ID cards will not be compulsory, says Alan Johnson

Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, has announced the death of compulsory ID cards in a significant Government climbdown over the controversial scheme.

By Tom Whitehead, Home Affairs Editor

Alan Johnson said ID cards should not have been portrayed as ‘a panacea for terrorism”.

He said the cards will now only be issued to Britons on a voluntary basis meaning no one will ever be forced to have one, effectively paving the way for the scheme to be scrapped altogether.

A pilot scheme for airside workers, which marked the first attempt at making the £4.9 billion programme compulsory for British nationals has been abandoned.

Mr Johnson even admitted the suggestion the cards would help combat terrorism was exaggerated as he accepted the Government should never have allowed “the perception to go around that they were a panacea for terrorism”.

Instead, the Home Office is now concentrating on the cards being useful for youngsters to prove their age when going in to pubs.

It will remain compulsory for foreign nationals staying the UK long term to have an ID cards but Britons will only have one now if they request it.

Chris Grayling, the shadow Home Secretary, said: “This decision is symbolic of a Government in chaos. They have spent millions on the scheme so far – the Home Secretary thinks it has been a waste and wants to scrap it, but the Prime Minister won’t let him. So we end up with an absurd fudge instead. This is no way to run the country.”

[…]

Telegraph

This is in no way good enough.

First of all, if you do not give ID Cards to everyone, then people who are stopped and asked to identify themselves will be forced to identify themselves in another way. The pressure will very great to adopt the card ‘voluntarily’; there will be more hassle in daily life without it, especially when you cannot even buy a teaspoon without an ID Card.

Second, if the NIR still exists, it will be trivial for the next totalitarian government to reintroduce compulsory ID Cards, and in any case, the NIR, since it takes your fingerprints, will make your fingers your id card. The position still remains the same that if you do not want to go into the NIR, you will have to forgo having a passport. This is totalitarian madness and yet another demonstration that Neu Liebour, even now, simply cannot change its evil nature.

The NIR must be SCRAPPED. Anything less than scrapping it is UTTER NONSENSE, and everyone knows it, because they know that the database is the problem, and not the card. Everyone also knows that the NIR does not make sense if the whole population is not in it. It is an affront to all decent people and must be abandoned completely.

Third, the suggestion that ID Cards would stop terrorism was not believed by anyone with a single brain cell, and everyone who said it was called a liar by us, and people better than us.

Fourth, the need to prove your age is a completely absurd excuse to maintain the NIR and ‘voluntary’ ID Cards. There are private organizations that print these cards for those people who really want them, and in any case, underage drinking is a health problem, not an identity problem.

Fifth. Compulsory ID Cards for foreign nationals staying in the UK is discrimination pure and simple. These people ALREADY have ID – THEIR PASSPORTS with VISAs in them; in other words, they have been vetted before they even got here. To require them to have (and pay for) another, superfluous piece of ID, running on the NIR, costing BILLIONS of pounds is completely insane. And of course, all foreign looking people, which means anyone who is not caucasian, will be constantly asked to identify themselves, as I say above. The fact that foreigners will be forced to have ID cards will increase the pressure on people in the UK to carry ID cards constantly dramatically. To stop accusations of racism, the beleaguered police will once again, be asked to stop people at random, this time for their ID just to make up the numbers. The government will also pass laws unrelated to the ID Card itself, requiring identification for a whole raft of goods and services, and the people who provide these will ask for either a UK drivers license, passport or UK ID Card. No one likes to carry around a sensitive and valuable document like their passport, and not everyone drives. That leaves signing up for a ‘voluntary’ ID Card. They will be able to force the adoption of this evil without trying very hard; this is why the NIR MUST be scrapped, because it is upon that that everything they are planning is built.

Clearly they have not got the guts to completely back down and destroy the work of David Blunkett

Charles Clarke

and Jacqui Smith,

who all spent so much time lying and misleading in an attempt to sell ID Cards to the British public.

What these cowards are doing is trying to steal the thunder of the Tories. The Tories have promised to scrap the ID Card. So now, Labour, to save their skins, are scrapping it.

This is actually a good thing.

Now the Tories will have to double down or fold. They will have to up the stakes and say that they are going to dismantle the NIR, since it is the key to the whole totalitarian system, and they are the party of liberty and freedom. If they do not do this, they LOSE the argument.

With both of the two parties playing this game, in the end, there will be NOTHING LEFT of the totalitarian apparatus.

Either way, it looks like ID Cards and now the NIR are finally on their way to total annihilation, and not a second too soon. Next, ContactPoint is going to go up for the chop. When that happens, it will be impossible for Local Authorities to generate lists of who is and who is not registered at a school.

I can hardly believe it, and I am tentative in saying it, but it looks like Britain is on the mend!

FURTHERMORE

Alan Johnson says in the Daily Mail:

Everyone who wants a card, or a biometric passport, will have their details stored on the national identity register.

So now there are going to be TWO types of British Passport?! a Biometric one and NON Biometric one?!!

As far as I know, there is only one type of passport available to British Subjects, the BIOMETRIC PASSPORT and in order to get one, you are FORCED to enter the NIR!

Mr Johnson said he still believed the cards would help improve security at airports.

This is a lie. HOW will it help security ANYWHERE that it is required?

Mr Johnson said he was an ‘instinctive’ supporter of ID cards and said he wanted to ‘accelerate’ the delivery of the cards.

That means that he is an instinctive totalitarian. What an admission!

Next year young people opening bank accounts are to be encouraged to obtain ID cards and over the following two years anyone getting a passport will get one – but can opt out.

Just like it was predicted; they are were going to tie the ID Card to your bank account, and use it to monitor your every withdrawal.

I’ve been reading “My Life and Work“, Henry Ford’s autobiography, I was pleasantly surprised by much of it (that is I mean you should read it too). Here are some quotes:

When we are at work we ought to be at work. When we are at play we ought to be at play. There is no use trying to mix the two. The sole object ought to be to get the work done and to get paid for it. When the work is done, then the play can come, but not before. And so the Ford factories and enterprises have no organization, no specific duties attaching to any position, no line of succession or of authority, very few titles, and no conferences. We have only the clerical help that is absolutely required; we have no elaborate records of any kind, and consequently no red tape.

[…]

Because there are no titles and no limits of authority, there is no question of red tape or going over a man’s head. Any workman can go to anybody, and so established has become this custom, that a foreman does not get sore if a workman goes over him and directly to the head of the factory. The workman rarely ever does so, because a foreman knows as well as he knows his own name that if he has been unjust it will be very quickly found out, and he shall no longer be a foreman. One of the things that we will not tolerate is injustice of any kind. The moment a man starts to swell with authority he is discovered, and he goes out, or goes back to a machine. A large amount of labour unrest comes from the unjust exercise of authority by those in subordinate positions, and I am afraid that in far too many manufacturing institutions it is really not possible for a workman to get a square deal.

I would say this is the polar opposite of ‘statist’ enterprises (e.g. BBC) and the bureaucratic mentality in general.

When a business becomes congested with bad methods; when a business becomes ill through lack of attention to one or more of its functions; when executives sit comfortably back in their chairs as if the plans they inaugurated are going to keep them going forever; when business becomes a mere plantation on which to live, and not a big work which one has to do–then you may expect trouble. You will wake up some fine morning and find yourself doing more business than you have ever done before–and getting less out of it. You find yourself short of money. You can borrow money. And you can do it, oh, so easily. People will crowd money on you. It is the most subtle temptation the young business man has. But if you do borrow money you are simply giving a stimulant to whatever may be wrong. You feed the disease. Is a man more wise with borrowed money than he is with his own? Not as a usual thing. To borrow under such conditions is to mortgage a declining property.

Substitute “a business” for “a country’s economy”

An impartial investigation of the last war, of what preceded it and what has come out of it, would show beyond a doubt that there is in the world a group of men with vast powers of control, that prefers to remain unknown, that does not seek office or any of the tokens of power, that belongs to no nation whatever but is international–a force that uses every government, every widespread business organization, every agency of publicity, every resource of national psychology, to throw the world into a panic for the sake of getting still more power over the world. An old gambling trick used to be for the gambler to cry “Police!” when a lot of money was on the table, and, in the panic that followed, to seize the money and run off with it. There is a power within the world which cries “War!” and in the confusion of the nations, the unrestrained sacrifice which people make for safety and peace runs off with the spoils of the panic.

!!!

Coming soon to a hyperinflated fiat currency near you!

Money: Cheaper than paper!

Gavin Webb is a Libertarian Liberal Democrat councillor for Stoke and Trent Vale ward on Stoke-on-Trent City Council.

He has just written something that was sent to us, so lets look at it shall we?

Those who can, teach – like parents!

As a matter of principle, Liberal Democrats should support home educators in their opposition to Graham Badman’s recommendations in the Review of Elective Home Education in England. However, I fear the Party leadership will not do so.

That is because they have no principles, obviously.

Instead, it looks at though it will be seeking to find a ‘balance’ between the rights of parents to decide for themselves how best to educate their children, and the collective welfare of children as a whole.

Why am I so concerned that the Party may side with collectivism as opposed to defending individual rights? Upon seeking clarification on the Party’s policy on home education from Cowley Street’s policy boffs, and in particular on the Badman recommendations, I was reliably informed of the need to find that balance. In short, I was told the Party is generally supportive of the Badman recommendations.

Which is just what we expect from a party filled with irrational people.

I have several problems with siding with this subjective piece of rubbish. As a libertarian, I say the Party should not be endorsing coerced collectivism at all. Sure, if a group of parents want to voluntarily come together and register their children with the State and the evil database that is ContactPoint, then let them do so. I would say they are foolish in their choice but they should be free to do so nonetheless.

Parents should not be ‘free to register with ContactPoint’. That is completely absurd. If the government of TODAY says its voluntary, any future government could suddenly make it COMPULSORY. This is why we should never support totalitarian infrastructures being built in the first place; you may trust Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith, but in the future, someone who you do not trust may take the reigns and do something dastardly with all that collected data. Also, for some parents to be able to use ContactPoint, the parents who do not want it will have their money stolen from them to pay for it by the state. The state should never put something like this together. If parents want to create and run their own private ContactPoint, that is another thing, but one designed and run by the state is always unacceptable to Libertarians. This is pretty basic stuff, how can you get it so very wrong AND support No2ID?

