Voting TaKtiX

Donald’s on form:

STATEMENT: If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.
QUESTION: Do you have curtains?
STATEMENT: They’re to stop anyone perving over intimate moments with my wife.
QUESTION: You do know that as soon as they upload your STD records on that health database, the whole of Whitehall can see everyone you’ve fucked since freshers’ week?

Write To Them. Or chase down a Swiss grandad.

Damn stupid idiotic centralising authoritarian fools. Technology will solve all our problems. Especially if it’s a technology that we don’t really understand and will subcontract to a bunch of incompetents like Capita et al…

People may be interested to see NO2ID’s latest campaign against ID cards. They are asking all those opposed to the introduction of ID cards to Renew For Freedom by renewing their passports in May. Hopefully this will create a surge in the number of passport applications big enough to highlight the number of people who are against compulsory ID cards.

Or it might fall flat on it’s face, as I’m sure the government will claim support for ID cards if the number renewing isn’t particularly high…

Hopefully though, it will provide the catalyst for people who have said “I better renew my passport before then” to actually get around to doing it. Me included.

Bastards. I believe, given that the deputy to the sweaty baboon has answered in Parliament that we can renew at any time, that they’d have a hard job of changing the rules now. So the plan to renew next year proceeds apace.

I went to the pub this evening, met up with Chris and also the local No2ID organiser. Get involved. Even if it’s just to give up a morning leafletting instead of shopping. If you can’t see a local organiser? Any reason why you couldn’t get together with friends and become one? This needs to be a campaign on two fronts, one is civil disobediance; renew your passport early, don’t register, refuse to register, get fined, refuse to pay, get headlines and the rest.

The second is electoral. I repeat the earlier statement; at the next General Election, ask every candidate:

Will you vote to abolish the National Identity Register

If they don’t promise to do so, make sure they’re not elected.

Between now and then? Councils across the country have passed resolutions on the issue. Local elections are coming up in much of the country. Make it an issue. Some people (and I’m one of them) have a bit of a problem with national issues effecting local campaigns. But this really does affect everything.

Big picture? I repeat my call. At the next General election, we’ll need to ensure we have a strong tactical voting campaign against any candidates that refuse to repeal this Act. Other issues, such as Leg/Reg, etc also matter. But this one, to me, is the big one.

We have to get them out.

In the meantime?

Labour members!

There’s still much, much talk of a ‘coronation’. The Labour party has a strong tradition as a democratic party. I’ve voted Labour in the past FFS. Don’t let the give Brown a coronation; make sure there’s a leadership campaign, make NIR an issue.

We cannot (and will not) submit to a database state. To arms my friends, to arms.

The bill got passed. We are all to be numbered and categorised. I will not submit. So, we have some heroes, some villains, and some dodgy characters. Heroes (more…)

I just don’t get it. First off, the government tries to say that passports wont be compulsory because people don’t ‘need’ to have passports. The opposition see it for the lie that it is, and rightly oppose it. Charles Clarke gets laughed at in the house of commons for uttering such a barefaced lie.

Fast forward a couple of weeks. Same situation, the government is now trying to convince everyone that everything about the ID card system is fine, because it will be delayed by four years. This time though, the opposition buys it, hook, line and sinker.

Why? Why, after opposing the bill for so long and forcing the government into ever increasing ridiculousness, after laughing at this country’s Home Secretary for the length to which he was willing to lie for Tony and his bill, after it has been proven time and time again that ID card wont help to stop terrorism, wont reduce crime, will be abused by the police and the government, why did they cave in just like that?

I honestly thought this was going to go all the way to the Parliament Act, and at least to some extent I can hold my head up high and say that my party of choice did try their best to ensure this happened. I completely agree with the comments on Spyblog about the lack of trust over civil liberties from the Tories; slim chance though it was, David Cameron has just lost any chance of getting my vote.

I honestly do not think that I have ever got this riled up about any act or bill or law ever introduced, and that includes the fox hunting ban which I campaigned to be introduced quite passionately. This system will not only destroy a good deal of our ‘civil liberties’ and ‘personal privacy’, but it will almost certainly be a huge failure will gaping security holes which will compromise individuals across the whole country.

I will not carry an ID card, and I will not allow my personal information to be held on any register. I would urge everyone to follow Mat’s ideas below and refuse to vote for any candidate in an upcoming election that will not vote to do away with the national identity register.

So, how long before I need to renew my passport then?

The Lord have caved in with a compromise that makes it worse, not better. You’ll still be stamped and categorised, they’ll still put your data on a centralised “secure” register, but you can have the sop of believing that you don’t need a card.

Central pledge required from all candidates at the next General Election:

I will vote to abolish the National Identity Register

If they don’t sign up to it, campaign against them. Regardless of party affiliation. I refuse to be ‘registered’.

Henry Porter at Comment is Free:

The failure to register will be punished by a maximum fine of £2,500. The failure to apply in a manner prescribed (whatever that means) to renew your ID, or to inform the national identity register of a change of your details, or to surrender the ID card, or to notify the register of an invalid card, will all incur a maximum fine of £1,000.

Read that through again. £2,500 fine if you forget to tell them you’ve changed your details?

£2,500 fine?

As someone who perpetually forgets to file paperwork, whose drivers licence is still the one I was first issued 13 years ago registered at my parents address (perfectly legally I add), this scares the shit out of me. Why do they need a £2,500 fine for what they’re selling as an ‘entitlement’ card?

• Nosemonkey:

The Lords have fallen for it. After a heroic, drawn-out defence they’ve been conned into believing it’s the cards, rather than the database that backs up the cards, that’s the problem.

