I cannot claim to have been brave very much in my life. And I do not know that I am being brave now. But I do know that I am now committed along with more than 10,000 others to refuse to register with the National Identity Register, whatever the Government may now choose to do to me.
The first NO2ID “Refuse” pledge through the MySociety PledgeBank site has been successful. 10,000, and counting, British people value freedom enough that they are prepared to become an un-person, rather than submit to lifelong supervision under the fallaciously named “ID card” system that the Government hopes to introduce. In four weeks we have raised promises of £100,000 for legal defence. And people are still joining in.
In a few days we will launch a bigger pledge, a million-pound-plus fighting fund, for everyone to subscribe to who supports the refuseniks, but cannot (because they have dependents or professional obligations) join in the identity strike. We need 50,000 people willing to pledge £20 if the bill passes. Look out for it.
And to the American readers of this blog I say: Help us now. If we go down, you are next…
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“I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered.
My life is my own.”
I too am registered and committed, but I do fear that £100,000 is not nearly enough.
I’ve posted here, Phill Booth’s (the creator of the Pledge and a NO2ID co-ordinator) plans now that the pledge has recieved it’s 10,000 participants.
Guy
I pledged my tenner some time ago and I will not have an ID card. It’s one of those lines in the sand for me. I’ll pledge another £20 too, no problem.
Erm … have you heard from Gordon if it’s tax deductable?
There would be a wonderful irony if it did qualify for “gift-aid”.
I just signed the pledge. I don’t know what £20 works out to in American dollars, but it will be money well spent to help my British friends who wish to remain free.
Cheers!
No hope of gift aid or tax relief, I’m afraid. Since our goals are wholly political we cannot be a charity under current law, and since we are opposed to government policy, it is unlikely the new Charities Act–designed to punish former charities the Government doesn’t like (such as independent schools and hospitals), and reward those organisations, not charities before, that it does–will change that.
£20 is nearly $37 at current rates, but we have no inhibitions about excepting donations in fifties. 🙂
Add me to the list.
God knows, I must be on so many 😉
guy–
I’m also committed to NOT being ” pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered…” Sorry, have to draw a line somewhere.
Richard
to the American readers of this blog I say: Help us now. If we go down, you are next…
Ok. Where do I send my contribution? Do they use paypal?
Another Yank to sign as well. That “you’re next” rule is true far too often.
Richard: It’s about 35 bucks.
And here’s a bit of a nag: Yes the Brits and the Yanks stick together pretty nicely. But let’s not forget our other cousins, at the very minimum, Australia, Canada, New Zealand. They deserve the respect to be included in our conspiracies. And, we’re gonna need them.
Froggie – Let’s not forget our most populous member of the Anglosphere: wonderful India, with such a bracing freelance attitude to life and enterprise – but civilised adherence to the rule of both criminal and civil law.
Canada – I wouldn’t bother. Tony Blair country.
Our American cousins may want to look closer to home ?(Incipient stage of the REAL ID act)
Although I am sure this has already been discussed at great length. I found some parallels with what our Government tells us are the ‘advantages’ of the ID card, stop identity theft, make it difficult for terrorists, however I did not see the benefit fraud card being played.
It would appear that both Governments hold their populations in equal contempt.
Later
Hi, Verity.
Actually, my post was largely an expression of regret that we don’t hear more from Down Under and the Great White North on this blog. Perhaps if we address them?
Full agreement on India. I knew I was being too brief as I wrote, thus the italicized very minimum. The Left has been quite clear on the International nature of their vison for a very long time, and we need to do the same when fighting our battles. I’ve worked with people of many nationalities and races, even French, who would be perfectly at home on Samizdata. There are liberty lovers the world over, and we ALL gotta stick together.
There are plenty of good people in Canada. They’re just saddled with an unusually dense (pun intended) contingent of lefties. Thus, the remaining non-dhimmi Canadians especially deserve our support.
Actually America is already well on its way towards an effective National ID card, in the form of standardized driving licenses. While it is true that Britain leads us in the rush to have such cards, we aren’t far behind you at all.
After a sixteen year silence on the matter, this week the Australian gonvenment started making ID card type noises again.
And this from a aussie Prime Minister far more committed to traditional freedom than Tony Blair can begin to comprehend.
HELP!!!!
Doug,
There’s a paypal button on the front page here. Thanks.
Verity: Canada – I wouldn’t bother.
I don’t know about that. It was reported in 2003 by the CANOE network that:
The Canadian government subsequently dropped its plans, though it would not surprise me if they were revived again soon. One fears that “orders from Washington” may not be too far from the truth of the matter.
Good news from Australia.
Senator scuttles ‘Orwellian’ national ID card
How I envy you; I have had my ID card (none of those fancy biometrics, please, we are post-communist, cant afford it – just a bit of paper in laminated plastic) ever since I was 15 and noone here gives even a thought about it being somehow “wrong”.
John Galt: We’ve had nationalised driving licences for a long time already.
I don’t understand.
If the bill passes Parliament – which is practically a certainty- what are you raising money for?
Revolution?
Yes, yes, that is right, work actively against your government! Cause as much difficulty to them as you can. Distract their attentions and resources! Sow the seeds of further public discord!
Truly you are all worthy dhimmi. We shall remember your loyal actions when it comes time for Britain to bear the blessed yoke of Islam.
Allahu Akbar!
The poll tax passed Parliament too, it didn’t pass the British people however.