If however, parents decide they want nothing to do with the State, they too should be free to exercise their rights.

They should be free to live without interfacing with the state.

Under the Badman proposals home educators will not be permitted their rights.

They will have their rights stripped from them. They will not be free to exercise their rights.

They will be forced to register their children with their local education authority, and their children will be entered onto the ContactPoint register, and if parents’ standard or type of education doesn’t conform with that which is prescribed by the State – which most of us know to be crap – then the freedom to home educate their children will be denied them. Opposition to this is a matter of principle for all Liberal Democrats.

No, it is a matter of principle for all libertarians. Liberal Democrats HAVE NO PRINCIPLES except BAD ONES.

Of course, if a child is being abused – which, as an aside, government do-gooders have attempted to use as a justification for more regulation and control of home education – then that is another matter. No-one should be aggressed against contrary to their will. If there are victims of abuse, then the full weight of relevant laws should fall upon the aggressors.

Home Education has nothing to do with children at risk. The two should never be used in the same context, except to refute that vicious lie.

And the current laws and systems in place are more than adequate. In fact, in every one of the cases that the state trots out as pretexts for more control, the social services and police were fully aware of the families involved, were concerned and took no action. The fact of the matter is that they consistently fail to protect children; this is the message that is never propagated and brought to light. More powers will not help them improve their common sense. Putting ALL children into a database harms ALL children; it creates a needle-in-a-haystack scenario where people are looking into the affairs of perfectly innocent and ordinary people for no good reason.

If however a child is not receiving an ‘adequate’ education, this in itself should be no business of the State’s to resolve. Despite it being written in man-made Human Rights laws (that by the way also protect the State so should perhaps be referred to as Human and States’ Rights laws) the truth is that under natural law no-one has a right to education.

Agreed.

Yes, it would be nice if every single human being on this planet had access to not just a ’suitable’ education, but excellent education too; but I say this again, no-one has a ‘right’ to education. For if they had, the question is then what standard of education? Mediocre to poor? For that is the general standard delivered by the State to our children.

True.

If people want better than the State can provide, they should be able to opt out of State provision without fear of threat and hindrance from government and its agents. They should have unrestricted freedom to choose what they believe is best for their own kids because – and this is a fundamental point – the kids belong to the parents, not to society or government!

True!

Once bureaucrats gets involved and starts dictating the terms, quoting laws and targets, the already high standards that are achieved in most cases through home education – and indeed independent sector education – will be dragged down to State level.

True.

I hope the Party leadership sees sense and doesn’t allow the collectivist malaise undermine home educators’ freedoms, for if it does, it may as well ditch the word ‘Liberal’ and replace it with ‘Social’.

It is YOU that clearly have no place in the Liberal Democrat Party.

Are you a Libertarian, or are you a Liberal Democrat? How can you possibly remain a member of a party that explicitly wants to eradicate the rights of people to run their families as they choose?

You cannot serve two masters; you can either be FOR liberty or AGAINST it, and liberty is indivisible. Its like someone who is a member of the BNP saying on the one hand that they are FOR immigration but at the same time they are members of a party that is explicitly AGAINST immigration.

Gavin Webb’s council is going to run ContactPoint. Unless they say otherwise, he will be involved in the mass violation of children by working in a place that runs that system. I would like to see a written declaration that he is going to refuse to do any work that comes from, is in any way touched by ContactPoint.

When populations are being rounded up for ethnic cleansing, many people working in the apparatus simply got on with their jobs, even though they might not have agreed with what was happening. Every person who works at a council and who touches ContactPoint instantly becomes an accessory to the sale of children. By using that database, they are helping the contractors make money out of the children they have been paid to put into that database.

I do not immediately see a policy position on ContactPoint at Stoke-on-Trent City Council’s website but we do find this:

Elective Home Education

Information for Parents/Carers

The education of your child is a great responsibility, one that Stoke-on-Trent City Council takes very seriously. We have 93 schools across the city, catering for a wide range of needs and abilities. We are proud of the way they meet the challenges of an ever changing environment, whilst continuing to provide a rich diversity of experience for pupils of all ages.

It is a legal duty of parents/guardians to secure appropriate full-time education for their children. Most parents/guardians do this by ensuring that their child attends their local school. However, for a variety of reasons, a small number of them decide to take on the duty to educate their child themselves. In Stoke-on-Trent there are about 45 families educating their children at home, out of a total school population of over 32,063.

Educating at home is sometimes known as ‘Education Otherwise’, named after one of the independent charities set up to support such parents. More information about this charity can be found on the ‘Useful Contact and Links’ page.

Children should not be taken out of school simply because of a disagreement with the local school. There are many ways of solving such problems and talking to the Headteacher, or consulting with Children and Young People’s Services, will often resolve any difficulties. In Stoke-on-Trent, we will always make every effort to find a place at the most appropriate school for your child.

Home education is a major undertaking for a family. It will require serious amounts of time, patience and energy, and can have financial consequences.

[…]

http://www.stoke.gov.uk/ccm/navigation/education/home-education/

It is not the place of Stoke-on-Trent City Council to ‘take seriously’ the education of children who they themselves admit, are ‘yours’. How many schools you have is irrelevant… and for that matter, lets take a peek inside one of the schools that you ARE responsible for:

Peer Support at Longton High School

Longton High School is a large comprehensive on top of a hill on a mostly council housing estate on the edge of Stoke-on- Trent. The building consists of a tall tower block and a maze of buildings on the ground floor.

The kinds of problems students face are racial and bullying problems such as harassment, name calling, violence and singling out occurring both in between lessons on the schools corridors, and during break and dinner. The school has had a few major racial disputes but mainly faced with minor disputes between students, which with the skills we have been taught through our training, we are confident to deal with.

[…]

Anti-Bullying Alliance

Uh huh, just as we thought, your schools are as bad as everyone else’s.

They then say that:

It is a legal duty of parents/guardians to secure appropriate full-time education for their children.

This is a LIE. The actual wording of the law is:

Duty of parents to secure education of children of compulsory school age
The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable—
(a)to his age, ability and aptitude, and
(b)to any special educational needs he may have,either by regular attendance at school or otherwise.

As you can see, the word ‘appropriate’ is not there. What is or is not appropriate is the affair of the parent, not Stoke-on-Trent City Council. Also, as someone clever said on a blog, if a parent sends their child to a school that they know is not providing an efficient full-time education, are they not ‘in violation’, since it is the duty of the parent to ensure that their child receives such education? Or are they relieved of all responsibility under that section of the law should they hand their children over to the state?

Hmmmmmmmmmmm!

Educating at home is sometimes known as ‘Education Otherwise’

Say WHAT?

Children should not be taken out of school simply because of a disagreement with the local school.

Says who? It is precisely because of disagreements with the local school that children are removed from school.

Home education is a major undertaking for a family. It will require serious amounts of time, patience and energy, and can have financial consequences.

Having a family is ‘a major undertaking’ educating your children is a part of it. Raising a family requires serious amounts of time (whatever that means), patience and energy, which parents (especially women) have in abundance, and having a family costs money.

We know this.

Major digression there, but I just could not let it lie. I will leave you to splutter your tea over your keyboards at their useful contacts page and their outrageous FAQ, where you will find gems like:

What evidence will the Local Authority expect to receive?

Basically, we are satisfying ourselves that the education received by the chid is ‘efficient, suitable and full-time’, so the sort of evidence will be:

• long and short-term planning;
• possibly a weeks outline programme;
• a diary of work covered; and
• evidence of the child’s own work.
• Often talking to the child will be important evidence

and

What does the law actually say about the parent’s duty?
A parents’ duty is actually defined under section 7 of the 1996 Education Act, which says:

“…to cause the child to receive efficient full-time education suitable to his/her age, ability and aptitude and to any special educational needs he/she may have either by regular attendance at school or otherwise.”

Unfortunately the words ‘efficient’ and ‘suitable’ are not defined. ‘Efficient’ is usually taken to mean that the activity achieves what it sets out to achieve, and it is ‘suitable’, if it prepares the child for life in our society and enables the child to fulfill their potential.

My emphasis on the last one.

We are now at the stage where everyone has to draw a line and say, “I am morally obligated to refuse to work with this.” Everyone has their limits and their pain threshold, however it is clear that unless people refuse to take a stand and refuse to assist this infernal machine, it will continue to gain momentum and end up turning us all into hamburger meat.

Its good to read words from people who are waking up; we must give credit where credit is due, every time. At the same time, illogic, inconsistency, errors of judgment etc have to be flagged, otherwise, people persist in believing nonsense. Im sure Gavin is a nice guy. Clearly he can think, and he is aware of what is going on to a great extent. What I cannot accept are inconsistencies that actually hurt people. By all means, everyone can believe what contradictory stuff they like. When it becomes a matter for concern is when those people have their hands on the levers of the machine.

FURTHERMORE

I updated and reinforced the section about parents who want ContactPoint being entitled to it.

Renegade Parent uses substitution to see into the future:

24 hour home surveillance -a glimpse into the future

Someone to watch over you:

"It sounds like a fantasy straight from The Truman Show George Orwell's 1984: a house that monitors your every move, from bedside to bathroom and from medicine cabinet to fridge. The aim, however, is to help the elderly to ensure that children lead safe and independent protected lives.

"Researchers are working on a “health safe house” so sophisticated that it will not only track everyday habits but also check weight and blood pressure and predict whether a person is at risk of a serious fall child abuse.

"Britain is one of the largest investors in “telemedicineprotection” — using medical surveillance and monitoring technology to help chronically ill deprived and older people indeed all children to be treated for longer continually inspected at home rather than in hospitals or care homes through visits by social workers or education welfare officers.

"The system, developed by GE Healthcare and Intel Becta and the NSPCC, uses sensors that track a person’s behaviour and send alerts when unexpected disruptions or data are picked up. Similar networks are already being used by for about 3,000 people children in care-home settings but researchers now hope to introduce a much more sophisticated model for private homes.

