The ID & The Egos

‘HOW do we know who we are?

It’s a question philosophers have juggled with for centuries. But now the Government has devised a cunning solution. What you are is what it says you are on your identity card.

And the sooner you hand over your laminated papers to the jobsworth demanding them, the happier we will all be.

And the poorer. The Telegraph says that the Home Office thinks the scheme will cost around £7billion. But a study by 14 professors at the London School of Economics puts the figure at £10.6billion, and could rise to £19.2billion.

But whatever the cost, it is surely worth it. Think how much safer we’ll all be when a man in a uniform can check up on us with the request “Papers!”, and all our details are stored on a portable microchip.

The estimated £170 it will cost each of us to pay for our cards is a bargain, even if you will have to get a new one every 10 years, or every five years, or every three years, for older people whose biometrics may alter with age.

Yes, biometrics. It’s the new buzzword. And it essentially means that as your body changes, the data on your ID cards needs to change too.

Witness the old aged pensioner struggling to get her winter fuel allowance because in the intervening months between the previous cold snap and this one her new cataracts have altered her biometrics. She is no longer who she thought she was. She no longer computes.

See the small boy whose hand geometry has altered in such a way that he has changed from being Jake to a sixty-year-old terrorist nicknamed the Hyena who’s topped Interpol’s most wanted list for years.

“You’re coming with us,” says the copper dreaming of promotion. “You cunning, swine. I can see right through that disguise. Plastic surgery, eh…”

But not to worry because, as Professor Ian Angell, of the LSE says, the ID scheme is a “one-stop shop for fraudsters”.

So, if your card is not up to it, you can always buy a new one from Tony Blair. You know, the one-armed Jewish Rastafarian at No.10…’

Posted: 28th, June 2005 | In: Uncategorized Comment | TrackBack | Permalink