On the political front it is really worrying here. The Blair Government is dead set on setting up a national database, with ID cards encoded with 59 different pieces of information about us.

They are setting up Government Interrogation Centres (they don't call them that!) in many larger towns and cities. In a very few years people will have to go to these places and be quizzed and checked, then fingerprints/DNA samples/iris images taken, then this info put onto Passports/ID cards.

Fines and criminal records if you don't comply, plus if you change address/name (eg married woman) then you pay swingeing fees or pay more fines etc. Estimated cost £12 billion and rising.

All to defeat terrorism and stop benefit fraud! If you believe that you'll believe anything- and a frightening lot of people do!  Oh- one class of people will be exempt - non British Subjects (they like to call us citizens now) who have been resident for less than 6 months!!

Already the Police are taking people's DNA if they are interviewed for anything - no charge let alone conviction need be involved.

Why doesn't our so called Opposition insist that we are informed as to whether Blair has had his details logged as a result of his 2 hour Police "interview"  regarding the Cash for Peerages corruption scandal? The Government has also called off the Serious Fraud Office's investigation into suspected corruption surrounding a big Saudi Arms deal with British company BAE, saying that the "National Interest" overrode the Rule of Law in this case!!  

I could go on and on - but- why do people keep voting them in???? (Or refrain from voting them out???)

Some people (who in my view continue to dwell in a fool's paradise) aver that I am a bit paranoiac. Maybe so..... Then think about what can happen in democracies.. Chile (Democracy ----Allende---- Pinochet) Germany (Democracy-----Hitler----- WWII).

Vast swathes of the mountains of legislation which are swamping us are passed into law by Ministers without any reference to Parliament; MP's over the years having given the power to them to do so without any mandate from the electorate. Around 80% of new laws nowadays are initiated not from Westminster but from the Council of Ministers in Brussels, which is a sort of super quango of unelected bureaucrats and power brokers answerable to nobody, least of all the British electorate.

A very good website to get the lowdown on the ID card business is www.SpyBlog.org.uk. There is another set up called http://www.no2id.net/ .

 -- MARCUS WEBB
                   

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