ID cards - Blair tries a different tack. Same result

Tony Blair today tried a slightly different tack on trying to justify ID cards. After bitterly contesting the argument over how much they are going to cost, and largely failing to win anybody over at all (OK, in the current political climate it was always going to be difficult...), he is now insisting the measure is about "modernity not civil liberties."

Presumably the implication of this is that civil liberties are not compatible with the modern world? A refreshingly honest assertion from Tony, anyway.

Blair's also arguing that although the costs may be big, the benefits will be bigger. He went on to say:

I don't think, in the debate so far, that we have even begun to explore the benefits that we will see in, say, ten years time.

The Home Office will apparently be publishing an "Action Plan" in December after they have "done the math" on this. Presumably this will be after John Reid has spent a quick 2 months sorting the department out?

The whole thing smacks of a cocktail of desperation and arrogance. Meanwhile, the number of people on the DNA database continues to grow, past 3 million now... and you, too, could join the fun. All yhou have to do is be arrested... and you don't even have to have committed a crime! The police will take your details free of charge. It's such a good deal, why doesn't Blair suggest that we all troop down to the cop shop and have our DNA swabs taken? Or could we include the info as a DIY kit with the 2011 Census? (I'm sure a leading New Labour politician will suggest it soon... where's Alan Milburn when you need him?)

Henry Porter in the Observer has Blair and Reid bang to rights on the assault on civil liberties. Porter writes essentially the same column every week, but that doesn't stop it being totally right every time. It's like when Status Quo remade the same single about 20 times in the early-to-mid 70s: every one a winner. I thoroughly recommend Porter, along with NO2ID, as guides for the perplexed.

That's not to say there isn't a debate to be had about whether we want a national DNA database, or ID cards, for that matter. It's just that, as usual, we don't get any kind of debate worth the name. We get what the good Agent Mulder called "B.S. and double talk" just before he slugged Skinner in the last episode of the 2nd series of The X Files (still my favourite, I think.) Whilst the David Icke fantasy of "a micro-chipped population linked to a global computer" is over the top for the moment, stuff like Alex Jones's Infowars site becomes more believable by the nanosecond...