"Patient data, such as risks of hypertension, diabetes and respiratory emotional disturbance, sleep disorders, over-attachment, concentration or eating problems, would be combined with information on daily routines to create an algorithm capable of identifying subtle health abuse indicators or behavioural changes that might signal more serious problems.

"Examples might include how many times a person opens the fridge door or uses a tap logs onto NotSchool; repeat trips to the fridge could signal mental impairment a danger of obesity while failure to use the tap log onto NotSchool might suggest an increased risk of dehydration lack of a suitable education.

"The next generation of sensors also studies activity such as use of the lavatory, time spent sleeping and when medicine mood stabilisers or enhancers are taken, plus vital signs such as blood pressure, weight and blood-oxygen levels.

"Work is under way on more advanced alerts that could identify changes to a person’s gait — providing an early signal of instability learning or behavioural difficulties, feelings of isolation or depression, lack of meaningful relationships or even substance misuse and heightened chances of a serious fall abuse by a neglectful parent — and how long it takes to get out of bed in the morning."

[…]

http://www.renegadeparent.net/post/A-glimpse-at-the-future-home-surveillance.aspx#top

What this looks like, long time readers of BLOGDIAL and sci-fi fans know is THX-1138.

Will your children be able to do it without etracene?

That is the question!

People are waking up to what all of this really means, and how all the dots join up.

By Chris Buratta

A father has refused permission for his daughter's Oxford school to take her fingerprints – fearing it is step towards a 'Big Brother' state.

IT IS a step towards exactly that, and even if this library system is self contained, i.e. does not connect to any other database anywhere, the very fact that they have it serves to soften up the students into accepting this sort of technology as a part of ordinary life, when it is not. It is a total invasion and violation, and as we can see below, even the ignorant pigs administering it do not know how it works.

Ben Emlyn-Jones's daughter Louisa, 12, attends St Gregory the Great School in Cowley – which is planning to use fingerprint recognition software in its library.

On Tuesday, it was revealed that Windale Primary School, Glory Farm Primary School, Matthew Arnold Secondary School and The Cherwell School currently use fingerprint systems in libraries and Cheney School uses the technology to register pupils.

Absolutely ridiculous. Whats more, I would like to know how much this system cost the school. I wonder how many BOOKS you could buy with the same money….hmmmmmm!

Mr Emlyn-Jones said: "I am really quite disturbed about it, it reminds me of a Big Brother state.

"There may be advantages in having a fingerprint database, but the price you pay is too high."

There is NO advantage to it. Library books in a school, where all the pupils are known and where only pupils can enter has no need to install a system whose purpose is to uniquely identify an individual. The people who allowed this to be introduced into the school simply cannot THINK.

He refused to allow his daughter's fingerprints to be taken and was also concerned that the school had not contacted parents.

Well done Mr Emlyn-Jones, you are a hero, and a good parent.

He added: "It is as if they know it is wrong and have done it secretly, hoping no-one finds out."

That is EXACTLY what they are doing, otherwise, they would have contacted everyone in advance. The amount of time, effort to explain and money to roll this out is a complete waste of scarce resources.

Mr Emlyn-Jones said he was opposed to the principle of biometric data being used by schools.

"Once people are on a computer then the world's your oyster as far as the Government is concerned.

Exactly right.

"It also desensitises kids. When they're grown up and they apply for a passport and apply for jobs they won't bat an eyelid about having fingerprints taken or a laser being shined in their eyes."

This man's brain is switched to 'ON'. And what is great is that his daughter will also have her brain switched on also.

This week, Liberal Democrats called for Government guidelines to be introduced to control the use of the technology in schools.

But Mr Emlyn-Jones said that would not satisfy his concerns.

He said: "Once the infrastructure is in place those guidelines could be abolished. That's my concern."

Once people have their brains working, its impossible to placate them with doubletalk and weasel words, at which the Liberal Democrats are masters. They want to cancel ID cards because of the 'privacy concerns' but then want to replace the rates with a local income tax which would mean the council getting into far more of your private affairs than they do now, either by having data shared with them or by collecting it to calculate your new 'more fair' rates. You see? COMPLETELY STUPID. But I digress…

Now comes the ignorant pig part:

St Gregory the Great's learning resources manager Hilja Bassett said the library system, which would be operational next term, was very efficient and secure.

Just because it is efficient, that does not make it right. And in what way is it more efficient? By what measure? Does that library exist for the convenience of the students or the convenience of the staff? As for 'secure' how does she know it is secure? Did she design the system? Does she know wether or not it connects to any other computers over the internets? Does she know ANYTHING ABOUT IT AT ALL? Or is she just repeating verbatim from the sales pitch?

She added: "It can only be used in this one place, in this one way, for this purpose."

And that one way and one purpose are illegitimate.

She said fingerprints were not stored, just certain data taken from the print.

And there is the proof that Hilja Bassett is a completely ignorant pig, computer illiterate student violating jackass. NO biometric fingerprint system stores the ENTIRE PRINT. They ALL work by mapping the print, finding points to store and then storing those points; that is enough to (90% of the time) uniquely identify the person whose finger it is on the scanner. THAT IS THE WHOLE POINT YOU STUPID RETARD its not about actual images of the fingerprints, its about being identified by a part of your body that is unique to you. And of course once it is in the database it can then be transferred (along with all the prints and the names and addresses of the other students) to other databases and systems where if the admins are corrupt, your UNIQUE IDENTIFIER can be placed alongside a criminal profile turing YOU into the criminal, even though you have never done anything whatsoever. Don't believe me? IT IS ALREADY HAPPENING:

Old news department, or a taste of how NIR information will be implemented. I emphasise.

A FYLDE coast student was arrested after posting Christmas cards to his family

Stunned David Atkinson found himself at his local police station under suspicion of stealing the festive greetings he last saw when he put them in a postbox five years ago. Due to fingerprints found on the mail – which was stolen then recovered – police thought they had their man. However, it transpired the “suspect’s” fingerprints were those of the student who had innocently sent the cards to relatives when he was 15.

Mr Atkinson, now 21, of [address omitted – gosh, to think that his address was posted online after this, mm], was arrested because his DNA and fingerprints had been kept on record under controversial Government laws to combat terror.

It was only after Mr Atkinson asked officers to look more deeply into the crime his innocence was proved.

The law student said it has shattered his confidence in the system. He said: “The potential incompetence, laziness, or over enthusiasm of an individual officer means an innocent, law-abiding citizen can never truly have confidence in the giant police database.”

It was the second time Mr Atkinson had been arrested – twice for crimes he did not commit. He has now lent his support to a campaign to force a rethink by the Home Office.

The mix-up began last March when Mr Atkinson was arrested on suspicion of criminal damage – but, when the real culprit gave himself up to police, he was released without charge.

During his short time with the police, he had his fingerprints and DNA taken as part of the arrest procedure but, under recently passed laws, all details – no matter whether the person is innocent or guilty – are kept on a national computer.

Mr Atkinson thought nothing of it until he got a call from officers a month later asking him to go along to the station. He said: “I was arrested as soon as I went in. “The officer told me he had a computer report which had automatically matched my fingerprints with those recovered from a number of items of post which had been stolen from a letter box in December 2000.

“As a result of this report alone, and no further investigation, the officer advised me to ‘get the matter out of the way quickly and take a caution now’.

“After refusing to admit a crime I’d not committed, I was bailed while further investigations were made.”
“The recovered letters were in fact my family Christmas cards which had been taken after I had posted them five years ago.
“This innocent explanation had not even crossed the officer’s mind and, as far as he was concerned, if his computer report said I was guilty then I had to be.”

Mr Atkinson complained to Lancashire Constabulary and eventually received an apology. But, he claims, without the Government’s “menace to our freedom”, he would not have been put through the ordeal. A police spokesman said: “We can confirm that we did receive a complaint in August about a wrongful arrest concerning stolen post. “This was investigated thoroughly under our normal complaints procedure and dealt with locally to the satisfaction of both parties. “Under current legislation, all police forces can retain and record DNA taken for arrestable offences no matter what the eventual outcome of the investigation.”

ben.rossington@blackpoolgazette.co.uk

http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=304

And there you have it. These systems are EXTREMELY DANGEROUS, and should not be in schools for any reason WHATSOEVER.

Parents had been informed through a newsletter, she added, and pupils who did not wish to use the system could still make use of library services.

Oxford Mail

So out the window goes Mutterschwein Hilja Bassett’s claim that it is for efficiency; if people can opt out of the system, that means they will be running two concurrent systems, the old and venerable Library card system and the new one, causing inefficiency.

And apologies to all Mutterschwein out there; calling Hilja Bassett a pig is an insult to pigs.

If you are a Home Schooler, you never have to deal with any of this of course!

FURTHERMORE

This courtesy of Home Ed Forums:

The truth about biometric systems used in schools (using verifiable references)

“People have to be stark, raving mad to use conventional biometrics to improve the efficiency of a children’s lunch line.” Kim Cameron , Microsoft’s Identity Architect, 05 April 2007 (read more from Kim Cameron)

“If a child has never touched a fingerprint scanner, there is zero probability of being incorrectly investigated for a crime. Once a child has touched a scanner they will be at the mercy of the matching algorithm for the rest of their lives.” Brian Drury , IT security consultant, 12 March 2007 (read more from Brian Drury)

Schools that introduce fingerprinting usually try to reassure parents by saying “the system does not store a fingerprint, just a number. It is not possible to reconstruct an image of a fingerprint from what is stored”.

