So now there is no choice. You must take a stand. Will you continue to be a free man, or submit to being a numbered citizen?

Labour’s manifesto promised ID cards would be voluntary

The battle over the government’s controversial ID Cards Bill has ended after peers accepted a compromise deal.Under the compromise, anyone who renews a passport will have their details put on a national ID database – but will not have to get a card until 2010.

[…]

“The amendment preserves the integrity of the National Identity Register by ensuring that everyone who applies for, or renews a passport or other designated document has their biometric information and other identity details placed on the register,” he [Burn’em] said.

“However, it also goes towards meeting the concerns of those who have argued that the card itself should not be compulsory at this stage by allowing those who apply for or renew their passport before 1 January 2010 to ‘opt out’ of being issued the ID card itself, even though their identity details will be entered on to the register.”

[…]

Do you see yet? The Lords, for all their worthy bluster, cannot prevent ID cards when the government agrees to abide by the exact wording of their manifesto. A card will not be compulsory, but you will still be tagged.

You know what to do. You have been told.

Instead of an Iron Duke, we have a Rubber Poodle. Instead of an ultra-Tory in opposition, we have have an MOR pseudo-Tony. No more pistols at dawn , just press releases over lunch….

Iron Duke fights duel over Catholics

Saturday March 28, 1829
The Guardian

It is our duty to announce to the public an event which fortunately has not been attended with fatal consequences to the personages concerned. A meeting took place yesterday morning in Battersea-fields between the Duke of Wellington and the Earl of Winchilsea.

[…] From the Duke to Lord Winchilsea: “My Lord – is a gentleman who happens to be the king’s first minister, to submit to being insulted by any gentleman who thinks proper to attributed to him disgraceful or criminal motives for his behaviour? Your lordship is alone responsible for the consequences. I call upon your lordship to give me that satisfaction for your conduct which a gentleman never refuses to give.”

From Lord Winchilsea. “My Lord – the satisfaction which your grace has demanded, it is of course impossible for me to decline.”

The Duke of Wellington and Lord Winchilsea met at the appointed place. The parties having taken their ground, Lord Winchilsea received the Duke of Wellington’s fire [apparently not aimed at him] and fired in the air. After some discussion the accompanying memorandum was accepted as a satisfactory reparation to the Duke of Wellington. […]
There is no honour in politics any longer. There is little enough in British life altogether, for that matter. I would rant about the ‘respect’ culture Herr Blair insists we must engender, when he commands so little of it himself… but I wither at the thought. I would rail against the ‘professional politician’ as an invasive species detrimental to the natives of these Isles, for the evidence lies clear around us… these new, mutant isoforms of human beings falling somewhere between parasites and saprophytes, feeding both from the remaining living Britains and sucking the vitality from those millions already mentally dead. I long for truth, and look for someone to trust, someone to inspire, but today the clouds are low and dark and there is a sickness in my stomach and a stench in my nostrils. The sounds of Wellington’s gunshots have long since died, and in their place only the slither of snakes crawling over the rotten, bloated corpse of a once Great Britain.

The only solution, pick up your metaphorical pistols and challenge these whimpering political dogs to a fight! I will see you, Sir, at dawn, and the choice of weapons shall be mine!

‘Youre always so happy, how the hell…

You’re like a dumb dumb patriot

If youre supposed to be so angry, why dont you fight

Let me benefit from your right?

Dont you know the only way to change things

Is to shoot men who arrange things

Robin I would try and explain but you’d never see in a million years.‘

BBC in product placement shock
[….] ‘We would never knowingly insert the product of any company and try to pass it off as a news story’, said a source. ‘The BBC is an independent service for the British license payer. The only way a story like this could get onto our news site would be if there were internal corruption – someone taking massive backhanders.’ he continued. ‘Unless the story comes from Arslikhan PR, of course.’ […]

The Hyshot III was attached to the front of a conventional rocket

A new jet engine designed to fly at seven times the speed of sound appears to have been successfully tested.The scramjet engine, the Hyshot III, was launched at Woomera, 500km north of Adelaide in Australia, on the back of a two stage Terrier-Orion rocket.

Once 35km up, the Hyshot III fell back to Earth, reaching speeds analysts hope will have topped Mach 7.6 (9,000 km/h).

It is hoped the British designed Hyshot III will pave the way for ultra fast, intercontinental air travel.

An international team of researchers is presently analysing data from the experiment, to see if it was a full success.

The scientists had just six seconds to monitor its performance before the £1m engine crashed into the ground.

Rachel Owen, a researcher from UK defence firm QinetiQ, which designed the scramjet, said it looked like everything had gone according to plan.[…]

‘We’d hoped to get some coverage, but to be placed so highly on the BBC site is exactly what we needed, what with the recent share price slide. The BBC reports give us an air of respectability one just doesn’t get with the Queensland Daily Sheepskinner, for example. No disrespect, of course.’ […]

The more the pigs squeal about how good things are, the more shit you know must be piling up.

