New Refuse ID Pledge

Simon Davies has started another anti ID card pledge.

"I will refuse to register for an ID card and will donate £10 to a legal defence fund but only if 15,000 other people will also make this same pledge."

— Simon Davies, Chairman, NO2ID

Over 11000 people signed the original. If he does succeed in getting another 15000, that will be over 26000 people actively out of their own pocket supporting a protest against the government's ID card plans. Mark Oaten the Liberal Demoncrats home affairs spokesperson has pledged to go to jail rather be scanned for an ID card. Every sensible security analyst who has looked at the scheme, including those from the companies who stand to benefit financially from it, has said it can't work in the form proposed.

Yet government can't back down, primarily for two reasons. Firstly it would be too embarrassing. Secondly they are locked into a thinking trap of their own making, whereby they have to "do something" big and expensive that affects everybody, just so they can be seen to be "doing something." And no matter how rational or sensible your explanation as to why there are problems, it will be treated by those within the bounds of their own thinking trap as irritating noise which needs to be shut out. Hence you get the situation William Heath describes

"The head of the Home Office's ID project team told me last Thursday that none of the companies she had met had felt the scheme was ill-advised or unfeasible. But concerned people in business tell me she refuses to meet them! *sigh*"