Because they weren't free to travel away from where they lived. ID cards (aka internal passports) will achieve the same goal.
Just as an ID card will.
Look, you're either a serf or a free person. If you're free, you don't need to carry an ID card to prove who you are to your 'master'.
If they were useful, the government wouldn't need to make them compulsory: people would choose to use them.
If you believe that not being able to get a job, get a bank account, travel, own a car, get healthcare or, well, do pretty much anything without government permission won't make you into a serf, you have a pretty damn weird idea of 'freedom'.
Government workers need ID cards to prove who they are to the people. Free people have no need to prove who they are to the government.
And to those millions of the rest of us who like to have as little hassle as possible in the various situations where we need to show some evidence of who we are.
It's funny how you hardly ever see any sort of *rational* argument against ID cards, just emotive (but meaningless if analysed) phrases.
All you do by this sort of "argument" is demonstrate that you don't really have any good reason against them.
Indeed...I would rate Recce pilots as among the most precise and courageous I have ever seen....
Take the RAF's current recce mainstay, the Tornado GR4A....In order for them to convert it from a standard GR4, they have to fit an Infra Red Line Scanner (IRLS) and two Sideways Looking Infra Red (SLIR) sensors....Unfortunately, to make room for these, the lineys have to remove the forward cannons.....So aircrews from 2 and 13 Sqn tend to go into battle relatively poorly armed....
Yes, of course they have the usual compliment of AAM's, ECM, flares and chaff pods, and a small compliment of conventional bombs for opportunity-targets, but for good old fashioned dogfight scrapping, they're quite badly equipped....
I can speak from personal experience, that if we tell an recce pilot to fly an exact path, at a set height, bearing, and speed, and switch his sensors on and off at exact points, he will do exactly as we have asked him to do....Often the sensors will be switched on a tad early, and off a tad late, but this isn't a problem, as it gets us extra footage....Oh, and there's normally a nice picture of the pilot or navigators house tagged on to the end of the film somewhere, LOL....
And I don'tjust mean the RAF recce pilots either....The Army Air Corps have a seriously skilled crew flying Islanders and doing recce....
Those people who want an ID card for the reasons you've mentioned can have one. I don't want one - I'm happy to live with the supposed inconveniences. More importantly, I don't want to be forced into having one.
All of the rational arguments for ID cards can be dismissed quite easily without being emotive. However, the emotive aspects are very important to many people.
Less hassel when you *want* to prove your ID - though there are plenty of documents available to you right now for that purpose. The hassel will be when you *don't* have any wish to be identified, but it is demanded that you produce your ID.
Try reading my posts on the subject if you cannot understand the reasons given by the PP. Or better still, take a look at history and some of the purposes that ID cards were used for by other governments in other purportedly democratic countries.
Also remember that there is nothing special about the label "criminal". It can be applied to you just as easily as anyone else. All it needs is for a law to be made that prohibits you from doing something that you feel strongly about. You do not actually have to
*agree* with a law in order to become a criminal, and the law does not even need to have majority support.
The ID card could be misused against you in many ways, but were you ever to feel the need to become a criminal, it will hang you. I could even give you a reasonably realistic scenario if you like based upon our *present* laws. No changes needed.
I think the government would do better to introduce them as voluntary.
If you then find that there are a number of things for which they become pretty well the only acceptable form of ID, then they will effectively become near-compulsory by default.
Very true.
But they won't really work as reasons not to have them introduced.
And I don't have any problem with people just saying that they don't want one, for whatever reasons.
I'm certainly not by any means sure that a good case has been made for compulsory ID cards.
But I do object to people describing those of us who don't object as "cattle" or as "serfs".
They *could* help in that aim, should government wish to restrict our travel in that way.
But there would be a hell of a lot more to worry about than ID cards if they were planning on restricting our liberties to that extent
Stating they *will* do that is just ridiculous, because there are just far too many other things that would have to be done first, which neither the British people nor our partners in the EU (most of whom already have compulsory ID cards) would allow.
Wrong.
Freedom/serfdom has nothing to do with whether you need to carry an ID card or not.
I think that would probably happen if they brought them in as a voluntary thing.
But your assertion is false anyhow. For just one example, most people would agree that wearing a seat belt is useful when in a vehicle in motion, but many people chose not to do so until it was made illegal.
And if you think that being required to have an ID card would make any of those things more subject to government permission than is the case now, you have a pretty damn weird view of life in this country.
To get a job (legally) you have to provide your NI number. To get a bank account, you have to provide several separate pieces of identification. To travel (outside the country), you need a passport. To *own* a car requires nothing, granted, but there is no reason why an ID card should change that. To get healthcare generally requires that you prove who you are.
They do if they want anything personal from the government.