The bigger the pig, the louder the squeal, the smellier the shit.

Blair is fundamentally wrong.

Bush is clueless.
Steve Bell is right on the money.

Critics claim ministers are breaking an election promise that the ID scheme would be voluntary by insisting that anyone who renews a passport will also have to get an ID card and be entered on the national register.

But Mr Clarke rejected this charge last night to laughter and jeers of derision from the opposition.

“Passports are voluntary documents,” he insisted. “No one is forced to renew a passport if they choose not to do so.”

Invertebrates refuse backbones.

So, from this final statement by Dumbo, I infer that there must be no legal requirement for me to have a passport in order to leave this country and return. Otherwise, once again, HMG are stating that I will be under confinement within the UK mainland unless I comply with their ‘voluntary’ ID card scheme.

A quick search on the UK Passport  Service site reveals no page detailing any legal requirement for holding a passport in order to leave the country. Hmmm… I wonder. Don’t you?

An 82-year-old Women’s Institute stalwart has been asked to remove her hat in a pub – because staff claimed it was a security risk. […]  “I mulled it over and then thought ‘How ridiculous!‘ “.

[…]
Pub licensee Tony Love said it was pub policy to always ask people to remove their hats. …”Mrs Wilbraham does not understand that the world is changing.”

…

Wrong. Mrs Wilbraham obviously understands the changes better than Mr Love. She immediately and correctly identified the changes as ‘ridiculous!’. Mr Love thinks being filmed while in a pub is a normal way for society to progress. He is blind and stupid.

…

I also wanted to point out this as a fantastic read. The Chinese have had enough of being hit by rocks tossed by their friends in the glass house. Every single page is fabulous.

I meant to post this quote from a football manager, talking about a football pitch.

“Sometimes you see beautiful people with no brains. Sometimes you have ugly people who are intelligent, like scientists,” he said.

I’m glad I’m not stereotyped.

Excuse me while I set up another flask of bubbling green liquid.

MPs overturned previous Lords defeats on the ID Cards Bill

Government plans to make all passport applicants also have an ID card have been defeated in the Lords.Peers voted by a majority of 61 to overturn the proposal – backed by MPs last month – for a second time.

Opposition peers say the plans break the government’s promise that ID cards will initially be voluntary.

…

The UK and other countries must introduce biometric passports by October to remain part of the US visa waiver scheme, which makes travel to America easier.
[…]

On this latter point…

Remember: this is the government of my country changing my passport requirements – putting my biometric details on a database – at the request of another country.

And will that country get access to that database when some British mug wants to enter The Land Of The Free?

So obviously, if I put on my passport application that I don’t want to travel to the USA, or that I don’t mind getting a visa, I can opt out of having a biometric passport.

N’est pas?

No, me neither.

Al Quaida strikes again!

Update:

Clunk vows to continue ID battle

“I hope the Lords will recognise that this manifesto commitment, voted through by the elected chamber, should be respected,” Mr Clarke told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

[…]

OK. And the manifesto commitment is (was)…

On page 52 of its 111 pages, under the heading “Strong and Secure Borders”, the Labour 2005 manifesto said:

“We will introduce ID cards, including biometric data like fingerprints, backed up by a national register and rolling out initially on a voluntary basis as people renew their passports“.

[…] From David Davis.
As one Lord put it last night, and as this site has said recently…

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury, a Liberal Democrat, said] … describing the ID card scheme as voluntary was stretching the English language to breaking point. He went on: “It’s not often it’s left to the opposition to make sure the government honours its manifesto pledges.”

Sharks with implants are planned to be released off Florida

Pentagon scientists are planning to turn sharks into “stealth spies” capable of tracking vessels undetected, a British magazine has reported.They want to remotely control the sharks by implanting electrodes in their brains, The New Scientist says.

[…]

Like Dr Moreau’s island for the 21st century neocon.

You know what the next logical step is.

And you know that as soon as they can, they will.

My sister is emigrating to Australia in a few months… Can anyone recommend a video camera setup for keeping in touch? I’ve read mixed reviews of the iSight, and am not convinved by Apple peripherals in general. Mac this end, PC hers.

Merci beau.

Call for applications for the
MP- Scientist Pairing Scheme 2006

Are you a scientist with an interest in politics?  The Royal Society is currently inviting applications from scientists to take part in the 2006 round of its successful MP-Scientist pairing scheme.

The scheme helps build bridges between parliamentarians and scientists in theUK. MP and scientist pairs spend time together in the laboratory and the constituency followed by an opportunity for scientists to go behind the scenes at Westminster gaining first hand experience of how science policy is formed.

We are looking to recruit post-doctoral scientists either with a research fellowship or working at a Research Council institute and a proven interest in science communication and matters relating to science policy.

[…]

I would apply, only I have no interest in politics….

Do I?

A Sudanese man has been forced to take a goat as his “wife”, after he was caught having sex with the animal.The goat’s owner, Mr Alifi, said he surprised the man with his goat and took him to a council of elders.