• The short answer is that fingerprint templates are what is stored on these systems. These are the equivalent of fingerprints – rather like the difference between a drawing and a photo – otherwise the systems simply wouldn’t work.
• Police, the security services, and governments use fingerprint templates to identify criminals.
• There are international standards to ensure that biometric templates from different manufacturers are compatible – so what’s stored on one system can be read by any other, including government systems.
• Where fingerprint templates are stored in an encrypted form, it is impossible for anyone to guarantee that this won’t be broken during a person’s entire lifetime. A PIN number can easily be changed. A fingerprint, and the template dervived from it, cannot ever be changed.
• Moreover, the Government has the power to demand encryption keys from the system supplier, under the terms of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 Part III.
• In the future, fingerprint templates will be used to authenticate passports, bank accounts, etc. Thus biometric templates are extremely valuable and need to be kept in a highly secure environment.
• In addition, fingerprint templates can be used to rapidly link different databases and to build up a disturbingly accurate profile of an individual without their knowledge or consent.
• The US government’s official National Science & Technology Council says you CAN reconstruct a fingerprint image from a fingerprint template.
• Government security experts have successfully hacked the fingerprint scanners used in schools.
• Schools cannot possibly provide the level of security necessary to protect children’s data.
• A school might not even be aware that children’s data had been compromised until it was far too late.

“If you want to find out who owns a fingerprint, just convert the fingerprint to a template and do a search for the template in one of these databases. Call the template a binary number if you want to. The point is that all you need to save in the database is the number. Later, when you come across a “fingerprint of interest”, you just convert it to a number and search for it. Law enforcement can use this information – and so can criminals.”

Kim Cameron , architect of identity and access in Microsoft’s connected systems division, 09 May 2007

http://www.leavethemkidsalone.com/facts.htm

First, take a look at this:

Then read this.

In the past, the facts and subsequent analysis about an event like this would have taken months to propagate. Accurate analysis would never come to the attention of the wider public at all. Now both are happening in a matter of hours, thanks to teh internetz. The very systems that are being used to destabilize countries are self healing and nullifying the ill effects of dastardly plots like ‘Operation AJAX 2.0’:

We know that the US funds terrorist organizations inside Iran that are responsible for bombings and other violent acts. It is likely that these terrorist organizations are responsible for the burning buses and other acts of violence that have occurred during the demonstrations in Tehran.

A writer on pakalert.wordpress.com says that he was intrigued by the sudden appearance of tens of thousands of Twitter allegations that Ahmadinejad stole the Iranian election.

He investigated, he says, and he reports that each of the new highly active accounts were created on Saturday, June 13th. “IranElection” is their most popular keyword. He narrowed the spammers to the most persistent: @StopAhmadi @IranRiggedElect @Change_For_Iran. He researched further and found that on June 14 the Jerusalem Post already had an article on the new Twitter. He concludes that the new Twitter sites are propaganda operations.

[…]

http://vdare.com/roberts/090621_iran.htm

which has been underway in Iran as the ‘Green Revolution’, the occurrence of which was known about before it actually started to happen:

Neoconservative Kenneth Timmerman let the cat out of the bag that there was an orchestrated “color revolution” in the works.

Before the election, Timmerman wrote: “there’s talk of a ‘green revolution’ in Tehran.” Why would protests be organized prior to a vote and announcement of the outcome? Organized protests waiting in the wings are not spontaneous responses to a stolen election.

Timmerman’s organization, Foundation for Democracy, is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) for the explicit purpose of promoting democracy in Iran. According to Timmerman, NED money was funneled to “pro-Mousavi groups who have ties to non-governmental organizations outside Iran that the National Endowment for Democracy funds.”

The US media has studiously ignored all of these highly suggestive facts. The media is not reporting or providing objective analysis. It is engaged in a propagandistic onslaught against the Iranian government.

[…]

http://vdare.com/roberts/090621_iran.htm

Read that entire article by Paul Craig Roberts.

Now we have even the pro intervention, pro regime change Guardian printing an article that hits the nail on the head:

Democracy, made in Iran

By reviving memories of an ousted leader, Iran’s protesters are signalling they want to win reform without US intervention

Stephen Kinzer

Protesters displaying pictures of former prime minister Muhammad Mossadeq alongside presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi during demonstrations in Iran last week. Photograph: Anonymous (courtesy of Stephen Kinzer)

Despite efforts by Iran’s leaders to keep photographers off the streets during post-election protests this month, many vivid images have emerged. The one posted here, above, is the one I found most chilling, poignant and evocative.

By now, many outsiders can identify the man whose picture is on the right-hand side of this protest sign. He is Mir Hossein Mousavi, the reported loser in this month’s presidential election. The elderly gentleman in the other picture is unfamiliar to most non-Iranians. He and his fate, however, lie at the historical root of the protests now shaking Iran.

The picture shows a pensive, sad-looking man with what one of his contemporaries called “droopy basset-hound eyes and high patrician forehead”. He does not look like a man whose fate would continue to influence the world decades after his death. But this was Muhammad Mossadeq, the most fervent advocate of democracy ever to emerge in his ancient land.

Above the twinned pictures of Mossadeq and Mousavi on this protest poster are the words “We won’t let history repeat itself.” Centuries of intervention, humiliation and subjugation at the hand of foreign powers have decisively shaped Iran’s collective psyche. The most famous victim of this intervention – and also the most vivid symbol of Iran’s long struggle for democracy – is Mossadeq. Whenever Iranians assert their desire to shape their own fate, his image appears.

Iranians began their painful and bloody march toward democracy with the constitutional revolution of 1906. Only after the second world war did they finally manage to consolidate a freely elected government. Mossadeq was prime minister, and became hugely popular for taking up the great cause of the day, nationalisation of Iran’s oil industry. That outraged the British, who had “bought” the exclusive right to exploit Iranian oil from a corrupt Shah, and the Americans, who feared that allowing nationalization in Iran would encourage leftists around the world.

In the summer of 1953 the CIA sent the intrepid agent Kermit Roosevelt – grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, who believed Americans should “walk softly and carry a big stick” – to Tehran with orders to overthrow Mossadeq. He accomplished it in just three weeks. It was a vivid example of how easy it is for a rich and powerful country to throw a poor and weak one into chaos.

With this covert operation, the world’s proudest democracy put an end to democratic rule in Iran. Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi returned to the Peacock Throne and ruled with increasing repression for a quarter-century. His repression produced the explosion of 1979 that brought reactionary mullahs to power. Theirs is the regime that rules Iran today.

Carrying a picture of Mossadeq today means two things: “We want democracy” and “No foreign intervention”. These demands fit together in the minds of most Iranians. Desperate as they are for the political freedom their parents and grandparents enjoyed in the early 1950s, they have no illusion that foreigners can bring it to them. In fact, foreign intervention has brought them nothing but misery.

The US sowed the seeds of repression in Iran by deposing Mossadeq in 1953, and then helped bathe Iran in blood by giving Saddam Hussein generous military aid during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. Militants in Washington who now want the US to intervene on behalf of Iranian protesters either are unaware of this history or delude themselves into thinking that Iranians have forgotten it. Some of them, in fact, are the same people who were demanding just last year that the US bomb Iran – an act which would have killed many of the brave young protesters they now hold up as heroes.

America’s moral authority in Iran is all but non-existent. To the idea that the US should jump into the Tehran fray and help bring democracy to Iran, many Iranians would roll their eyes and say: “We had a democracy here until you came in and crushed it!”

President Barack Obama seems to grasp this reality. During his recent speech in Cairo, without mentioning Mossadeq by name, he conceded that “in the middle of the cold war, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government.” Then, after the current electoral protests broke out, he avoided the hypocrisy of righteous indignation and confined himself to saying that “ultimately the election is for the Iranians to decide.”

Anyone doubting the wisdom of those words should pay attention to the sprouting of Mossadeq pictures during protests in Iran. They mean: “Americans, your interventions have brought us tyranny and death. Stay home, keep your hands off and leave our country to us for a change.”

[…]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/jun/19/iran-protests-mousavi-mossadeq

The fact of the matter is that it is no longer possible to mount 20^th century Psy Ops in countries like Iran; cellular networks are like mass vaccination – they immunize the populations that have them from being infected by the vile propaganda of the colonialists. Centralized radio and television cannot counter AJAX style operations. Why? Because the TV is not a ‘trusted introducer’ to any idea, whereas a text message from your social network IS a trusted introducer.

Those Rock & Roll loving Iranians had better watch out; they are doing the work of the lord when they hold up signs IN ENGLISH, riot, cause mayhem and destabilize THEIR OWN COUNTRY. They have only to look to their former enemies to see what US ‘liberation’ looks like. What they are actually asking for is the complete DEATH of Iran and their culture.

Thankfully, the small deluded minority causing all this trouble will not get it.

Now let me be clear. The problem with all of this has nothing to do with the ‘right and wrong’ of how Iran runs its own affairs, and wether or not you personally agree with it. What this is about it the pursuit of global domination by monsters, who are hell bent, literally, on wiping out any culture or system that is different to theirs, or which is not under their direct and absolute control.

Tehran is the largest city in the Middle East and is the second most populated. If the Iranians should ever discover the true nature of money they could become an unstoppable economic force in the region. Right now, they are being run by Keynsian witch-doctors (John Maynard Keynes is to Economics as a Witch-Doctor is to Medicine), who are printing money like drunk sailors on the rampage at the ripperbahn.

Did you know that Tehran has an ‘Underground’?

These people are dangerous; dangerous because they are so successful, so organized and so peaceful. They are the most threatening nation to the ‘New World Order’. They are showing, through results and not rhetoric, that you can have huge prosperity without interfacing with the globalists.

That is why they must be destroyed.

Nicolas Sarkozy today took a hard line in France’s latest row over mens dress, saying stacked heels and shoe-lifts were a sign of men’s debasement and “not welcome” on French soil.

More than 50 MPs, mostly from the president’s centre-right UMP party, last week backed calls for a parliamentary inquiry to debate whether men who wear cuban heels posed a threat to the republic’s fashion values and gender equality. A government spokesman had suggested that a law could eventually be proposed to ban elevated shoes from being worn in public in France.

Sarkozy today used his first state of the nation speech to defend the French republican principle of Napoleonism and attack heightist attitudes.

He said: “The problem of the heel is not a religious problem, it’s a problem of liberty and men’s dignity. It’s not a religious symbol, but a sign of subservience and debasement. I want to say solemnly, the cuban heel is not welcome in France. In our country, we can’t accept men prisoners behind a platform, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity. That’s not our idea of freedom.”

