Trust and ID cards

Peter Hitchens wants you to get angry now:

We will become just like other countries where arrogant power will not let us walk down the street without poking its nose into our affairs. When this happens, England will cease to be England for ever and it will be far too late to be angry.

So please, get angry now.

I'm way ahead of you on this one Peter but as you note here:

Hence the dispiriting parrot-like squawk of 'If you haven't done anything wrong, or have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear', which comes from those who are happy to be tagged and docketed and scanned by the authorities

it does seem that many are quite happy with the idea of carrying an ID card around and, presumably, would think nothing of handing it over for inspection for no other reason than they have been asked to produce it.

It's fundamentally a question of trust, I guess, and a great many people's default position is to trust government and to trust that it will always have their interests at heart.

The way to win is to persuade those that have always trusted government that things can take a turn for the worst and that very bad people with evil ideas can get into positions of power. This is extraordinarily difficult to do with the current track record of British government at home throughout recent history.

Unless you have been unfortunate enough to have been a member of one of the minorities that the government has disenfranchised you will not really have a basis on which to mistrust them. You will buy the idea of ID cards and even welcome them with open arms.

Posted by JohnJo at November 18, 2003 10:46 AM | TrackBack