Good Grief; Sinister Government Mediocrity

I am not the first to point readers to the latest reports on Britain's five billion pound identity card scheme. The libertarian Blogger, Devil's Kitchen, has already done that. I would just counsel you to consider what the British government is talking about doing.

As part of a crazy scheme to categorize law-abiding people (though criminals will, as usual, escape), the government has cast aside plans for huge 'enrolment centres' at which people will be scanned, numbered and issued with their identity papers by the state.

Instead, the government plans to work with large, monopolistic retailers the money of which makes its way often to pet government projects. These retailers could host identity booths where people, under pain of eventual criminal sanction, could register for an identity.

The quality of our politicians has never been high. The Batty Blogger, for instance, has recently convinced herself (after ten years containing around ten major items of constitutional reform) that the country should be 'reformed and dragged into the twentieth century'. She's harmless and confused and for some bizarre reason I quite like her rambling away. But this identity nonsense is exactly the sort of sinister badness which appeals, as are these attacks on bloggers, to these people.

It is not that they are sinister masterminds; it is rather that they are grey, humourless apparatchiks who will always avoid coming to know themselves and others in case they run screaming from the delusional rubble of their souls and the acknowledgment of what they have done.

Many people with any sense are thinking of leaving this country--not all. I wonder how long it will take for the rest of us to see the light?

Here's the excellent song Human from The Killers.