There was raucous applause from MPs and senators. Sarkozy backed the setting up of a parliamentary commission on the issue of shoe-lifts, calling for all arguments to be heard. “But I tell you, we must not be ashamed of our values. We must not be afraid of defending them,” he said.

Earlier in his speech, he warned against stigmatising short men in secular France. “We must not fight the wrong battle. In the republic, short men must be respected as much as other men.”

Cuban heels and all height-enhancing implants were banned in schools in 2004, and the latest row over dress is likely to spark more soul-searching and controversy in France.

There are no figures for the number of short men who wear stacked heels, but it is believed to be a very small minority. In France, the terms ‘platform heel’ and ‘shoe-lift’ are often used interchangeably – the former refers to a full-shoe covering worn largely in the Palace of Versailles with a mesh screen over the toes, while the latter is a full-foot insert, often in black, with a gap for the toes.

Critics have already warned that the government risks stigmatising short men over a minor and marginal issue. After Sarkozy’s speech, the leftwing senator Jean-Pierre Chevènement said the subject was difficult because people were free to dress how they liked in public under French law, but full veils could contravene French ideas on gender equality. He cautioned against whipping up “pointless provocations”.

[…] Guardian

President Sarkozy’s comments have not come out of the blue.

They are in response to a call last week by a group of 65 cross-party MPs, led by the Communist Andre Gerin, who wants a parliamentary commission set up to investigate the spread of the cuban heel in France.

They want to see whether such a spread is indicative of a radicalisation of Fashion, whether men are being forced to embiggen themselves or are doing so voluntarily, and whether wearing the heel undermines French secularism.

Mr Gerin believes the cuban heel “amounts to a breach of individual freedom on our national territory”.

[…] BBQ

The Renegade Parent has a great post about Ed Balls.

I have been looking into this creature over the last few days, and found two articles that sum him up perfectly:

Our children have had the MMR jab, says Brown’s Cabinet friend

By GLEN OWEN

A key Cabinet ally of Gordon Brown has let it be known his children have had the controversial MMR vaccine, in a clear break with former Premier Tony Blair’s policy of refusing to discuss the issue.

Going public: Yvette Cooper and Ed Balls with baby Elle in 1999

Schools Secretary Ed Balls, who has three children with his wife, Communities Minister Yvette Cooper, sanctioned the release of the information in the week that officials revealed Britain is in the middle of the worst measles outbreak for 20 years.

In allowing the disclosure, Mr Balls – who was Mr Brown’s right-hand man at the Treasury for nearly a decade – has broken ranks with Mr Blair’s long-standing ban on Ministers saying whether their children have had the controversial vaccine.

Campaigners are now calling on the Prime Minister to declare publicly that his children, too, have had the MMR inoculation.

Take-up of the vaccine, which also protects against mumps and rubella, plummeted after Dr Andrew Wakefield published research in 1998 that claimed it was linked to autism and bowel problems.

Mr Blair – who has repeatedly refused to say whether his son, Leo, had the jab – was furious at the embarrassment caused to him in January 2001 when Ms Cooper told a newspaper that her daughter, Ellie, had received the inoculation.

He later slapped the ban on Ministers speaking about their personal decisions.

Since then, Mr Balls and Ms Cooper – who is also in the Cabinet – have had two more children reach vaccination age (there are two injections, one at 13 months and a booster between the ages of three and five).

Mr Balls’ decision to lead by example follows a warning from the Health Protection Agency that the number of children suffering from measles has trebled in the past 11 weeks.

The HPA, concerned that even more children will be infected as the autumn term begins, has urged parents to add MMR to their back-to-school list.

After Dr Wakefield published his research in The Lancet, take-up of the vaccine fell to 80 per cent.

It has since recovered to 88 per cent, which is still short of the 95 per cent rate the HPA recommends.

The study is being scrutinised by medical watchdog the General Medical Council in a professional misconduct hearing involving Dr Wakefield and two of his co-authors.

Meanwhile, in a series of briefings timed to coincide with the start of the new term, Mr Balls announced he will write to every headteacher in the country to urge them to help deliver ‘a world-class education for every child’.

The new term also sees the start of a ban on schools selling fizzy drinks, chocolates or sweets in vending machines.

From now on, pupils will have to choose from foods such as bagels, muffins and breadsticks.

[…]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/

This is a man (and his ‘wife’) who would use (and if he gave the MMR specifically for this purpose, SACRIFICE) his daughter’s health to show support and undying loyalty for the evil gargoyle Gordon Brown, and to curry political favor.

If he will do this with his own child, imagine what he would do with yours? Well, you do not have to; you have the Balls and Badman report in your hands.

And here, we have an example of the Balls anti family agenda, where the school and the state are the new parent in the totalitarian dystopia being born in the UK:

Teachers ‘must worry about pupils when they go home’, warns education secretary Balls

Teachers have a responsibility for what happens to children after they return home from school, Education Secretary Ed Balls warned today.

On the day that he and Gordon Brown are launching a national debate in Bristol on the future of children’s services, Mr Balls has urged schools to do more beyond their gates.

“Not every school sees their responsibility as worrying about what happens when the child goes home… and they should,” he told The Guardian.

Praising breakfast clubs for giving children a good start, Mr Balls added: “A little boy may not eat between leaving school and coming back the next day. There’s no way the school can solve that problem.

“It requires parents with the support of social services to do that, but the school can provide an early warning.”

Mr Balls dismissed Tory claims that society in Britain is “broken” following the spate of killings of teenagers in London and other cities.

“There are always going to be some kids that get into more serious trouble with the law, but we shouldn’t demonise young people.”

Prime Minister Gordon Brown today opened the first new school built under the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme.

He arrived at the Bristol Brunel Academy in the inner city Speedwell area flanked by Mr Balls.

The school is the first in England to be completed under the Government’s £45 billion BSF programme.

The initiative is intended to re-build or refurbish every one of England’s state secondary schools over the next 15 years.

About 1,000 pupils moved into the school this morning which replaces Speedwell Technology College whose crumbling buildings sit immediately in front of the gleaming new academy.

The Prime Minister will tour and then officially open the new school.

Later this morning he will take part in the first citizen jury held in the school’s sports hall.

The Prime Minister looked at a “wishing wall” at the school entrance which is covered in messages from pupils.

One message read “I wish I could eat toenails” while another read “I wish to become a successful accountant”.

He then chatted with pupils, each with their own personal laptop computer, in a Year 7 IT class being taught in one of the school’s many open-plan classrooms.

The Prime Minister then visited pupils undertaking a soldering lesson in a craft design and technology class.

The pupils were guided by overhead monitors in a state-of-the-art classroom as they worked on circuit boards.

[…]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Do I really have to spell this out for you?

Have a look at all these articles on Balls for yourself.

I wouldn’t leave this man in charge of an ice cube in the Antarctic.

You can get very tired of people voicing their ill-considered views about home-based education with no apparent knowledge of the research of the last 30 years in UK, USA, Canada, Australia and elsewhere on the subject. They are also forgetful of the dire effects of ‘compulsory mis-education’, as Goodman put it, in the day-prison system of learning called schools.

One response is to point out that their comments on home-based education might be construed as a kind of treason. After all, the Queen is a home-based education graduate, so accusations of ‘missing out on socialisation’, ‘no exposure to approved forms of knowledge’, etc., must apply to the monarch. The response to this line of argument is usually an uncomfortable silence.

Those who prefer Presidents democratically elected to unelected monarchs can look at the USA situation where of the 42 or so past presidents, 17 were home-based education graduates. Moreover, the various studies trying to rank them in order of success, consistently put the first five as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt. Yes, you have guessed it – they are all home-based education graduates.

There is a second kind of treason, to the evidence of other well-known people who were home-educated. Thus, Yehudi Menuhin went to school for only one half day.

“When I came back from the morning, my mother asked me what I had learnt. I said, ‘I really didn’t learn anything. I sat at the back of the class, and there was a little window high upon the wall, through which I could see branches. I hoped that a bird would alight. No bird alighted, but I kept hoping’, and that’s about all I could report. So my mother promptly said, “Well, we’ll educate you at home.”

He got on well enough without school to become a world-class violinist.

Patrick Moore, the astronomer and broadcaster, was educated at home and did not go to university. He tells us that he chose his curriculum at the age of seven as learning to type, which he thought would be useful, by copy typing some tomes in astronomy. This, he thought, would inform him about the subject that interested him, and would also serve as a course in improving his English. He would also spend some time on his xylophone and later the piano developing his musical skills. This ‘unbalanced curriculum’ served him well, he explains, since the central activities of his life have been astronomy, journalism and music. All other knowledge and skills that he needed were gained incidentally on a ‘need to know’ basis.

Then there was the Headteacher of Wolverhampton Grammar School who was a party to educating his two daughters at home until they were eleven because the local primary school was not able to facilitate a personalized learning system to take into account their own keen learning interests in gymnastics and music.

Bertrand Russell, distinguished philosopher and mathematician, was another home- based education graduate. He observed that:

“I was glad I did not go to school. I would have had no time for original thought, which has been my chief stay and support in troubles.”

The roll-call of well-known people can take up a whole book – see An “A” in Life: Famous Home Schoolers by Mac and Nancy Plent (1999) Unschoolers Network. It includes George Bernard Shaw, Charlie Chaplin, Claude Monet, Thomas Edison, Andrew Carnegie, The Wright brothers (the aeroplane inventors), Agatha Christie, Noel Coward, Margaret Mead, Pearl Buck, C.S.Lewis, John Stuart Mill, two Wimbledon tennis champions, and several contemporary film actors.

There is also a third kind of treason, to the respect for research evidence, which shows that the bad news about home-based education is very hard to find and confined to a few odd cases – reported in the press, for I have never come across any myself and I have encountered thousands of home-based educating families in the years I have been researching the subject. The Home Education Research Journal has been publishing systematic studies on home-based education for over 30 years in USA. The research shows that, in the vast majority of cases, home-based education is a good news story. Mike Fortune Wood’s two books, The Face of Home –based Education 1: Who, Why and How, and The Face of Home-based Education 2: Numbers, Support, Special Needs, are two recent surveys of the scene in UK showing the same outcome.