The left manning the barricades all the time is becoming tiresome.
Living in Israel, I have no other choice but to have an ID card. You can’t even get a driving license without it, not to say get your healthcare, sign your children to school or study in the university.
I will gladly help the brits in their effort to avoid the same situation.
No-one should belittle this achievement. it’s almost impossible to get ten thousand liberty-minded people to sign up together to personally put their livelihood on the line for a common cause. It means certainty that our numbers are large enough to cause poll-tax scale chaos if ID ever becomes law.
Let Battle commence! Bring the Bastards on, they will only get my fingerprints from my ” cold dead Hands”
The problem is, there is a distinct lack of firearms in this country to be able to force them to onl take your fingerprints from your “cold dead Hands”.
I can’t do much from America beyond sending you some filthy lucre, but I’m good for $100.
You people need a viable conservative party immediately before you really turn into a socialist state.
Just signed up myself, but must admit I feel a bit uneasy – isn’t this, er, well, collective bargaining?
Gareth, don’t worry, England has a wide preponderance of table legs, the carrying of which is sufficient for the police to make your hands cold and dead.
Rich
Richard Thomas, thanks for that, could not put it better myself!!
So what? Where did this preposterous notion come from that ‘collective’ means socialist? Collectivist is bad because that means assigning rights on the basis of a group and denying that human right can only be individual… but collective action just means acting cooperatively and if actions are not coerced, what is intellectually or morally wrong with that? There is no contradiction in acting collectively to secure individual rights.
You forgot tagged, branded or tattooed.
I’ve had a national ID card before (actually, in those pre-digital days, it was a small book which contained all the relevant details of your life).
It was the way the Afrikaner Nationalist Party managed to keep apartheid going, in South Africa.
I’d like to donate towards the NO2ID cause, but my money is going towards the purchase of ammunition.
Really.
I plan to get more than one ID card. If you band together with like-minded people you can verify each other quite easily.
Remember any ID card scheme is TOTALLY vulnerable at the start.
Poison the well early.
I tried out the paypal button and I can report that it worked flawlessly.
I would encourage any Americans reading this to avoid quibbling about driver’s licenses and try it out yourselves.
You are completely correct about all of the ID card schemes in the US. They are dangerous to our liberty and are to be resisted.
However. Those battles are for the future.
This battle is now. Your support will do the Brits no good next year. Use the button.
As Wodehouse’s Americans frequently said: “Do it Now.”
Here’s to £40 coming your way from Taxachussetts!
Good Luck!
Good luck to you all.
Question on tactics: what do you plan to do when your tax service (Inland Revenue, if I recall correctly?) requires a valid ID in order to pay your taxes? If you retort that you do not possess one, you will end up in jail – not for the popular and politically difficult-to-prosecute crime of not possessing an ID, but for the less sympathy-invoking crime of tax evasion.
Put more broadly, if the British government makes the consumption of basic government services (police, fire, car licensing, etc) require a valid national ID how will you work around it? Do you have a plan for a national organization to provide those services in parallel?
Bombadil poses a very critical question. Who has thoughts?
Also, Bill Gates’s idea was rather nifty. Get several ID cards. In the early days, while they’re still mucking it up, it should not be too difficult. All with one little detail different. For example, under Race (and I am certain that this root word of Za-NuLab will feature) have one under Caucasian, one under Jewish, one under the ever-popular golden-oldie “Mixed”.
On a couple of them, make your middle name into your surname and your surname into your Christian name. In fact, Christian would be a nice name to write where it says First Name. Under title, I think you deserve to be a lord or lady at least once in your life. Why not? If they question it, it could be an honorary title you received from a tribe in Africa and you don’t feel it should be subject to questioning just because Zulus are black. They have their own, equally valuable, civilisation, after all. Or how about Dr? You could have a doctorate in macramé from the University of Walla-Walla. Are they going to ask you to bring your diploma in? I doubt it.
The more I think about it, the more I like Bill Gates’s suggestion. You certainly are a clever man, Bill! Hang in there and one day fortune will turn your way!
The G isn’t stupid, Veritas, they know that if the taxman started demanding fingerprints overnight it would be unpopular to put it mildly. Hence the period of having them optional before they are made compulsory. This tactic seems to me to be quite difficult to counter.
If the public gets used to them and takeup is high while they are optional, then the step to making them compulsory is a small one, and we will have lost. There may be grumbling but if 75% of the population have already had one for a decade, the grumbling will be minor.
If on the other hand the public grows to revile them, then the battle is won, and it’ll be before the IR has a chance to force you to submit or lock you up for tax evasion.
Therefore, the battle needs to happen publically, messily for the government, and [i]straight away[/i]. People have to be made to hate these things and see them as they are immediately. Course, if they are optional people might not care until its too late… Bliar counts on the apathy of the Great British Public and plans to gently ease them in without waking said public up.
{Psuedo-)Mohammed:
Distract their attentions and resources!
There (through dim sarcasm) speaks a state-worshipper. Just because they say it is for our own good does not mean we should believe them. I can see no more wasteful use of attentions and resources, decreasing the security of the citizen for the convenience of the bureaucrat, than universal surveillance.
“I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own.”
Not my original words, BTW. And note “will”, not “shall”. Those things may yet be done, but only against my will.
To my mind the relentless soul-sucking blank benignity of The Village in The Prisoner is a far more apt reference than 1984, which gets a lot of inappropriate name-checks in the present situation.
“- What do you want?
“- Information.”