In a move which will be the effective creation of a state ID card, Dr Liam Fox, the Conservative health spokesman, has said the next Conservative government will introduce a health entitlement card for all UK citizens.
Thanks, Liam. It’s just what I’ve always wanted.
These cards will either be difficult-to-forge, requiring a trip to a police station to get your iris scanned, or they will be easy to forge, requiring a used tenner in the heroin-dealing under-the-table pub of your choice, to get hold of an effective fake one.
And given that the black market works free of most government interference, except for the bribes necessary to pay off police enforcers, expect even hard-to-forge ID cards to come on the black market for under a tenner within a couple of years.
So in order to garner a few short-term votes, Dr Liam Fox is willing to foist a new hideous layer of expensive bureaucratic control upon us, which will be easily circumvented by everyone except by the guiltless and the honest. Though I’m sure that when it is, an even more expensive and intrusive ID card system will be the solution proposed by the next Conservative government, once again to ‘protect’ the blessed NHS.
Don’t prevaricate, Liam. Just abolish the NHS, and have done with this Jurassic-Age monster.
Though I think I’m rapidly approaching the Carrite position, where just like the pigs in ‘Animal Farm’, the difference between New Labour and the Conservatives is becoming ever more difficult to discern.
Until even recently I held great hope for the Conservative party, but over these continuing issues of ID cards I am losing my belief.
I blame that Murray Rothbard. His books are just too enlightening.
There’s no such thing as difficult to forge – just more expensive (and more profitable).
Dr Liam Fox is a damn good reason not to vote Conservative. Blunkett a damn good reason not to vote Labour….
What now? Revolution?
For Mark Ellot, ‘What now? Revolution?”
No! the answer lies before you, on your keyboard. The future is being built by the destruction of the unreal structures that go to build up our perception of the present.
To witness the work in progress, visit http://ukipuncovered.blogspot.com there the power of the blogosphere is about to be demonstrated in the quiet overthrow of a corrupt group at the centre of what should have been a vibrant and libertarian political force, fighting against restrictions on personal liberties.
When this task is completed, which it appears might soon be the case, we can move on to destroying the even greater threat represented by the coporatist EU itself.
On ID cards and their place in our future, you can horrify yourself by reading my novel set in the year 2014, that can be purchased for a fiver (including postage) from links on either of my blogs http://ironies.blogspot.com or that above.
No! the answer lies before you, on your keyboard.
Dried tomato sauce?
Fear not. The I.D. card will only be temporary.
Embedded microchips and a forehead tatto will be along to replace the cards in due time.
An opposition announcement is easier to deal with than a government policy. (We know that if the Tories get into power they’ll have the ready-made policy offered to them anyway: the state wants it, regardless of the politicians.)
What now? Write to your nearest Tory MP, or IDS, and point out that they are suckers for suggesting it, since it amounts to supporting a de facto state ID card, and by doing so they are alienating their natural constituency among the liberty-loving of all parties and none–in return for predictably trivial gains to a monumentally screwed-up NHS. I’ve done so already.
I don’t think so. Something much more realistic would be to require DNA tests since that identifies people pretty much uniquely, in the cases of identical twins, triplets or other genetic clones maybe they could get some sort of tattoo to identify which twin or triplet it is. People who are honest will of course have nothing to fear from this, it’s all in the interests of law enforcement, or public safety or immigration control, or the war on terror… or whatever seems most plausable at the time.
I don’t quite understand the fuss here.
If there was a private insurance based health system surely you wouldn’t object to there being membership numbers etc to stop people who were not insured claiming they were.
Whilst the NHS is the main method of health care in the UK, which it would be for at least the majority of a Conservative term of government even if they came in with a proposal to change it, surely it makes sense for those who use the system to be able to prove that they are entitled.
This is not a defacto ID card any more than a driving license is. It’s a form of ID to prove our entitlement to a service.
The problem raj, is that everyone living here legitimately can be assumed to have one, since the NHS is supposedly a universal service. The ID is readily extensible, therefore.
It will be (initially informally) demanded in cases where currently one might be expected to produce another form of ID which one might not have (passport, driving license, credit card, utility bill, etc…) Imagine how irritated the banks and the FSA are with those pesky people who don’t have a driving license or passport but still expect to be allowed an account.
The NHS isn’t an insurance based service, and is part of government. The ID-card and related records will be structured in a way that meets other e-government policy objectives, not just as a flat tally. See for example
this.
The NHS does lots of things–apart from undermining private medecine–that wouldn’t be tolerable from an insurance company. It has lost my paper records every time I have ever moved in the last 20 years. So much for privacy. Efficiency.
Error could easily become terror when you can be excluded or monitored instead of simply medically misdescribed.
So Andy,
Are there any fields of demarcation left between Labour (in its various guises) and the Tories?
This wacky Dr’s outburst surely must leave your blog of a few weeks past extolling the “coming of the Tories” looking rather like Swiss Cheese.
