Oh, that's interesting

So there I was, at the Carlton club in London, to celebrate the Trafalgar victory. Surrounded by the inner enclave of a Tory stronghold I decided that this was probably an opportune time to bring up the Tory party support in principle for ID cards. They looked up from the rather marvellous and well presented lamb briefly and a couple even decided that it might be worth giving this oik a little charitable attention.

I began and a found myself subjected to a half hearted attempt at heading me off at the pass with some particularly inept use of emotive keywords. “Don’t you think that your wife and child should be able to prove their identity and not have it stolen by someone else?”. ”No, not really. I already know who they are and so do they. We’ve know for quite some considerable time and have got by rather well so far?”. Well, what’s sauce for the goose and all that.

My time was short, that I could see even through the haze of a not insignificant amount of celebratory beer. Oh, and the wine.

”The thing is, what history tells us is that the machinery of the state is only ever rarely rolled back. That’s one of the reasons why when it comes to things such as ID cards we have to be very careful. To support ID cards is to not only state that you trust this present government but that you effectively sign up to trusting every subsequent government that might come to power. I simply cannot make that commitment and I am surprised at the Tory support. If the Tory party should be about anything it is about support for the smaller state.”

”Well”, was the response from a rather amiable councillor sitting on my right, ”it’s always nice to hear an alternative point of view.”

Indeed, it was as if this was the first time any of them had heard that particular proposition and that, dear readers, is the most shocking thing of all.

By the way, here's something interesting. This is a photograph of the fire surround in the member's bar. A photograph that I was not permitted to take but one I took anyway. My, I could feel the eyeballs on my back.

It shows the damage caused by an IRA bombing of the member's bar some time ago and was caused by flying debris from the initial explosion at the opposite end of the room. It's a rather strong piece of marble surround with quite a large piece missing.

Terrorism. Nothing new to the Tory party.