A message from the Home Office as ID roll out begins…
Article published: Tuesday, December 1st 2009
As ID cards are made available in Manchester this week at the start of the national roll-out of the scheme, the following message arrives in OurKingdom’s inbox from an anonymous Home Office email account…
Dear OK readers,
I write confident that those of you in the Manchester area will have been leap frogging down to the Identity and Passport Service’s registration centre this week to join the excited queues registering for one of the eagerly awaited ID cards.
Those that haven’t already snapped up this wonderful new accessory, de rigeur for the modern Mancuanian about town, may want to consider the many benefits of the scheme, such as [DELETE –>> combating terrorism, securing your identity, managing immigration<<–]… busting open Yale locks, clearing the ice off your wind-screen on a cold day and playing swingers’ ID shuffle with a group of close friends.
Mancunians should of course ignore the likes of Dave Page of NOID who has been advising people against submitting to “the largest state database system in the western world” (surely a reason for pride?) which will track you until death, impose “fines for not keeping your information up to date” (when we say “voluntary” we mean until you’re on the database, Okay?) and make your personal information vulnerable to a “vast numbers of faceless bureaucrats” (we prefer the more PC term, “soulless functionaries”) who are unable to keep it “secure” (I can personally vouch for my 300,000 colleagues and the government’s record in data management).
People like Dave are apparently still clinging to the quaint 20th century notion of “privacy” unaware that like its cousins, “innocent until proven guilty” and “the right to silence”, it is an outdated concept which has no place in the brave new omniscient hi-tech state that We, your wise and beneficent rulers at the Home Office, are preparing for you.
Anyone tempted to give credence to the claims made by scurrilous campaigners like Dave, backed up as they are by meticulous research and expert opinion, should instead focus their attention on the following propaganda pieces we have put together for the Manchester campaign:
See? A fun little finger-print man? Biometric identity systems are cool and exciting and totally non-threatening.
So next time you have doubts about the threat the £230,000 a day schemed poses to your civil liberties, just think of this cuddly little chap:
And remember what a pain that ice can be to shift in the morning….
Yours insatiably,
The Home Office
Mordor, SW1
This article was first published by Guy Aitchison, and openDemocracy.net under a Creative Commons licence.
More: Manchester
Comments
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One of the sweetest arguments I’ve heard against the ID card was: “It’s silly, I mean where would I put my Visas?”
Comment by arwa on December 4, 2009 at 9:53 pm
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