IDS’s outburst a few weeks back that you then referred to I suspect was designed more to keep people like yourself “in the fold” than actual Tory policy.
raj writes:
I don’t quite understand the fuss here.
If there was a private insurance based health system surely you wouldn’t object to there being membership numbers etc to stop people who were not insured claiming they were.
When I claim on my car insurance, you’re right, I have to quote my insurance number. I may also have to send in three photocopies of three separate documents, with my address on, plus the bills, cheques, etc, are sent to just one address (or NHS appointments, or GP appointments, or whatever, are sent to one named person at one named address).
What Direct Line, or the Prudential, don’t need is an iris-encrypted genetically-blueprinted card, for me to prove who I am. And I’m sure no company, like Kaiser Health Care in the US, need such a thing. I’m sure a valid credit card does the trick nicely.
And of course, I don’t have to pay for Direct Line insurance, if I don’t want it, and because of this they treat me like a valued client, whom they are only too happy to help, otherwise I will take my custom elsewhere (if they want my custom) and not like a feckless serf who should be grateful for what he gets, or a tattooed Auchwitz prisoner who should be grateful his artillery-shell making skills get him his piece of bread every day, until he’s no longer fully productive.
This is the state of affairs for infirm non-economically productive pensioners in this country, who are almost ignored by the NHS, with younger people getting preferred treatment because doctors decide they are worth it economically, and have more productive life ahead of them. At least, this was the case when I was a medical student, and I’m sure it has since got worse. Just try asking any pensioner in Worthing, in Sussex, how long it takes to get a GP’s appointment. It’s now heading upwards of six weeks.
And no private insurance company, unless compelled to by the state, will use my personal insurance information to help other arms of government control me more easily.
ID cards are evil, because they are a necessary step to take, for any totalitarian government. Any political party which proposes them, or any politician like Blair who says they are ‘good in principle’, is therefore heading this country, towards totalitarianism. And they are either doing this knowingly and deliberately, as that fascist Blunkett is doing, and are evil in themselves therefore unfit to govern, or they are doing it unwittingly, and are therefore unfit to govern on the grounds of stupidity, as I hope is the case with Liam Fox.
Hi Shaun,
Swiss cheese? No, swiss cheese after Tom (of Tom and Jerry fame) has been at it for a bit.
I hope you’re wrong about IDS, but again, I fear you may be right.
My thread is close to snapping. But, it’s difficult to know where to turn to next. Boris voted for Ken Clarke, Letwin hesitates on ID cards, and Liam Fox wants to introduce national socialist policies.
Better read some more Rothbard. I’m currently on ‘How the Government Stole Your Money’, and it’s pretty damn good stuff.
Do we need to take Rothbard’s approach, a Libertarian Party, forming temporary pressure group alliances with those promoting more libertarian policies? It could be the way to go, but there seems no appetite for it.
How about:
Manifesto of the Samizdata Party
=====================
Shadow PM: Mr Carr
Shadow Chancellor: Mr De Havilland
Policies: Rothbardian, plus (somehow) the British Armed Forces, fudged in a bit
I’d vote for it! 🙂
PS> We could challenge Michael Portillo at the next election, in Kensington and Chelsea, and raise our profile that way. We could make the Spanish one sweat a bit, anyway.
Raj, if it is a normal and necessary part of receiving a service, how have we managed to receive NHS treatment without ID cards for 50 years?
If everyone in Britain is entitled, then there’s obviously no need for a membership card is there?
Don’t tell me you’re one of the deranged people who think the entire population of Belgium is popping into Britain each month to use the NHS?
I certainly don’t think the entire population of belgium is getting free treatment but my sister in law (originally from India btw) is a doctor at a north london hospital and says the majority of patients are not from the UK and noone checks for whether they are British residents etc.
As an immigrant she obviously doesn’t assume that these are all not entitled to NHS treatment but the fact that there are no checks at all is quite worrying
I am sympathetic to the idea of a creeping ID car& would prefer it if we could have a system of verification through other already existing data (e.g. passport, address etc).
There’s a good piece on ID-creep by John Lettice in The Register today.
How about Kelvin MacKenzie to lead the Tories? Here’s his four-point plan:
First, I would privatise the BBC. My investment banker friends say that would net £5 billion for the radio and television station. I would promise to return the whole lot to the 20 million-plus licence fee payers within 120 days of being elected. So, instead of you paying £112 to the Government, I would send you a cheque for £250.
…
Second, I want to pull up the drawbridge on Britain. Our roads are too crowded, our house prices too high, our trains too packed. I don’t want any more white South Africans, Australians, New Zealanders, Asians, Jamaicans, etc allowed into our country for the next five years.
…
Third, I want to reduce taxes. … I would set the starting threshold at around the £16,000 mark.
…
I want to bring in the death penalty for DNA-proven paedophile killers.