An ID card is only as good as the evidence used to obtain it. Everyone in this village knows me as my sig under. But what proof is that? Considering that you can get anyone's Birth Certificate just by paying for a copy (Day of The Jackal etc). What evidence are they going to ask for? Utility Bills? Neighbour's Affidavit? Certified Photograph? Useless.
The next thing will be to report to the police every time you move house, as they do on the Continent, I believe.
Now there's a thing. Is it not part of some EU scheme for integration?
I apologise to one and all for inadvertantly starting such a long and heated branch of this thread by making what I assumed would be a throw-away remark. The level of paranoia and fear of persecution is higher than I could possibly have guessed; but I suppose it would be a boring place if we all agreed.
... any chance that those who want to continue could retire to uk.legal and leave uk.d-i-y in peace so we can get back to the newsgroup topics?
Behaviour which has been alleged but never proven to a satisfactory standard.
But the point is not whether the power has or has not been used in a way that you agree with. It is that the power to restrict the travel of someone who has not been convicted of a crime *does* exist right now. This is a power that you claimed could never be introduced by a UK government. Start with the sort of things that "right thinking" people will agree with and cry, "something must be done", and once the powers are in place you can gradually increase their scope. Germany did not sstart by saying, "We want to introduce measures that will make it easier for us to kill the Jews when we decide to do so."
The idea is to tighten the reins a little at a time. Let the population get used to one new restriction or obligation before imposing the next. That way, a restriction that would have caused a civil revolt at one time can be introduced with hardly a murmur of dissent.
If that is *not* the main purpose of the ID card, then you will have to explain to me what its actual purpose is that is so beneficial that it justifies the amount it will cost. Because I cannot think of a single beneficial reason that is not either already achievable with what we already have, or achievable at little cost without imposing on the liberty of the majority of the population. Because of all the reasons I have heard from the government, not a single one of them is even slightly plausible.
I'm willing to accept that other might have suggested it, but I haven't.
Given that you appear to be arguing against such measure are you in favour of scrotes of all ages being allowed to go around causing mayhem for uninvolved passersby. If two groups of people want to arrange to knock shit out of each other in a field somewhere (with the owqners permission) then I'm quite happy that they should be allowed to do so.
They started by driving the Jews out of their businesses, their homes and everywhere else and then deported them. Other groups of people were included. Killing such people off apparently came from a suggestion made by a German citizen.
Quite, it's done all the time in many different spheres of life, "Softly, softly catchee monkey" is the phrase.
Such things have been going on since someone decided to impose his will on the rest of the population. It has been happening even faster in recent years. Much of it prompted by people's unwillingness to comply with existing laws and trying to weedle out of them on technicalities.
And it was the monitoring which provided the proof he (and every other Lufthansa jet) was cutting the corner and the airline received a warning over it. This one made the local newspapers. I thought it made BBCi as well but can't find a URL. If I find one I'll post it.
I can't be out scanning the horizon for them continously. They sweep over the hill ehind us and pass over my house within 100 foot or so often without seeing it there until it's too late. By the time I get outside they're well gone.
We are on the side of a hill near the top. The valley them rolls away sharply again. I imagine they know the height of the hill so provided they are a little above it they are safe but don't notice there is a house and large farm just the other side.
Rules of evidence. Prosecution and defence. Proof beyond reasonable doubt of contravening a defined criminal law. That sort of thing. As opposed to "He was seen by a bloke at the pub hanging around the station just before it gets daubed with graffiti, and his eyes are a bit close together".
My mistake. It was the PP who I had directed my last post to.
That's the same standard of logic as, "If you disagree with the war on Iraq, then you must support Saddam".
I am in favour of using normal criminal law against those who break the law, and not using the law against those who do not break the law. I am not in favour of reducing the standards for conviction, which I see as akin to dumbing-down the exams to "solve" the problem of lowering standards of education.
If there is no complaint afterwards, then such activity is most unlikely to be acted upon. It's when one suffers very serious injury or death that the issue of what degree of consent was actually given becomes significant.
Before that came the compilation of records to make them easier to identify and find.
UK citizens make similar suggestions about sections of our community regularly. It does not mean that I believe a government should encompass it as an official policy.
Yes. It has always been wrong, and continues to be so.
Being innocent is a minor technicality that should perhaps not stand in the way of law enforcement?
There are in fact very few cases where a defendant has "got off on a technicality" in the UK, and I'd be interested to hear which cases you believe qualify. Our rules of evidence are pretty pragmatic. Unlike the US, where a relatively minor procedural error can exclude the main prosecution evidence. The only mainstay that *used* to be the foundation of our justice system for a long, long time, is that a person must be assumed to be innocent until *proven* guilty. Any such proof must be "beyond reasonable doubt". The new laws have been engineered so that a psuedo-conviction can take place if it is thought "He's probably guilty of something".
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