Tim Worstall

I think Phillip Johnston might have nailed it here.

A valedictory report on the project said: "The National Identity Register proposed as part of the Home Office Identity Cards Programme will deliver many of the CIP benefits… by effectively acting as the UK adult population register."
Shorn of much of its security paraphernalia, that is what the […]

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Under the plans, mothers who successfully claim they deserve more money for child support will also be able to claim a share in any profits their ex-partners make from selling assets – even those acquired long after the divorce. And authority will be given to civil servants to raid the father’s bank account and withdraw […]

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A government-appointed panel of experts is warning that the new ID cards system will be open to fraud by the people running it.
In a potentially damaging revelation, which undermines claims that the scheme will enhance national security, the group has concluded that it will be prone to corruption.
A new report by the Independent Scheme Assurance […]

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So, a newspaper carries and advertisement for the BNP. The editor’s comment?

In his editorial column, Mr Martin wrote: "To be able to tolerate those we vehemently disagree with is the hallmark of an open, egalitarian and democratic society, where freedom of speech and expression are sacrosanct."

Quite. As DK said in a slightly different context. Why […]

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A mother in need of a kidney transplant was denied her daughter’s "perfect match" organs after her sudden death.
Laura Ashworth died, aged 21, at Bradford Royal Infirmary after a suspected asthma attack.
She had spoken of her desire to help her mother, Rachel Leake, who has kidney failure, but despite being on the national organ donor […]

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More than 1,000 covert surveillance operations are being launched every month to investigate petty offences such as dog fouling, under-age smoking and breaches of planning regulations.

No, no,. these are very special powers, only to be used in times of grave crisis:

When Ripa was passed in 2000, only nine organisations, such as the police and security […]

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You’ve got to laugh, eh?

A council has used powers intended for anti-terrorism surveillance to spy on a family who were wrongly accused of lying on a school application form.

Those exceptional powers, those that would only be used in the most important and urgent of cases, are employed to check up on a school application.
What next? […]

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I’m not in fact sure whether this David Selbourne fella is being serious or not.

Instead, modern free societies, the freest history has known, are gradually disintegrating from abuse of their freedoms. The harms being done to them by exploitation of their liberties are real; the harms being caused to them by the erosion of those […]

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Magazines could be banned from using airbrushed photographs of celebrities that make them look slimmer over fears that they are promoting unrealistic body images.

At the moment it’s actually a voluntary code of conduct that’s under discussion. And no, of course I don’t give two hoots about whether models are airbrushed or not.
But we do know […]

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Such a home of freedoms and liberties, isn’t it?

Cuba has blocked access to the country’s most popular blog, signalling an apparent government crackdown on a new generation of cyber critics. The blog, Generación Y, received 1.2m hits last month, but its writer, Yoani Sanchez, said Cubans could no longer visit her web page.
Attempts from the […]

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It’s usually identified as a logical error, the use of the slippery slope argument. If we allow X to happen, then Y and Z will follow, with the proposer using as an example of Z something that pretty much everyone will reject. The aim is to gather support for not doing X, of course.
It really […]

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Primary school children should be eligible for the DNA database if they exhibit behaviour indicating they may become criminals in later life, according to Britain’s most senior police forensics expert.

This is laughable. Eligible? So it’s a privilege to be registered with the State?
Come on guys, Minority Report was a dystopian vision, not an operating manual.

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You know how ID cards are supposed to lower the levels of fraud?

But there was also a six per cent increase in card fraud losses in Britain, which was largely driven by fraudsters using stolen details to make purchases over the telephone or internet, or by mail order.
This "card not present" fraud soared by 37 […]

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My first concern is honesty. Since ID cards manifestly cannot fulfil any of the functions for which government ostensibly desires them - prevention of terrorism and organised crime seem the most childishly simple to debunk since terrorists and organised criminals with access to planes, guns, bombs and currency laundering will just as surely access fake […]

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Has anyone else seen this?

Millions of British airline passengers face mandatory fingerprinting before being allowed to board flights when Heathrow’s Terminal 5 opens later this month.

Eh?

All four million domestic passengers who will pass through Terminal 5 annually after it opens on March 27 […]

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Glorious!

Under the plans, inspectors from the EHRC would be empowered to carry out spot checks at any workplace - those where there was cause for concern or firms which had done nothing wrong.

So, a group of bureaucrats, eager to prove that they are indeed needed, that they are uncovering great scandals, can walk into any […]

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This ID card system: going to be 100% secure and accurate, isn’t it?

Baroness Anelay of St Johns, with a group of parliamentarians, was once given a demonstration of a facial recognition system. It failed; indeed the system subsequently crashed, twice. The reason? The baroness was told her face was “too bland”.
The only property that all […]

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But a previous plan, stating that by 2010 anyone applying for a new passport would be given an ID card as well, has changed. Now passport applicants will be given a choice.
Ministers will then wait to see how this voluntary scheme progresses before any expansion.
Personal details from both passports and ID cards will still be […]

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About 100,000 workers at the Olympics site in London are to be screened using advanced face and palm recognition techniques in one of the largest and most expensive security operations undertaken on a British construction project.
Every worker on the site – up to 10,000 at one time at the peak of construction in 2010 […]

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Well, whadda you know. When a private group, with no accountability, gets the power to prosecute, they are over zealous in doing so.
Not really all that much of a surprise, is it?

The Self-Help Group of farmers and others has existed for nearly two decades to put anyone experiencing difficulty with the RSPCA in touch with […]

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