Members of the establishment, despite showing the signs of being damaged by their mis-education at school themselves, can be won over in time. Thus, a school inspector, quoted in D. Smith, Parent Generated Home Study in Canada, 1993, said: “I so wish I’d given my daughter the opportunity you’re giving your sons.”

Roland Meighan: D.Soc.Sc, Ph.D., B.Sc.(Soc)., L.C.P.., Cert. Ed., he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Writer, publisher, and consultant/research er on learning systems, past present and future. His work on “The Next Learning System” has been translated into more than twelve languages. Roland is also Director of Educational Heretics Press, Director/Trustee of the Centre for Personalised Education Trust Ltd. He is also a former Special Professor of Education at the University of Nottingham and was Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Birmingham.

He is an acknowledged Educational Heretic for his view that mass compulsory schooling is an obsolete and counter-productive learning system which should be phased out as soon as possible and schools should be recycled into something more personalised, flexible and humane. He began researching home-based education in 1977, appearing as an expert witness in key legal hearings.

UPDATE

A wise Home Educator chimes in on Roland MeighanL

Roland Meighan has long been seen as a “champion” of home education. He spoke at a conference in Glasgow a few years ago. I cheered him and enjoyed watching some establishment types squirm. We dined with him and his wife afterwards and enjoyed the company. I do not *want* to think badly of him.

The language of “alternative education” for want of a better phrase, or “personalised education” to use a Meighanism , has been nicked, perverted, re-branded and is being used to sell some very nasty outcome-based “education” eg: http://www.home-education.biz/forum/media/352-radical-learning-reform-unveiled.html (lazy link to some of our discussion of CfE in Scotland – obviously just one example).

Roland does not seem to mind this. Recently, in the light of this “not minding” and prompted by discussion on one of the lists, I had a look back at what he had actually said in the past.

Sadly, I found this rather telling quote – afraid the link is no longer live (have emailed the person who owns the site to see where it has gone).
Roland Meighan, 2003 –

“There’s an important sense in which the people who are home schooling are trail-blazing their way to the next learning system.

They are not the next learning system but they are trail-blazing their way towards it.”

http://www.thebluecrane.com/BLUECRANEMEDIA/subhtm/education-germany/EducationOtherwiseVideoTranscript.html

This article is not quite so clear cut but is in a similar vein:

http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=305041

I accept that it is easy to be wise with hindsight but surely, at best, this shows an incredible political naivety?

And then he says this in his response to the Badman crap?

“Education Otherwise and similar organisations could form a monitoring body if given the finance and resources to perform this task well. OFSTED and LEAs are not competent to do this task having been trained only in the authoritarian crowd instruction and crowd control approach to learning – ‘you will do it our way, or we will find something nasty to do to you’.”

Have a look at the connections between PEN /BECTA/ARCH/ EO and Heppell (man loves himself so much one link would be meaningless).

+++++++

I read his response to the Badman report, and those quotes jumped out. This matter is about the autonomy of parents as much as it is about Home Educating parents. EO have no business monitoring Home Educators (which will mean registering with them) or anyone else for that matter, unless people volunteer to be a member of their organization.

Having said all that, I found this piece to be worthy of posting. As usual, we do not have to agree with everything everyone says; at the same time, at a time when EO are maneuvering for the job of being the masters of all things Home Education, with funding and power handed to them by the state, it is a good idea to know precisely who is who. By posting this article and exposing the name of the author, it is possible (but unlikely) that this mans voice could be amplified by the BBC, and clearly, his ideas about EO are anathema to many Home Educators.

‘The Fog of War’….

This just came to me over ‘teh internetz’:

Elizabeth Mills response to the regulation of Home Education seemed to echo the common response from home-educators. Another opportunity for the state to control how we treat our children. And so on. It’s something I find an increasingly tiresome argument, as I seem to be one of the few people viewing regulation of home education as a positive thing.

Here we go…

I was home-educated between 1993-2001. It was an appalling experience. My mother was, in the most polite terms, a manipulative bitch, who actually never bothered to teach us at all. It was a whim for her for about a year, but then I think she just lost it and just couldn’t be bothered with anything, except keeping us in the house. As a child I barely left the house except maybe once a week to help do the shopping in Morrisons. I didn’t do science, languages, PE, art, music, or anything interesting. My interest in English Literature arose out of being a Manics fan, otherwise I suspect I would have never had that.

Your problem is that your mother was a ‘manipulative bitch’. I would also say that she failed to teach you any logic. It does not immediately follow that Home Education is bad for everyone else, just because your mother was not a very good parent. All the families in the UK should not have to suffer at the hands of the state because you were born to a dysfunctional family.

Only once did someone come round to inspect us. Once in eight years. The night before that inspection is something I try to forget. Essentially an hours beating to make sure when they ask how me and my sisters felt our response was that we were happier. My memories of the inspection were that he had no problem with our basic skills – from the few rushed examples of work pushed at him – but that he was concerned by our mothers Irish nationalist stance in everything and the lack of PE, language or music. Mostly though, he disliked that none of our work was dated, because that meant he had no idea when what he saw was produced.

I feel very sorry for you, just as I feel sorry for all the people who have ‘bad parents’. Once again, this story and all other ‘horror stories’ are not enough to smear ALL PARENTS. We do not live in a world where if there is one nutcase in the country, everyone gets a new raft of laws eliminating ancient freedo….. oops.

Yes, some people are just honestly supporting children with learning difficulties or trying to embrace their own culture, but there are cases where it does just turn into abuse. The chances are, like me and my sisters, that it isn’t really reported or known. The reason for that being that, with no real or completely accurate figures oh home education, its possible for the worst situations to slip between everyone’s fingers. Who would have considered themselves responsible for my welfare when I was growing up? We just went on living in a dysfunctional and destructive family until we were old enough to be dysfunctional adults. I’m not even sure if my sisters can read or write properly.

And there are abusive families who send their children to school. The point is, once again, that no natter what the statistics are, people have rights. People are innocent until proven guilty. They have the right to privacy. They have the right to organize themselves and their families as they see fit. We are now starting to see what it is like to live in a country where because a few people get hurt, the government tries to ban everything that could potentially cause harm, we now call it ‘the nanny state’ and everyone agrees, its not a very nice place to live in.

It seems like the majority of opinions on this are all about embracing positive alternative education. I don’t dispute that home education can be a positive experience for many and take them leaps and bounds beyond others in their schools. Equally though, I fail to understand why so many parents can’t see that it could turn into a nightmare. Surely, if you have nothing to hide or be ashamed of, then no harm will come of someone checking that your children are being educated.

‘Nothing to hide, nothing to fear‘ only the most naive of people believe this. Thankfully, their numbers have dwindled to almost nothing.

My sisters and I are all completely estranged from our mother now. She hates us because we stole her life because she had to teach us. As soon as I got to sixth form I felt that even the weakest student, with Cs and Ds, was better educated than I was. Around this time we fell out. She denies my existence now.

This is all very sad, but is has nothing to do with Home Education in general, our rights, right and wrong, or anything else. There ARE bad parents out there. There will ALWAYS be bad parents. You can never have perfection or the elimination of crime, bad parenting or any other ill. What we need to do is pay attention to the vast majority of people who are good, trustworthy and decent, and not allow ourselves to be sucked into a totalitarian nanny state because an EXTREMELY small minority of people have a bad time of life.

Your best revenge is not to try and destroy the lives of all the decent people in the UK by calling for them to be violated, but to use your pain and your experience to make the world a better place, without trampling on the rights of other people.

Surely someone checking that your children meet a standard of numeracy and literacy, and aren’t raised to believe that the world is controlled by Jew-hating-lizards from outer space is something that should be done, not beaten down by shouty hippie parents with anger issues towards the local education authority, or Labour, or Catholicism or various other issues, is a good thing? If parents become ill, or must work more, and can’t support their children’s education, shouldn’t there be someone to step in and make a stand about that?

You sound like an angry person who has deeply seated problems that you have not resolved. You want to lash out at all parents because your parents were bad. Hurting other people will not make your pain go away. You need to get some psychiatric help to get you over your problems.

After all, when you’re young, whoever teaches you tends to be your earliest guide in the world. Did you know how you should be educated when you were 8 or 9? You don’t really have any authority on this yourself when you’re young, parents decide it for you. If you did, you’d probably just sit in the dirt chopping hair off dolls and eating refreshers all day.

This is not an argument.

I fail to understand why there’s such opinion that the government/ LEAs/ the big bad whoever are anti-home education.

That is indeed, a big failure on your part. A failure to read, a failure to empathize and a failure to understand what a real family is like. This is understandable, since you never had one.

The attitude against this regulation does seem to broadly be part of a much larger anti-Labour grudge, or a grudge against local education authorities and regulation.

This is simply not true. No matter what political party is in charge, if they were to propose what New Labour are proposing they would be rounded upon. You really do not understand what this is all about!

Regulation seems to be a dirty word to these people, implying control when it equally means protection.

Regulation does not mean protection. Get yourself a dictionary. You have no experience in parenting or of parenting, you have no idea of what the nature of the state really is… you are ignorant.

Home education has grown as an alternative option since the 70s or so and there really has been very little regulation on it at all, and yet it concerns one of the most important factors in a persons life being decided by what could be the whim of an unstable parent. What seems to be recommended is an enforced and compulsory regulation of what is currently very loosely done. The suggestions made by the recent review have flaws, which have been pointed out on the previous post’s comments, but I view them as caring for the education and welfare of vulnerable children who are currently beyond any particular authority and whose lives are solely controlled by one or two people.

http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/2009/06/18/regulating-home-education/

Those ‘two people’ are called PARENTS they are not just ‘people’.

Compulsory school education is a relatively new phenomenon:

Whilst the intentions of compulsory school laws were good, what we have now is a system that serves to brainwash people. Now that there is a trend away from state schools, there are many forces that want to reverse it.

Teachers unions are bitterly opposed to Home Schooling. Departments of education are against it. Communists are against it. Fascists are against it. Well meaning busy bodies are against it.

