Cretins, Criminals, Cards and Disks

(This entry was originally posted elsewhere in December 2007, but it's still relevant...)

When one government or leader is replaced by another the most you can hope for is that new one will be better than the last simply by not being as bad. Unfortunately this is rare.

Gordon Brown for a brief moment had the benefit of not being Tony Blair, but that glory has now vanished as a result of various events, the most recent being the embarrassment of HM Revenue and Customs losing two disks containing private details of millions of people 'in the post'. The postal service is run by the government, as well, and is suffering from the same cretinous attempts to be 'improved'. Improvements usually mean job losses and reductions in services, hence the gradual decrease in things you can do at a Post Office and the inevitable reduction in the number of POs throughout the country. This used to be called 'rationalisation'. No doubt there is another fashionable word for it.

Mr Brown thought it would be a good idea to merge two government departments when he was Chancellor - the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise. Presumably he thought the major benefit would be that of saving money by sacking thousands of civil servants and making the remaining ones do twice as much work for the same pay. This, after all, is the way the private sector works and, unfortunately, since Thatcher injected the poisonous ethos of the marketplace into the public services over two decades ago, the whole of British govenment and society seems to have suffered a sea-change in its moral DNA. In keeping with this attitude ordinary people just become mechanicals whose only reason for existence is on the one hand, simply to work as much as they are told (in the private sector for the profit of a small number of beneficiaries) and on the other to spend as much as they can. In the marketplace your only value is monetary; in the public sector your only value is obedience.

The government will no doubt keep trying to lay the blame for the lost disks (and there are now other cases) on 'junior' officials - as if they would have the ability to say to the superiors "Is it really a good idea to send sensitive information by post?" and not be told to fuck off, that's the way we always do it. With regard to the child benefit case, it also appears that HMRC wouldn't supply the non-sensitive data that were being requested by the Audit Office because of the cost of extrapolating them from existing records, and so sent the whole lot.

Lest you should think this is just a matter of incompetent politicians and their civil servants, however, just remember that in June the Bank of Scotland lost data concerning over 60,000 customers in a similar way. Banks are a bunch of thieves and con-merchants, as the current fiasco over Northern Rock clearly reveals. Tax-payers are now covering the losses incurred by ambitious and greedy directors, who will walk away into new well-paid jobs, with their wallets and pension funds bulging.

Plus ca change... However, I have one last point, one that flows from the above. More than any previous government, this one has proved most zealous in its desire to snoop on and gather information about its citizens. The most high-profile example is its persistence in pushing ahead with ID cards (though they don't call them that any more - be prepared to hear about the 'National Identity Register' instead - that is, if you hear anything at all). I don't have the will power to go through the whole thing here, so check out the following website (No2ID) for full details, etc. The government say they want everyone to have an ID card because this will prevent fraud, help stop terrorism, etc, etc (Blunkett when he was Home Secretary blathered on about it being an 'entitlement card', which is about as double-speak Stalinist as you can get. Good riddance, you cretin).

All of which is blatant nonsense, as a moment's thought will show. It certainly won't have any effect on anyone who wants to commit terrorist acts. It will, however, actually increase crime and fraud - the criminals are smarter than the politicans, for one thing, and the technology for forging identities is easy to access for another.

Here are some other plain, old-fashioned reasons for opposing the introduction of ID cards and associated data collection and ID schemes:

* it will cost far more than the politicians say it will - and we will end up paying for the privilege of being snooped on;
* the technology won't work: the politicos will pepper their statements with references to 'secure systems' and 'biometrics' (that's a favourite one) but the fact is that most politicians don't know their mouse from a dongle (in the same way they don't know anything about television, since they never watch it except to see themselves); as the current fiascos show, it's easier now to 'lose' data than it ever was in the days of paper; 'biometrics' is by no means reliable; and the technology simply won't be up to scratch. Neither will the software. Neither will the staff training;
* the system won't work: people will vanish from the register unaccountably, others will be declared dead while still alive and the dead will suddenly return to the world of the living; people will find themselves older, or younger, or with someone else's name, address or identity - and they will be held responsible for the error, without being able to correct it;
* the system will be open to abuse and error: too many non-governmental agencies will have access to YOUR private data, including your medical records: data will be lost, mis-typed, stolen, altered, sold.

Etc, etc.

The legislation for all these measures is being slipped through bit by bit. These bastards can't be trusted. If you live in the UK this will be your problem. If you're young enough, you always could emigrate somewhere more civilised (not the States, since they have problems with the Patriot Act and similar anti-civil-liberties legislation already operating) - just make sure you do it while can afford it - and the government lets you.

Pour me another whisky, nurse...