Look at this page showing UK government expenditure and Tax Revenue;
You will see that expenditure that is necessarily financed centrally amounts to only about a fifth of the total. Even if you are an 0ld 5k00l p1nk0-c0mm13 and include all of Health and Education that’s still only about half of expenditure that needs to be centrally funded.

If you scroll down to how where this money comes from you will see that only about half of the revenue comes from direct personal taxation.

Now if central government were to rightly devolve to local government the responsibilities for raising and spending tax income for the 50% plus that does not require central funding(with a small amount of redistribution to account for poorer areas) ALL personal taxation could be gathered and spent locally, and if you can bear to devolve education and health then you could include a large dollop of ‘Other’.

Basically I am showing you that there is no absolute reason (or absolutely no reason) for central government to directly tax individuals even if you keep current Government spending levels.

Now isn’t that peachy?

Visitors to the UK’s biggest cities will be tagged and tracked by a network of cameras in a revolutionary system to tighten security while also providing a personalised alibi for the general public.

Police in Manchester will be fitting visitors with wrist bands containing tiny Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips in the ultimate big-brother system.

Visitors will be watched as they use the city and will be filmed on streets.

At the end of the day they will ‘store their alibi’ in a proprietory HDTV format.

Technology experts at Stasi Solutions, the firm behind the project, say it will also make the city more secure, with the tags used to track lost children and cut crime.

Stasi Solutions joined forces with Sony to provide the system, called Your Life, which could also be introduced to Bush Gardens, in Florida and Halliburtonia, Baghdad.

Ali Baba, from YourLife, said: “It will involve cameras being strategically placed along the paths and at crime photo-opportunity locations.

“The cameras will be used to track and video visitors while they experience the city’s attractions.

“These personalised video clips will then be routed, catalogued and digitally stored, ready for the SOCA to pick up in a tailored HD format when they require it.”

He added: “In addition to using Sony video cameras to capture the guest’s experience in the city, the cameras can also be utilised to provide additional security protection in the event of break-ins or acts of vandalism.”

Hans Burger, from Stasi Solutions, said: “Our aim is to give the police the opportunity to view their unique day time and time again through secure digital video footage.”

Original story here and elswhere. Of course ITRW you would only need to install a network of RFID detectors and cross reference with CCTV as and when (to keep costs down).

An IRS Privacy Nightmare

April 11, 2006

This column was written by Peter Rothberg.

The IRS has quietly proposed astounding new rules which would allow tax preparers to sell the contents of their client’s tax returns to third-party businesses, as long as a requisite form is signed. Historically, tax returns were a strictly private affair, with both tax preparers and IRS agents forbidden to share the info with anyone for any reason. But this could all change if the IRS’s blatant corporate giveaway is passed. That’s great news for “data-brokers” like Choicepoint that make tens of millions of dollars selling personal information to corporate marketers.

Here’s how the new rules would work: When you visit your accountant or a tax-preparation firm like H&R Block, your tax preparer would ask you to sign a form authorizing them to release your information at their discretion. Once you sign that form, your tax preparer has permission to sell or share the information contained in your tax filings. You have no control over how that data will be used, who will get it, or whether it will be adequately safeguarded from identity thieves.

[…]

I assume your SSN is on US tax returns and this would be replaced by a RealID number and these can be cross referenced to health care provision, your driver’s license, credit card company, real estate. It’s almost as if they want your personal information to be insecure – so they can develop a ‘solution’ to their imposed problem.

Total Insanity!!!!!!

The new UK Identity and Passport Service, spawned out of the Passport Service after the ID Cards Act became law on Saturday, has celebrated its birth by trying to stop people renewing their passports whenever they want to, whether or not the passport is about to expire. The change in terms and conditions has been slipped into the website without announcement, and is quite clearly ID card related. [The Register]

Basically you can guarantee that if your ‘strategy’ is to look for loopholes in current legislation you are a sitting target and being as useful as going on a demonstration.
The government are making certain that you will have to *fight* for your rights if you want to return this country to a free, peaceable, libertarian democracy.

Edit:
The IPS site now has the fact you can renew your passport at any time on it. But the points above stand, legislation can and most likely will be amended to suit the government – loopholes are pretty trivial to close especially so if the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill is enacted.

So cock-up or a symptom of the endemic bullying of the Home Office?

A NATIONAL identity card scheme will be a “present” to terrorists, criminal gangs and foreign spies, one of Britain’s most respected former intelligence agents has told ministers.

[…]

Baroness Park, who was made a peer by Margaret Thatcher, passed a withering verdict on the proposed cards, ridiculing ministers’ suggestions that the system will make people safer. In fact, she said, the complete opposite is true.

“The very creation of such an enormous national identity register will be a present to terrorists; it will be a splendid thing for them to disrupt and blow up [!!!-mm],” she said.

“It will also provide valuable information to organised crime and to the intelligence services of unfriendly countries. It will be accessible to all of these,” she said.

[via bribery and database cracking, but of course peoples lives will be disrupted by ‘functionally fit’ false ID without the need for accurate NIR information – because some companies or institutions will accept the cards at face value]

The warning about the risk of foreign spying comes at a time when MI5, the domestic security service, has cut its counter-espionage budget, prompting concerns among MPs who oversee the UK intelligence services.

Baroness Park concluded: “I find it extraordinarily difficult to believe why anyone would voluntarily and enthusiastically come forward and say: ‘Do let me join this dangerous club’.”

Baroness Park is not the first former intelligence officer to question the value of a national ID card. Dame Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5, last year said she did not believe the cards would make Britain any safer from terrorist attack; they would quickly be copied, she said.

Whereas Dame Stella’s background was in combating internal threats, especially the IRA, Baroness Park has extensive experience of foreign intelligence operations.

[…]

From The Scotsman

–

In other news another government IT project has failed it – but this time due to ‘user non-compliance’, ;

At the meeting, the head of the watchdog, Sir John Bourn, said his report will say the government project had failed to win the “hearts and minds” of the NHS staff required to use it.
The project’s failure to “take the people in the National Health Service with them” meant it had become a “focus of dissension” amongst GPs and consultants.

And of course I mean;

At the meeting, the head of the watchdog, said her report will say the NIR project had failed to win the “hearts and minds” of the public required to register.
The project’s failure to “take in the people of the country” meant it had become a “focus of dissension” amongst Citizens and Residents.

Oyster data use rises in crime clampdown
Staff and agencies
Monday March 13, 2006

Police hunting criminals are increasingly seeking information from electronically stored travel records, such as those created by users of the popular Oyster card in London.

Figures disclosed today show a huge leap in police requests to Transport for London, which operates the Oyster cards used to travel on buses, trains and the underground.

Just seven information requests were made by police in the whole of 2004, compared with 61 requests made in January this year alone…

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1730002,00.html

This was bound to happen of course.

If you really want to have an Oyster card, (and TFL gives you a good reason to use one; bus fares are £1 with Oyster instead of £1.50 when you pay cash for example) you must:

• Make sure you have an anonymous Oyster card; you can buy them for £3
• NEVER fill your Oyster with your credit card or debit card, use only cash. If you update Oyster with a card that is connected to you, your Oyster will be connected to you via the details on the card.
• Never use someone elses Oyster. If they are a criminal, and you use their card, the police might swipe you coming off or getting on the underground*.

*Now, the last one is not true…yet, but you can guarantee that in the future the police will have realtime access to Oyster touc-ins and touch-outs. That means that when a criminal gets onto a bus, they can tell the driver not to open the doors until they get there. The same with the trains. They can tell the driver to stay in the tunnel until they get to the next station where they can sweep the whole train.