ID Cards to unlease bullies

Carol Sarler, writing in the Sunday Observer, sees the latest anti terrorism proposals and the ID card scheme as a boon for bureaucratic bullies.

"The act, like the suss laws before it and the ID cards to come, are all toys in the playbox of wannabe bullies and nothing that I have seen, either here or anywhere else, suggests that such people will ever learn to play nicely. Shortly after the fall of Ceausescu, I had Romanian friends to stay. En route to the theatre, one of them began to weep; they wouldn't let her in. She had left her passport at home. Passport? For the doorman at Cats? It can happen. That's all I'm saying.

In a land of ID cards I would be very afraid for my personal liberty. But only because Sod's law says if I were to be confronted one time too many by an officious twat, I'd be the one banged up. For slapping him."

A classic example of how clueless top down regulation can facilitate societal poisoning from the bottom up.