What is most bizarre is that you come off sounding just like a person who is a product of the state school system with its ‘nothing to hide, nothing to fear’ doublespeak lines learned by rote.

Either way, The point remains the same; your deeply saddening story of suffering at the hands of your parents is not a reason to destroy the sanctity of the family in general by mandating that the state become the parent of all children.

Finally, there are only a few people viewing regulation of home education as a positive thing because it is wrong; most people understand the threat that the state represents, what their freedom is worth and have a naturally powered ferocious desire to protect their children.

And this comment, says it all:

I feel for you, I really do, but…

The current proposals would have instead turned your once in eight year beating to coach your responses into a once a year beating.* I’m sure your mother could have turned in a report every year to show she was trying, and she would have been approved, even supported, by the authorities. She was in your own words “a manipulative bitch”, and who’s to say that she, like Baby P’s mother, like Eunice Spry, couldn’t wrap the authorities round her little finger.

Your story is repeated over and over with schooled children as well, with school staff at the very least ignorant, if not complicit in wilfull silence.

The authorities have shown that they cannot prevent abuse in schooled children, or children which are under the tightest scrutiny available to them. They have also demonstrated that people who are not manipulative, who are simply anxious in the presence of authority, get their children removed from them on the weakest of grounds because social workers don’t want to be the ones in the headlines for inaction.

The hostility to authorites is not due to some airy-fairy anti-establishment dogma, but due to a history of abuse of authority, coupled with a demonstrated inability of authorities to use their existing powers effectively.

I think you’ll also find that most people who believe the world is truly ruled by jew hating lizards from outer space were, in fact, schooled, along with the vast majority of British Islamic extremists, BNP supporters, climate change believers / deniers (delete where you agree) and people who vote on Britain’s Got Talent. Being schooled does not, on present evidence, innoculate you in any way against collective insanity.

*Yes, I’m sure there were more beatings, just this one was for coaching before the authority visit.

NO $ALE!

Before the Balls and Badman review nastiness, I have had some interesting discussions with Home Schoolers in the UK. To a man, all of them bristle when they are referred to as ‘Home Schoolers’. At any other time, I would simply take note of it as one of the many beautiful differences between people, and go on to discuss something else.

Sadly, we live in a world where there is a concerted and international governmental effort underway to totally eradicate Home Schooling in all its myriad forms.

Under such circumstances, it is plainly the height of total insanity, shooting yourself in the foot and foolishness, that parents who Home School should split themselves into non cooperating factions in the face of this powerful, single minded and organized enemy.

I had a tweet from a Home Educator saying sarcastically that, “apparently all homeschoolers should register, so we are OK since we are Home Educators not Home Schoolers!”. Then came some snide comments about Britain not being a part of America. Then followed another tweet from a different person saying that they would not sign a petition whose aim is to safeguard the rights of parents because the petition has the phrase ‘Home Schooling’ in it.

Oh dear me.

Regular readers of BLOGDIAL know that the age of writing and signing petitions an demonstrating as a tactic to get what you want is over, that they do not work and that doing them is nothing more than a time wasting feel good activity, but that is not the point here. The point is that over the phrase ‘Home Schooling’, some parents are not willing to join with others to fight people who are trying to kidnap and brainwash their children.

That is INSANITY.

The facts of the matter are these.

Whatever you might call yourself, all parents have one thing in common; they are parents, and they have the best interests of their children at heart, and they all have the absolute right to bring up their children as they see fit, without interference from the state.

This is the thing that binds all parents, and which binds all Home Schoolers, Home Educators, unschoolers, autonomous learners, structured learners, or whatever term happens to be en vogue at the moment.

Let me tell you something; the people who are trying to destroy your way of life do not care a damn what you call yourself. As far as they are concerned, you are ALL trash and your children are CANNON FODDER and you are ALL GOING TO BE MADE TO CONFORM.

The fact that you squabble over terminology to such an extent that you will refuse to help each other demonstrates to them that you really are a totally clueless bunch that have no right to be in charge of an empty carton of milk much less your own children. They laugh at you as you bicker like morons over this, all the while, rolling out their plans to take your children from you if you do not implement their brainwashing programmes and testing regimes IN YOUR OWN HOUSE.

There are lots of things that I do not agree with. I keep them STRICTLY private, and only share them with my inner circle. Whilst we are in the battle of our lives, I strongly suggest that if you want to HELP destroy the Badman and Balls agenda, that you keep irrelevant distinctions out of the discussion, and join with other parents who are fighting for the true goal of this battle, the rights of all parents.

You have the right to say whatever you want, join with whomever you want, not join with people that you disagree with and express yourself in any way you see fit. What you CANNOT claim however, is that it helps to factionalize people when we are all fighting against a common enemy.

And speaking of americans, we have this from the Home School Legal Defense Association:

UN Treaty Jeopardizes Homeschool Freedom in Britain

June 16, 2009

Ever since the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly and opened to nations across the world for ratification in 1989, HSLDA has been deeply concerned about the implications of this treaty for U.S. homeschoolers, if the U.S. were to ratify the treaty.

We have consistently warned that this treaty could be the vehicle opponents of home education could use to effectively ban or severely regulate homeschooling. On February 16, 1995, when Secretary of State Madeline Albright signed the UNCRC, the United States took a major step along the path to ratification which would make the UNCRC, as stated in Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, the supreme law of the land.

For the UNCRC to be ratified it must gain a two-thirds vote in the U.S. Senate. If this happens then the UNCRC will automatically supersede all state laws and U.S. judges will be obligated to follow the provisions of the treaty. Currently, family and education laws are state-based; however, ratification of the UNCRC would transfer the jurisdiction for making family and education law to the U.S. Congress. Congress would, in turn, be obligated to follow the UN mandates contained in the CRC.

While HSLDA has been sounding the alarm about this treaty for years, proponents of the UNCRC maintain that our concerns are invalid.

One such claim relating to homeschooling is from the Children’s Rights Campaign website, a group of 300 organizations arguing that we have nothing to fear from the UNCRC.

They say: “There is no language in the CRC that dictates the manner in which parents are to raise and instruct their children. Ratification of the Convention would not prevent parents from homeschooling their children.”

Sadly, HSLDA’s position has been proven to be correct. Contrary to what proponents like the Children’s Rights Campaign claim, UNCRC will be used to significantly restrict the freedom to homeschool in England.

On June 11, 2009 a report on home education in England by Graham Badman, a former Managing Director of Children, Families and Education in the County of Kent, was accepted in full by the British Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families. The report makes the case that homeschooling should be extensively regulated in England.

Aside from registering with the state and mandating reports by homeschoolers, the Badman report makes references to balancing the rights of parents with the rights of children. This idea is expressed in the UNCRC.

As Mr. Badman says:

I am not persuaded that under the current regulatory regime that there is a correct balance between the rights of parents and the rights of the child either to an appropriate education or to be safe from harm.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) gives children and young people over forty substantive rights which include the right to express their views freely, the right to be heard in any legal or administrative matters that affect them and the right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas. Article 12 makes clear the responsibility of signatories to give children a voice:

“Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.”

Yet under the current legislation and guidance, local authorities have no right of access to the child to determine or ascertain such views.

Mr. Badman has a solution for the lack of access of the state to homeschooled children in order to fulfill this provision of the UNCRC.

He proposed the following:

That designated local authority officers should:
• have the right of access to the home
• have the right to speak with each child alone

And:

That a requirement is placed upon local authorities to secure the monitoring of the effectiveness of elective home education.

Mr. Badman’s rationale for placing the state in charge of determining the effectiveness of a home education (i.e. deciding which curriculum is used) is based on Article 29 of the UNCRC. He asserts:

Such is the demand and complexity of 21st Century society and employment that further thought should be given to what constitutes an appropriate curriculum within the context of elective home education. Such a curriculum must be sufficiently broad and balanced and relevant to enable young people to make suitable choices about their life and likely future employment. Article 29 of the UNCRC states that:

1. States Parties agree that the education of the child shall be directed to:

1. The development of the child’s personality, talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential;
2. The development of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and for the principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations;
3. The development of respect for the child’s parents, his or her own cultural identity, language and values, for the national values of the country in which the child is living, the country from which he or she may originate, and for civilizations different from his or her own;
4. The preparation of the child for responsible life in a free society, in the spirit of understanding, peace, tolerance, equality of sexes, and friendship among all peoples, ethnic, national and religious groups and persons of indigenous origin;
5. The development of respect for the natural environment.

In short, the Badman report recommends that the state should have the authority to choose the curriculum for homeschoolers and he used Britain’s treaty obligations under the UNCRC to justify this intrusion.

Remember, the Badman report has already been accepted by the British government. It is now only a question of time before the legislation is introduced and a vote occurs in the British Parliament. Not surprisingly, the estimated 80,000 British homeschooling families are outraged at the Badman report.
The Badman report is a stark reminder of how government officials in an English-speaking democracy have interpreted the UNCRC. It’s clear that the right to homeschool in America will be negatively impacted if the U.S. Senate ever ratifies the UNCRC.

Ultimately, the answer to completely defeating the UNCRC is to amend the U.S. Constitution. This is the purpose of the Parental Rights Amendment being advanced by HSLDA and ParentalRights.org. The PRA would uphold the current U.S. legal framework which only allows the state to intervene where there is credible evidence of abuse or neglect. Otherwise parents are free to raise their children, which includes the right to home educate. Amending the Constitution will permanently protect the right of parents and homeschoolers. It’s a right we cannot surrender to any U.S. government present or future and certainly a right we must not surrender to the United Nations.

[…]

http://www.hslda.org/docs/news/200906161.asp

I am very grateful that there are people in other countries that are paying close attention to the problems that parents are facing in the UK. Especially a country where there are about THIRTY to FORTY times as many Home Schoolers as there are in the UK. I am willing to discuss with them, join with them and coordinate with them to protect my rights. I don’t care what they choose to call themselves. In the same way that I am willing to deal with any Home Educator on this matter, I will deal with the HSDLA if it serves the greater purpose of protecting my rights.

