Voting can be a funny thing.

When Labour won the recent general election with just over 35% of the popular vote what followed was a whole bunch of assorted Lib Dems and the odd few Tories - and there are some very odd Tories out there, I can tell you - jumping up an down about how, once you factored in the turnout of 61.3% only 21.7% of the total eligible voting population actually voted for a Labour government and that this meant Labour had ‘no mandate’ to govern Britain.

So, as the turnout in the Dutch referendum on the EU Constitution was a mere 62.8%, which meant that only 38.6% of the Dutch population actually voted no and, equally, that with an estimated turnout of around 70% in France and 55% No vote, only 38.2% of French voters actually voted against the EU constitution would anyone, especially any Tories, who claim Labour has no mandate also like to claim that neither the French nor the Dutch have really voted against having an EU constitution?

Or does the question of mandates only come up if you’re on the losing side?

I suppose it had to happen… finally up pops a blogger willing to mount some sort of defence of the Government’s ID cards proposal.

Actually, I have to say this is a good thing, not just from the point of view of simply having points to debate but also becuase Monjo’s comments - assuming that’s how the author styles himself from his blog - indicate clearly how and why the Government can claim that so many of our fellow citizens seemingly support the proposed ID Cards Bill.

It’s no accident that the focal point for much of the public opposition to ID cards is the Internet, after all it’s here that you’ll find - as you’d expect - a community of technically literate authors and activists, people with the skills and experience to understand fully what the ID cards bill could really means and where this legislation could lead us in future. It’s also no accident that the vast majority not just of bloggers but of the non-aligned technical press and technical analysts are also more or less overwhelmingly against this particular bill. The only industry figures I’ve seen coming out in support of this legislation have been those with a clearly identifiable vested interest - of the members of Silicon.com’s CIO panel, only the representatives of Newham Council and the Dorchester Hotel spoke up in favour of ID cards.

Richard Steel’s comment - he being Newham Council’s Head of ICT - is particularly revealing of public sector attitudes to this bill when he is quoted as saying:

“We badly need a national standard to link to other citizen-centric systems developments, including citizen identification and authentication, and the national ID card may as well be it.”

I’m sure that on a person level Richard is a nice guy, a fine upstanding British Citizen, but at the risk of violating Godwin’s Law the attitude he displays is one I find rather unsettling and all too reminscent of Albert Speer’s complaint of never having been adequately rewarded while Nazi Minister of Armaments for his dilligence in increasing war production - his complaint being not that he should have been rewarded as a believer in Nazi ideology merely that, as a bureaucrat and manager, he did his job very well. Richard is, I’m absolutely certain, by no means the only public servant to hold this particular viewpoint - and I can be certain having been part of conversations on the just the same topic myself, some three or so years ago.

Whatever concerns we might have about of civil rights and liberties, it is a simple fact that for many public servants and for the nation’s bureaucracy as a whole, the ID cards Bill is seen as a means to end which makes their working lives that bit easier and which enables them to do thier job just that bit more efficiently - which, in itself, is something that we all need to remember as it highlights one of the key dangers we’re facing here.

Take a good close look at the public ‘architects’ of this bill; David Blunkett, Charles Clarke and yes, Tony Blair as well. Now answer this one question…

… Do you really, seriously, believe that any one of them actually understands the full implications and potential of this piece of legislation, even allowing for the fact that Blair is, himself, a barrister?

No, me neither. Blair is well noted for his lack of technical literacy and I can’t say I think either of the other two have much of better understanding than he does. It’s not simply the Government or the Labour Party who is the ‘enemy’ here but the entire machinery of the State, the vested interests in the public and private sectors who’re pushing hard for this legislation and putting on the hard sell that its the panacea, the solution to everything from terrorism to immigration, identity theft to welfare benefits fraud.

We’re not talking conspiracy theories here and certainly not gettng into the whole business of the Bilderberg Group, Illuminati or even Freemasonry - simply a whole raft of otherwise reasonable people whi, like Speer, either cannot or will not consider the wider picture of what this legislation may really lead to in the long term.

In truth, when it comes to ID cards themselves, Monjo has an eminently defensible position. Even given the current doubts about the reliability of biometrics as it stands today the principle of everyone having an ID card which can be used to accurately verify their identity would undoubtedly have many potential and practical benefits, not least in combatting identity theft.

While no system could be considered absolutely foolproof, claims that some are making that the ID cards themselves could be easily forged or falsified don’t really hold water when you understand exactly how they would work for the simple reason that in order to produce a fake ID card would require not only the card itself but also a false entry on the National Identity Register which would be possible only by either hacking the central database or via the bribery and corruption of a public official.