• Bookdrunk on Burnham:

To describe any part of the ID card mess as ‘absolutely clear’ is either laughably delusional or grossly dishonest. The problem with Burnham is that it’s hard to decide which applies.

• And again:

More able to control access to my identity? What is this rubbish? How does an identity database protect my fingerprints, date of birth, iris pattern etc. etc. from being stolen? Doesn’t it store all of those things in one handy central place? How does this stop my credit card or name being used? Answer: it doesn’t and it won’t.

• Spyblog:

Most Conservatives abstained, but 24 of them including their Home Affairs front bench spokesmen David Davis, Edward Garnier and Patrick Mercer voted with the Labour Government. Only 8 Conservatives voted against the motion with the Liberal Democrats.

It seems that David Cameron’s NuTories cannot be trusted on civil liberties issues any more than Michael Howard’s Tories could be.

• Porter (again):

People are beginning to see that ID cards are not being introduced so that they can identify themselves but rather so that the government can identify them and keep track of every important transaction in their lives.

We have to get them out of office.

They’re a corrupt bunch of liars as well.

I think it’s pretty much established amongst the informed bunch that read this blog that something is rotten in the state of Britain. Liberty Central is a good project aimed at working out a new way of governing the country. Hopefully, it can be used to build pressure to sort the whole mess out.

The big problem is that for many, reformers are a series of disparate, single issue campaigners. We have:

1. electoral reformers
2. civil liberties groups
3. devolutionists of various stripes
4. parliamentary reformers (concentrating currently on the Lords)

My issue with this; all of the problems are interlinked. Each feeds of each other, it’s a systemic problem within the British polity.

The “West Lothian Question” is one of vital import to the future of the country

It has come about because a government that was initially radical and prepared to decentralise heavily has acquired cold feet and isn’t prepared to address the real issues and concerns of those that haven’t (yet) had power devolved from Westminster. Yet, ultimately, very few if any are genuinely calling for the complete break up of Britain, the Scots Nats appear to be losing, not gaining, ground in Scotland and the CEP is adament that they want parity for England within the UK (or Britain, depending on whether the person in question wants to keep the 1800 Act).

You cannot fix the “England Question” independent of the other problems

Virtually every other country of significance that has a bicameral Parliament draws its second chamber members as representatives of the next highest administrative level. US and Australian Senators are elected directly, the German Bundesrat members are sent as representatives of the Lander assemblies, etc.

I favour this approach, in part, for the Lords (or whatever we call the replacement). So, in order to solve the increasingly urgent issue that is the make up of the second chamber, we also need to figure out what level below Westminster we want as well.

The electoral system that we use is outdated

It specifically encourages a two-party system, yet increasingly a market orientated society wants genuine choice at election time as well, two-party politics doesn’t cut it any more. So we have a government elected with a fairly substantial majority with much less than 40% of the vote; compare this to 1992, when John Major got the highest number of votes cast since 1945, and a higher vote share than either Maggie or Blair ever acheived, yet had a wafer thin majority.

This leads to a worried government, that plays to a perceived gallery for headline grabbing initiatives, yet one that knows, deep down, that while it has a ‘legitimate’ mandate, it does not have a popular mandate; protesters are limited and arrested as never before, yet are increasingly likely as what are viewed as traditional liberties are encroached upon as never before.

Part of the recommendations of the Power commission is a new Concordat. Essentially, they are right. As Nosemonkey points out in comments here, the Bill of Rights is effectively irrelevent. Yet any constitutional historian worth their salt can confirm that the Bill of Rights is the founding principle of the modern parliamentary system. If it’s no longer relevent, what is?

I am not in favour of a ‘written constitution’

A study of the US shows that such exercises in aspic setting can, in later years, come back to bite you; the veneration of their outdated document the Americans show is worrying, let alone damaging. We need a new Bill of Rights, new Acts of Settlement. We need a British solution.

We need, as a nation, to determine, once again, how we are governed.

We, all of us, who are concerned with the constitution, who want to address these issues, need to work together to pressure our rulers to call a new convention. This may be a good place to start.

The problems with NuLabour

The New Labour project started as a method of making Labour electable again, by bringing under control their less, shall we say, thoughtful, elements. In government, it has taken that controlling tendency further. It is taking control of our lives. (more…)

Oh dear. The British Blogosphere’s favourite kicking ball is being even more obtuse than normal. For readers not aware, Neil Harding is a Labour supporting blogger in Brighton who has a tendency to disagree with, well, everyone, and thinks, as far as I can tell, that Tired Tony can do no wrong. His current crusade is on behalf of the (dis)Respect Agenda generally and summary confiscation as a specific. He has two posts on the subject, Why Tony is Right and Tony Blair and the respect agenda continued. The comments threads on both posts are impressively long, and, apart from Neil himself, no one has any support for his position. No, don’t worry, I’m not posting this to support him. You see, it’s so bad I thought I’d give him some more publicity.

I sometimes find in debates that the person that does the most damage to your position isn’t the person opposed to it, but the misguided supporter who, well, doesn’t quite get it and links everything together as one big overarching theme and assumes everyone opposed is inherently arguing from the same position with the same reasons. (more…)

Right, when I decided I wanted to run a blog, I knew I’d need at least one other person involved in order to keep it going. Having a pretty good friend who I agree with on most issues, who happened to be completing his Masters Degree in Critical Global Studies (which is posh for Political Theory/Philosophy) and a good writer was fortuitous, getting him to agree to post stuff here was cool.

So, on the grounds that I post so often his stuff gets swamped (and sometimes people credit me for the entire blog anyway without noticing the byline), I though, given that I’m feeling all grotty with a cold, I’d do a summary for his stuff.
(more…)