labour have been constantly snipping against jurry trial and judical independence." Which they have, but have thankfully been blocked from following through on. This does not mean that they would not have had they been able to.
OK I was wrong on the date when ID cards become compulsory, and thank you for correcting me. But I was correct they they will be made compulsory and that compulsion is in the current legislation. So they are not meant to be voluntary, they are meant to be compulsory and will be compulsory and my point stands that "they are only starting it off as voluntary because it would cause to much of a revolt otherwise."
All that the US travel regulations require for biometric passports is a copy of the current photo in machine readable form. Nothing else, no finger prints, no iris scans, no face patterns. In fact the US is backing away from even this requirement for any biometrics. You cannot shift the blame to the US or even the EU (as tempting as it is for me a eurosceptic) over this one, it is a UK government requirement nothing else.
Yes I did vote for the conservatives is the last election. I take my vote seriously and put alot of thought into it but it eventually came down to getting rid of New Labour for something a bit better.
Had there been a classically liberal party with a chance of winning I would have voted for them, if the Lib Dems where standing on a more Orange Book platform I would have voted for them instead. But they where not, so I voted to try and reduce the New Labour majority to curtail their illiberal tendencies.
As for the slur that the Tories where somehow even worse than New Labour, they faced a far worse terrorist threat with frequent bombings and even direct attacks against Downing Street and their party conference (which was rather more than just someone heckling). Yet they never once even proposed getting rid of Habeus Corpus or introducing ID Cards. They where never as illiberal as New Labour.
You might enjoy my fisking of the same piece here, and of his reply here.
DK
Chris, 2013 is a long way off, there will be another election before then. If people want to avoid compulsion they can.
Its my understanding that the current legislation will still need another vote in 2013 in both houses before compulsion is brought in. It all depends on the take-up of the voluntary scheme. I will be taking one up and so will millions of others. When people realise the ease and benefit, most will have one anyway by 2013.
Wasn't abolishing democratically elected local govt and replacing it with unelected QUANGOs authoritarian? What about the ridiculous ban on Sinn Fein speakers that made us the laughing stock of Europe? What about Section 28? What about the Criminal Justice Act?
ID cards can bring civil liberty benefits. 'If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear'. You are just arguing for the right to abuse benefits and public services. The freedom to have a false identity is detrimental to everyone else's freedom and we should use all the technology available to stop it. This is what happens in 21 out of 25 EU countries that are more libertarian than us. They can't understand how the hell we manage without ID cards.
As far as I know, the US are still demanding that face recognition biometrics and fingerprinting biometrics be in place on travel documents by next year.
Where those things authoritarian, yes. Because the Tories where illberal doesn't man that New Labour isn't far more illiberal. Where they really worse than getting rid of the presumption of innocence or accepting torture or removing the right to trial? Even feudal lords recognised that one (in theory if not always in practice). And since we both agree that QUANGOs are bad for freedom (if not in the same league as removing the right to trial) what about the 25% increase in them since New Labour came to power?
http://www.eastleighlibdems.org.uk/news/157.html
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