Not perfect, but possibly the best potential Prime Minister in Britain today. Apart from me, of course.
I though we already had a backdoor I.D. card – called the drivers license.
Don’t see what this would achieve at all besides adding another layer of pointless bureacracy acting as a jobs program for the un-productive.
…South Africans, Australians, New Zealanders, Asians, Jamaicans…
There is a problem with that lot that I have become increasibngly aware of over the last few years.
In several industries in London, including Advertising, there are hordes of antipodeans who are distinguished by their
a) willingness to work for peanuts.
b) willingness to tell their managers to fuck off at the drop of a hat.
Because of the former they will always be hired before locals (which is becoming increasingly comon) and becuase of the later, running a department becomes next to impossible.
I would still allow the 2-year VISA. I just wouldn’t allow them to work. Either bring enough money into the country to sustain yourself, or stay away.
Eamon
Eamon, isn’t what you’ve written, just a teensy weensy bit, dare I say it, tribal? Is this all antipodeans, or just most of them?
a) willingness to work for peanuts.
b) willingness to tell their managers to fuck off at the drop of a hat.
On the first count, good luck to them. If somebody can undercut me, and still find the rate they get acceptable, and they can secure the position, and keep it, good luck to them. It’s a good incentive to me to just be better than the competition, while remaining as good as, or better, on price, to give as good a value as possible to my clients.
And believe me, as I work in the field of IT contracting, I know of what I speak, where it seems 99.99% of my personal competition wear non-European rugby shirts at the weekend. Not that I’m also prone to exaggeration, of course! 🙂
And although I personally suffer, because I cannot charge as much as I would like to, doesn’t it serve many employers well that they can find lower-priced employees of the same quality, thereby enhancing their wealth generation and marginal profit returns? (and thereby in the future having enough investment capital with which to pay my exorbitant fee demands? 🙂
On the second count, I think it’s refreshing that when an employee feels he’s being exploited, he’s willing to say so, and take his labour elsewhere. If only the attitude was shared by we feeble welfare-dependent Europeans. What we tend to do is to fake sickies, or spend all day on Jobserve, at our employers’ cost, and then claim compensation and pensions for ‘stress’ if we get rumbled trying to rip the employer off by claiming sick wages when we’re fit, or abusing their information networks.
If you were an employing manager and you did think that certain people were perhaps more unreliable than others, and I don’t think we should have a window on your mind to check this, there’s an easy solution. You don’t whack great iron curtains across the borders, you just don’t employ these kinds of people.
If you’re too tempted by their cheapness? Well, as the employing manager, that really is your problem. You pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
You want strong, reliable people, who can take a little more stress than the average, and who you think won’t spend all night at pubs with names like ‘Walkabout’ and ‘Ozland’, needing to take time off to recover? Pay the going rate.
I must plead a personal case here. I fully expect, though I hope it doesn’t happen, that one day I will need to escape these socialist islands. My ports of call, in I think this order, will be:
US
Canada
New Zealand
Australia
Ireland
Israel
Now if we’ve locked all these countries out from the UK, except for holidays, what’s my chance of getting into their countries, unless I’m lucky enough to already have one of their passports? I’d say zip.
The problem in this country, with immigration, is the state, and the ‘freely-provided’ state services which immigrating parasites may be tempted to abuse. The answer is not to stop people immigrating, it’s to get the state out of services which are not directly paid for. That way nobody can abuse them. They can only pay for them.
The other problem is land regulation. Massive swathes of the UK are locked up in Green Belts, and other restrictions, which at the drop of a hat, the government can decide to drop, but nobody else.
Result? A shortage of land for house building, despite over 95% of the country being undeveloped, with farmers crying out for the financial relief which free land would give them. Plus, massive over-priced housing, in those areas the govt have sanctioned for building.
But wouldn’t the ‘schoolznhospitals’ get overwhelmed, if people were able to live where they liked, rather than in areas of governmental convenience? Yes, if the idiot state is allowed to continue to control them. Free schools and free hospitals, will easily take up any slack.
I never trusted Liam. Frank likes the bloke, I never knew why? Now I have another reason not to like Mr Fox. Leadership material? Yeah right, tell me another one. What a prat.
Yeah, great pick on all the Anglosphere countries, but let in all the non-whites right? Um, why pray tell? Surely that is racist? The ones clogging Britain up are not the antipodeans but the multitudes of immigrants who have no interest in assimilating, some of whom want to overthrow the government. Why is it that the Anglosphere go out of their way to screw each other over but continue to allow their enemies to come in freely?
> Yeah, great pick on all the Anglosphere countries, but let in all the non-whites right?
I suggest you re-read what MacKenzie actually wrote. He suggests zero immigration, from any country, by anyone, for five years, and suggests that we use that five-year breathing space to come up with a solution to the overcrowding problem. With luck and good campaigning, the solutions Andy proposes could be adopted at the conclusion of such a debate.