Come to think of it, I cannot think of a single Home Schooler that I know, to whom I have asked, “How do you Home Educate your children?”. It would never occur to me to ask that question; it is none of my business. I am able to communicate with other Home Schoolers, laugh with them, get incandescent with rage with them, down some beers with them, let my children play with theirs and just be a human being.

You may now follow Irdial on Twitter.

The Guardian reports:

A new 50p per month broadband tax is to be levied on every home and business with a phone line under government plans to raise up to £1.5bn to pay for the next generation of internet connections.

Even if you believe this is a role for the government this money could easily be diverted from more controversial schemes (insert your least favourite database here).

… [swathe about carving up the licence fee removed] …

“The licence fee must not become a slush fund to be dipped into at will, leading to spiralling demands on licence fee payers to help fund the political or commercial concerns of the day,” he said. “This would lead to the licence fee being seen as another form of general taxation.”

HA!

Carter stressed he is not advocating a reduction in the BBC’s licence fee […]. The National Audit Office believes the corporation could be sitting on a £250m surplus from the digital switchover fund.

“The case is made to make available public funding for the provision of news in the nations and regions,” said Carter. “It is our view that we have a funding mechanism for public content – it is called the TV licence fee.”

With the ‘digital switchover’ the licence fee is a relic and an even more unjustifiable tax – it has never been easier for the BBC to encode their transmissions and set up a subscription or micropayment system to restrict access and gain revenues.

Lord Carter’s 238-page report covers everything from combating internet piracy to setting a 2015 date for the switch to digital radio. Alongside the plan to get existing broadband – at 2Mb per second – to everyone in the UK by 2012, Carter took many in the industry by surprise by proposing the new 50p-a-month tax on all phone lines. That will raise between £150m and £175m a year which the government will make available to companies such as BT which want to push the next generation of internet networks, allowing consumers to download music in seconds and movies in a minute, to 90% of the UK population by 2017.

The ‘next generation’ broadband of now will be a previous generation by 2012, private companies will be subsidised to provide lesser technologies. No one, not least, the government has a clue how the internet(z) will be used in 2017 but I am sure it will NOT be ‘the same but faster’. Focussing private companies on deploying obsolete technologies when they could be engaged in R&D work to improve access actually distorts the natural improvement of technologies and should not be encouraged. The £6 a year tax is just a starting point and is already in discussion side by side with the TV licence fee – the obvious intention to be to create a broadband licence fee. Quite what the speed of downloading movies has got to do with the government is anybody’s guess.

Mirroring Gordon Brown’s recent appointment of Alan Sugar as enterprise champion, Carter also announced the appointment of Martha Lane Fox, one of the founders of travel site Lastminute.com, as his “champion for digital inclusion”, charged with persuading the 30% of households who are not online to get broadband access.

20th January
I have taken Inclusion. If I had been expecting an experience like that of Hoffman, when he accidentally took LSD-25 and unleashed the psychedelic revlution, I would have been disappointed. But, of course, I wasn’t, and was delighted.
[…] I found myself staring blankly at a Senior League Curling Championship, being broadcast from Peebles.

Will Self

That easily represents the extent of the Government’s ambitions about ‘inclusion’.

But the report was immediately attacked by shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt as “a colossal disappointment” and “digital dithering” as it will result in yet more discussions over the summer. “Where in all this is a single action?” he asked. “But there is one area in which this report has excelled itself: consultations. This is surely government of the management consultants, for the management consultants, by the management consultants.”

Quite except we do not want ‘action’ we want the Government not to act, not to commission these reports, not even to ‘consult’, just to remove themselves from what does not concern them.

The film and music industries also reacted angrily to what they saw as Carter’s half-hearted attempt to clamp down on people who illegally share copyrighted material over the internet. […] internet users could have their broadband connections slowed down or access to particular websites blocked after a year, although this is also up for further consultation.

Can’t work, won’t work. Consumers successfully rejected DRM and they will circumvent measures to restrict ‘unofficial’ downloading. ‘Slowing down connections’ shows that Lord Carter doesn’t consider the future of public/unsecured wi-fi to be relevant.

Recent research has shown that more than two-thirds of internet users would ignore warning letters, […].

Lavinia Carey, chair of Respect for Film and director general of the British Video Association, said: “As an alternative to legal action we advocate a more effective and proportionate approach, namely the prompt implementation of technical measures or ‘road humps’ for persistent infringers in order to make life difficult for them to continue to access content illicitly, while still enabling them to access other services such as email, banking and shopping sites.”

Hmmm, stay tuned and watch the inevitable fail.

An Anonymous Coward at BBQ writes with great sadness:

The Tories have written to five firms bidding to supply ID cards warning them not to sign any long-term contracts.

In the letter, shadow home secretary Chris Grayling says one of his party’s first acts, if it wins the next general election, would be to scrap the scheme.

He said he was urging the firms against large investments that may be wasted.

The government says ID cards, being trialled in Manchester from this autumn, will combat fraud, terrorism and organised crime.

You see how the scumbag BBC promotes the lies about ID Cards by repeating without analysis lines directly from Neu Liebour? The BBC reporters are, and have been throughout all of this, the ultimate total human garbage.

‘Substantial bill’

They want a nationwide roll-out of the scheme by 2012 but with a general election due within a year, the Conservatives say they intend to scrap it.

Mr Grayling’s predecessor as shadow home secretary, David Davis, issued a similar warning to firms in February 2007 and gave Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell formal notice of the party’s intention not to continue with the scheme.

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats oppose the scheme, estimated at costing about £5bn, and some Labour MPs have expressed doubts.

ID Cards do not work, are socially corrosive, are un-British and only collectivist vermin like the BBC support them.

ID CARD TIMETABLE
2009: Workers at Manchester and London City airport
Autumn 2009: Manchester pilot
2010: Students opening bank accounts offered ID cards
2011/12: All UK passport applicants
2015: 90% foreign nationals covered
2017: Full roll-out?

I have another timetable for you:

2001 BLOGDIAL warns that ID Cards will not solve anything

2002 BLOGIAL describes how ID cards destroy societies and dehumanize people.

2003 BLOGDIAL describes how a centralized database is extremely dangerous and open to abuse.

2004 BLOGDIAL attacks the imbecile David Bkunkett

2005 BLOGDIAL attacks the proposed ID Cards bill.

2006 The Frances Stonor Saunders letter AKA ‘the anonymous email‘ widely circulated and published.

snip!

2010 ID Cards plans permanently abandoned. ID Card contractors lose billions. ContactPoint scrapped. NIR scrapped.

Mr Grayling told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he was concerned about “a number of signals” recently suggesting “quite big penalty costs” were being built into contracts which will leave a “substantial bill” for the taxpayer.

“I want companies to be cautious and recognise that if they invest large amounts of money preparing for this business, it may not happen,” he said.

“There’s a danger the government will build more poisoned pills into the contracts that will simply make it more difficult to scrap.”

Asked whether the Tories were trying to paralyse government plans, he said: “I would be delighted if this slows down progress with the ID project because I think it’s the wrong thing to do.”

This is music to the ears of everyone in Britain.

Later this year, airside workers at London City and Manchester airports will be issued with ID cards.

They are all going to refuse them you jackass.

‘Conditioning’ public

And, from the autumn, people in Manchester will be able to voluntarily sign up for a card as part of a pilot project.

It is the beginning of the main phase of the scheme which ministers say will result in cards being available nationwide by 2012.

Within the next three years, the Identity and Passport Service plans to issue “significant volumes” of ID cards alongside British passports – but people will be able to opt out of having a card if they do not want one.

Earlier retired law lord Lord Steyn accused the Home Office of introducing the cards in stages as a way of “conditioning” and “softening up” public opinion.

He added: “The Home Office now proudly asserts that comprehensive surveillance has become routine. If that is true, the resemblance to the world of Kafka is no longer so very distant.”

The government believes that the public support the scheme – former home secretary Jacqui Smith said she was regularly approached by people who said they did not want to wait several years to register for an ID card.

It has been reported that Alan Johnson, who replaced Jacqui Smith as home secretary in the recent cabinet reshuffle, might be considering a U-turn on ID cards, after ordering a review of the scheme.

But in a statement Mr Johnson said: “In my very first interview as home secretary I made clear that identity cards was a manifesto commitment and that legislation governing their introduction was passed in 2006.

“We remain on progress to bring in what we believe has widespread public support.”

[…]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8104481.stm

What does ‘remain on progress’ mean? Who cares. ID Cards in the UK are TOAST, millions will not accept them, the Tories are going to scrap them; from both sides, the pressure will be so great that it will be impossible for this insane nonsense to work.

The only people who are weeping about this are the corrupt monsters like the wife of former Downing Street policy adviser Lord Birt who was set to land £2 billion ID card contract who will now be getting precisely nothing.

The Register reports that the Conservatives are writing to companies involved in ‘ID card contracts’, asking them to reconsider, this is a good first move but something more forceful is needed before the next election:

NATIONAL IDENTITY CARD SCHEME

As you will be aware, the Conservative Party has stated publicly that it is our intention that we will commit to cancel the ID card project and related databases immediately on our being elected to government.

I am writing to you as one of the companies involved in contracting for the project. I wanted to make it clear to you that our intention commitment to cancel the project remains unchanged. I think it is important that the companies concerned bear this carefully in mind before committing to any long term contracts for the project, since it will not be our intention to proceed with be a manifesto commitment to cancel the work if we are elected.

In addition, I wanted to draw your attention to my concerns about the nature of the contracts that are in development.

In March, the Home Secretary announced that the cancellation of two contracts for the national identity scheme, one to upgrade passport application systems, and one for a biometric database, would incur costs of £40 million.

Whilst we do not intend to scrap We will also substantially overhaul the programme introducing biometric passports, therefore I wanted to make it clear that we will take an extremely sceptical view of actively contest any future contractual arrangements on ID cards that appear to have been put in place simply to tie the hands of a future Government.

In light of this, I urge you to consider very carefully your future involvement in the ID Card project.

Yours sincerely

Chris Grayling

Shadow Home Secretary