Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

Jolyon wrote:OUCH. Sorry thats tasteless and way out of line. Some of us have/had our roots in Poland and Germany.

And you ran right into Godwin's Law (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_Law for details)

I ureservedly apologise for any offence caused that emphatically was not my intention.

As for Godwin's Law I've never heard of it.

The point I, on reflection insensitively, wanted to emphasise was how too much government control and information could potentially be misused by an evil corrupt government.

I formed the (possibly erroneous) impression that you were only concerned with the practicalities rather than the potential pitfalls of an ID card policy.

Once again my apologies for any offence caused.

I never understood the connection between us having ID numbers and some repression of our freedom.

With some 60 million people in this country and the easy of movement across borders we do need some system.

Yes you can use information for negative purposes. Things can always go astray. You give people motorcars, you get speeding and drink driving and the like. You give people booze you get drunkness.

Jolyon wrote:I never understood the connection between us having ID numbers and some repression of our freedom.

With some 60 million people in this country and the easy of movement across borders we do need some system.

Yes you can use information for negative purposes. Things can always go astray. You give people motorcars, you get speeding and drink driving and the like. You give people booze you get drunkness.

The obvious repression of freedom is as Richard describes when he lived in France, namely being forced to "produce your papers" under threat of arrest. My oldest daughter lived in France between 2002 and 2003 and the system was still in place. I do not want that in my country.

We already have passports, driving licences, NI numbers and NHS numbers to "track" the indigenous population. Soon the Galileo Satellite will come into play too. The potential problem is caused by illegal entry and the answer to that, in my view, would be a tightening of border controls, maybe a visa system as used by Australia and the USA. I realise though that such a system may well fall foul of EU freedom of movement legislation.

I think history shows how governments throughout the world have misused information so I will just say it causes me much concern how our present and future governments might respond.