Saturday, August 25, 2007

A Warning From Spain

I may be on holiday in Spain but there are a few differences which raise my political hackles sufficiently for a quick blog entry.

I leave it to you to decide which is worse; needing an I.D.card just to hire a locker at a water park or being able to circumvent the security/bureaucracy with a car park swipe card with my photo on? Ardent supporters of I.D. Cards will excuse the former by saying that the Spanish will have their cards with them in their wallets anyway. The same cannot be said for tourists I didn't anticipate needing my passport to do my best impression of a walrus on a waterslide. I happened to have my swipecard in my wallet.

Isn't this another example of why the introduction of identity cards in the UK would be an expensive and futile exercise. Now where is that suncream?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not only expensive and futile, unethical, unnecessary and very "Un British".

I remember sun, 1998 wasnt it?

Enjoy the Sangria

Anonymous said...

Yes indeed, if Labour had they're way we'd have have barcodes on the back of our necks as well.

I despise the Big Brother attitude of the Labour Government.

Anonymous said...

I must admit, I have a horrible feeling that if all the "fiddling" with our civil liberties continues that I may end up, along with everyone else, with Winston Smith on my passport!

Anonymous said...

Well we may joke but…Out of the three main parties two are extremely statist, whilst proclaiming not to be. By this I refer to Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Labour enjoys the power of a client populace to the state creating and intensifying state dependence. The Lib dems which to punish affluence, competition and individual endeavour with every move which is epitomised by their slavish devotion to a top rate of tax at 50%.

Appeasing the statists will only cede more individual liberty to the state. The explosion of CCTV shows this, but sadly we're now reliant on it.

The attitude of Lib Dems and Labour to taxation and enforced top-down state intervention is particularly telling. It's not your money, but rather it is the Government's.

David Cameron appeals to me as a non-tribal Tory because he is offering an escape valve for excessive state intervention and in many ways he is well placed to philosophically carry on some of Thatcher's reforming zeal. He has said there is such a thing as society, but it is just not the same thing as the state, for example.

I hope he'll follow Redwood's tax proposals as well. If the momentum on these issues can shift from a reliance on an already over-powerful state we can stop haemorrhaging power to the state once and for all.

Voting Tory is the only ready solution at this stage - in my view.