I.D. Cards; Should They Be Mandatory?

[highlandsflyer]

Charles Clarke once again beating the drum for this.

I have no objection to them, unless we have to carry them. I carry my driving license all the time, even on a bike ride. Wouldn't appreciate having to carry more, even another credit card sized item.

I also don't see them as a panacea for countering terrorism or illegal immigration.

Charles Clarke seems to think they are a cure all for most of society's ills.

What a curmudgeonly twat he is.

 

[ajm]

Dead against them myself. I almost never carry any kind of ID and my driving licence (which I never carry) doesn't even have a photo on it anyway. It's a major restriction of freedom to be obliged to carry an ID card around - and totally pointless since, as always happens with these things, there will be a ready supply of stolen or fake IDs available for terrorists and immigrants.

 

[Bats]

Everyone has id on them. Coppers can nosey on your phone find out who you are. They don't need to though because your debit card has your name on.

 

[ajm]

Everyone has id on them. Coppers can nosey on your phone find out who you are. They don't need to though because your debit card has your name on.

Bit tricky for coppers to read my debit card when it's nowhere near me though, isn't it? Outside of the cities, some of us live lives unimaginable to a communist... no ID cards, no party membership badge, no red scarf - something almost akin to freedom in fact!

I will concede that I mostly do have my phone on me during the working day (though they would probably take a while to figure out how to extract the data they wanted from it) but if I'm out for a walk, or more likely out on the bike, I won't have any ID whatsoever. Teeth and fingerprints...

 

[Bats]

So assuming you live a life without a bank account, you've found a surefire way to have no ID on you.

 

[highlandsflyer]

Good point ajm! That is how it should be. I realise they may be useful for those who have no other form of I.D., but making them compulsory, and then making it an offence to leave them at home, would have me wondering what our supposed liberty really consists of.

 

[ajm]

Re:

Of course I have a bank account, not to mention a passport, driving licence, all the rest. The point is, I'm not currently obliged to carry them and as a matter of habit almost never do so.

I would hate for that to change - I don't like totalitarian states or anything that helps lead to them and mandatory ID cards, particularly if there's an obligation to carry them, are a big red flag to me.

 

[ajm]

Perhaps we in the Highlands (or other rural areas) enjoy and value our freedom more than those locked up in the cities?

 

[Bats]

I think this particular interpretation of "liberty" as "I should be totally anonymous in real life if I want to and I'll be mortally offended if strangers don't trust me" is one of the worst american imports.

We live in a monarchy, not a republic founded on enlightenment principles, so the entire objection is pretty irrelevant. Our society was not founded on any high beliefs about liberty, but the idea that the queen has divine mandate to cut your head off. You aren't born with rights innate to the universe, you've been "generously" afforded some at HM's pleasure.

As such it's always been illegal to refuse to say who you are, so having an ID card is not taking anything away off you.

There's an upside though. Without any "founding fathers" wibbling about liberty, nobody here has had to carve them into a mountain.

 

[highlandsflyer]

As such it's always been illegal to refuse to say who you are, so having an ID card is not taking anything away off you.

You are talking shite.