Politics OnLine UK

Anyone who wants to commit a crime, who is determined to commit a crime, will. Deterrents to crime have been around a long time and have done little to convert criminals to lives of virtuous honesty and labour.

Terrorism is a modern day, so called, global threat that leaves the vast majority of us sleeping as easily in our beds as ever before, save for the misgivings engendered by politicians who like to bang on about the threat of terrorism. Once again, a determined terrorist will commit acts of terror and they are probably more fatalistically aware of the consequences if they are caught, martyrdom has its uses, then the sly thief, who at all times hopes to 'get away with it'.

Identity cards are like speed bumps, we all pay the price for this interference for the sake of the few who may or may not be deterred by these measures. Speed bumps are ruinous on cars and especially to Emergency Service Vehicles, but they proliferate. CCTV's have also grown alarmingly in number and few seem to consider the issue of being an ever more watched society as particularly bothersome, arguing, as with Identity Cards, that if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear. This argument is the most spurious of all, it isn't about hiding, it is about fundamental liberty without let or hindrance from the state. Government is there to serve the people, not to monitor them, not to curb their liberty or to mother them.

Identity cards are the next step in the nanny state, how much further we can go I cannot see but we are past the thin end of the wedge, the wedge is firmly in place. It will be too late to protest once our basic liberties have been undermined, to late to cry freedom from a cage. Perhaps people might like to consider that we may not know what we have had until it is gone, and we should hold to liberty a little tighter and with a little more reverence and care.

Identity cards

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