They ordered the man, Mr Tombe, to pay a dowry of 15,000 Sudanese dinars ($50) to Mr Alifi.

“We have given him the goat, and as far as we know they are still together,” Mr Alifi said.

Mr Alifi, Hai Malakal in Upper Nile State, told the Juba Post newspaper that he heard a loud noise around midnight on 13 February and immediately rushed outside to find Mr Tombe with his goat.

“When I asked him: ‘What are you doing there?’, he fell off the back of the goat, so I captured and tied him up”.

Mr Alifi then called elders to decide how to deal with the case.

“They said I should not take him to the police, but rather let him pay a dowry for my goat because he used it as his wife,” Mr Alifi told the newspaper.

[…]

The second fab ‘justice’ story of the day. Must be the weather…

A bicycle courier in Colombia has been given a four-year jail sentence for grabbing a woman pedestrian’s bottom, a TV station has reported.A judge’s ruling – criticised by some as being too harsh – ruled the courier had committed an abusive sexual act.

Diana Marcela Diaz told RCN that the courier had cycled off after groping her, but had been caught by passers-by.

When he was arrested, she was given the option of slapping him, letting him go, or filing a complaint.

[…]

Wow! I was very taken with the idea at the end here. To think, you could be given a choice as to how to punish those who offend against you.

Someone nicks your car, you get to (a) send them to prison, (b) make them do community work (c) punch them in the face 3 times or (d) take any 3 items you like from their home.

Vigilante justice, proscribed by law. What a lovely concept!

Mark Leyner, in ‘Et Tu, Babe’, has the main characters punished for stealing a phial of Abraham Lincoln’s morning breath by random punitive confiscation. At regular intervals, police would turn up and take one item from their home, without telling them what it was. Sometimes it’s obvious, like the TV. Sometimes you don’t find out until you need it, like an ironing board, or a waffle machine. Confiscated items cannot be replaced, under the terms of the punishment.

I like that idea.

My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist is my favourite Leyner book.

Especially the chapter entitled ‘Fugitive from a centrifuge‘

‘There were no longer Italian neighborhoods, or Cuban neighborhoods, or Irish or Greek neighborhoods. There were Anorexic neighborhoods, and Narcissistic neighborhoods, and Manic And Compulsive neighborhoods.’

Actors (from left) Waqar Siddiqui, Rizwan Ahmed and Arfman Usman with Michael Winterbottom and detainee Rhuhel Ahmed

The actors who star in movie The Road to Guantanamo were questioned by police at Luton airport under anti-terrorism legislation, it has emerged.The men, who play British inmates at the detention camp, were returning from the Berlin Film Festival where the movie won a Silver Bear award.

One of the actors, Rizwan Ahmed, said a police officer asked him if he intended to make any more “political” films.

….

‘Excuse me sir, is that your beard? Come with me, please.’

The idiots stopping people like this do nothing but exhibit themselves as stoopid, blinkered bigots.

Feeling safer now?

….

I have been wondering about my freedom to travel in the near future. I just got a new passport, valid until 2016. Under current proposals, I won’t have to submit to the NIR until 2016 when I renew this passport. Voluntarilry, of course!

So when I get a new passport, I assume I will be able to opt out of ID carding, as the system is voluntary.

Except we all know I won’t be able to opt out, as voluntary is only a word bandied around to appease the spineless gimps on the Labour backbenches who apparently cannot distinguish between ‘voluntary’ and ‘must submit to data-rape if you apply for a passport’.

So, it’s voluntary unless I wish to leave the country.

So far so clear. Now, we all know I won’t be getting an ID card. But where does that leave me regarding international travel? Is my government, the people who serve me, going to keep me under ‘home-nation arrest’ until I let them scan my retina and sample my DNA?

Does this infringe european human rights legislation?

Is an passport any less of a valid travel document just because it has an arbitratry expiration date? One day in 2016 I can go where I like, the next I am a prisoner.

This post is vague. It was in my head as I couldn’t sleep last night.

Bu tit’s the thought that counts.

Mr Burnham said the radio technology was being introduced to meet international regulations enabling identity documents to be read by scanners at airports. It was “nonsense” to suggest the frequencies could be used to monitor people’s movements.

“This kind of scaremongering is designed to whip up fears about the ID cards scheme. I hope people will see it for what it is.“

…

George Monbiot doing his best Irdial impersonation. But he holds himself back too much. Although this bit is pretty good…

‘So the police won’t even have to be there. Someone sitting in a control room could fly a tiny drone (some of them are just a few inches across) equipped with a receiver over the heads of a crowd and, with the help of our new identity cards, determine who’s there.‘

…

The ID card debate seems to be boring the populus into submission. It, as many other issues, has been transformed into a neo-liberal dinner party discussion and taken as far as possible out of the context of most citizens futures. Nobody I speak to really cares, nobody shows any passion one way or the other. The ‘nothing to hide: nothing to fear’ response prevails. Tis the way of the modern world.