Renew for Freedom

The Identity Cards Act 2006 introduces the database state, and your passport is the key the government is using to start the ball rolling.

When the Conservative Lords "compromised" by allowing you to opt out of having an ID card when you get a passport, they didn't let you opt out of paying for it, having an interview (where you will be "pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed and numbered") or being entered into the database. The Register, as it will be known.

However, there is nothing to stop anyone renewing their passport now, giving 10 years respite. I've done it. The online form is rather good for a government site, I must say, and all you will need is a printer, a credit card and a passport photo. Or two, I'm not entirely sure about that.

£51 for ten years - if nothing else it will probably save you money.

Foreign Criminals

I can’t understand this current fuss about non-deported criminals, other than from the point of view that it’s a good stick to beat the government with. Now, the government do need beating with a stick, but every time we've replaced an apparently bad Home Secretary, the next one along has been even worse. I thought Jack Straw was a dangerous nutter, but then we got David Blunkett. He seemed more right-wing than Michael Howard, but along came Charles Clarke and Bingo! Identity Cards and the database state. I tremble to think what new horror John Reid will introduce.

Still, back to Johnny Foreigner. They've not been let out early. They've not escaped. These people are ex-cons. They have served their time, paid their debt to society. If they were good old-fashioned British criminals then that would be an end to it: lesson learnt, wrists slapped, “sorry, guv, bang to rights, won’t let it happen again”. You could bleat about lenient sentences, excessive time off for good behaviour, etc. but the punishment, fitting or not, is done.

Not so the Foreign Criminals. Inherently untrustworthy, they must be shipped off back to “whence they came” lest they relapse into their bad ways; or, worse, the ultimate threat, become terrorists.

Is the real world visible in any of this?

Democracy Inaction

Democracy Inaction
Originally uploaded by DerekL.

How depressing is this? Just two candidates to choose from, 32% turnout.
The winner, as always and inexplicably a tory here in the countryside, started her statement complaining that Council Tax had doubled since 1997, and ended it complaining that the Government had capped it.

What should it be? Obviously the people don't care either way.