Not that I'd have been affected: I have an Irish passport and would have relied on that if ID cards had been made compulsory for UK citizens. Some of you are from states which require ID - what's your experience of it?
My sense is that the police would have used it as another means of harrassing the people they already target: black people. I feel that the right to go about your business without having to identify yourself unless you're committing a crime is symbolically important: the state has the right to intervene if you've transgressed laws democratically voted on, not on the whim of the local bobby. Cards wouldn't be effective in preventing terrorism (a justification they've quietly dropped) anyway - though they might have been useful for identifying the corpses afterwards.
2 comments:
Voluntary my arse. A ID card scheme can only work if it is compulsary. Otherwise it is, as you say, no different to ProveIt or Citizen Card. If ID cards are introduced it is only a matter of time before they are compulsary. Why would you buy one when they are essentially a passport that you cannot travel abroad with.
The compulsary ID card is being introduced in stages which is perhaps even scarier than it being forced on us because you know this way they will happen. They will just slither into existence. Until the ID card idea is scrapped completely it is a very dangerous thing indeed.
I agree with that, but think you're looking at it the wrong way round. It was going to be compulsory, and now it's going to be voluntary - which won't work. I see it as a way of slowly scrapping it while avoiding losing face. Once the take-up proves to be embarrassingly low, they'll properly scrap it.
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