A secure, and with improvements to biometric scanning, reliable Nation Identity Scheme is perfectly possible, if not right away then certainly within the next 10 to 15 years - but, and this is why the technical community is up in arms, such a system does not require the kind of intrusive all-encompassing indentity register that the Government are proposing no, even, does it need to reveal any personal data to anyone in the process. Identities can be verified using using what, in cryptography, is called a zero knowledge proof.

There is no logical reason for having a National Identity Register which contains what are, in IT terms, are a series of database keys which would allow the State to locate and unlock all manner of information about an individual let alone on which also provides, without legal restriction, a key which can be used by the provate sector to tag personal information in such a way as to allow it to be readily identified.

It’s this, and precisely, this related key infrastructure that I object to so much, that and the audit trail which allows the Government to track all requests for verification of your identity and which, therefore, makes real-time tracking of your movements and actions a real possibility.

This feature of the National Identity Register makes possible a whole range of things which would, if put into practice, create the single, most all-encompassing public surveillance system ever created - one capable of the most massive intrusions into your private life.

One Act of Parliament is not going to plunge us all into an Orwellian nightmare of state scrutiny of every aspect of our personal live, that’s true. In fact if only it were that simple as then the majority of people would see this Bill for what it really is - the biggest threat to civil liberties that we have ever faced.

It’s not a case with our rights and freedoms that it’s ‘here today and gone tomorrow’ rather we’ll see the slow and gradual erosion of freedom over time, one little piece at a time and every piece wrapped up and packaged just so, just in the right kind of terms and the right kind of language to make it all seem oh so very reasonable and rational.

Take a straightforward and very contemporary problem - how about the overpayment of £2bn in tax credits, most of which stems from ineffciencies in the tax credit system - people get overpaid due to simple human errors or, more often than not, because of a lag between their circumstances - and their income - changing and the system catching up with those changes.

Wouldn’t it solve this problem if, say for instance, the Inland Revenue could make automtic adjustments to these payments without relying on people to report changes in income by being permitted, instead, to monitor salary payments as they hit your bank account? Think of the convenience of it all, of never having to worry that they may have got a payment wrong because your salary is tracked authomatically as it reaches your bank account and all thanks to the wonders of the National Identity Register.

How many people do you think would swallow that particular argument? How many would justify just such an intrusion on the grounds that ‘you have nothing to worry about, if you’ve nothing to hide?’

What then if we apply this same idea to the matter of benefit fraud? The principle is pretty much the same - if you bank account(s) show income arriving which you’ve not declared then ergo, it must be fraud and, once again, if you’ve nothing to hide you’ve nothing to fear.

But then, people don’t just defraud the system by failing to declare income, the also do it by - for example - claiming incapacity benefit or disability benefits to which they’re not legitimately entitled.

What should we do here? I know, why not permit doctor’s working for the DSS to have access to claimant’s medical records? After all, its easily done thanks to the recording of NHS Registration numbers on the register and, yet again, if you’ve nothing to hide then you’ve nothing to fear.

Ah, but, none of this eats in to the ‘cash-in-hand’ economy does it? Except that how many of even think about the information being gathered everytime we hand over a ‘loyalty card’ at the supermarket - you think that all that’s being tracked is your points and not the complete record of everything you purchased and how much you spent?

And how many shops now ask you for your name and address details when you buy something ‘just for their records’ or so the can notify you of any ’special offers’ which might interest you?

How far away do you think we are from those same shops saying - oh, don’t worry about giving us your details, we’ll just scan them straight off your ID card…

… and when enough shops are doing that how difficult then is it concieve of the argument that we might, just might, be able to track down people defrauding the system via the ‘black economy’ if only we could use the data that’s own their to look for ‘anomalies’ in what they’re buying and how much they’re spending.

“Mr Smith - our records show that you recieve £150 a week in benefits yet it seems that your expediture is currently running at £300 per week and we know you don;t have any loans or savings - care to explain that?”

And all because if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear.

Drip. Drip. Drip…

There goes your civil rights and your freedoms and all without ever realising just how much you’re losing as it all slips slowly away - because every time the State comes back with a new suggestion for how it could use the data it can access via the National Identity Register it all seems so very reasonable, such small things, in fact just the kind of things that you have no reason to fear…

…because you’ve got nothing to hide.

Now to be fair to Monjo, he’s by no means wholly ignorant of the possibilities - why else would he note, at the end of his piece, Juvenal’s warning - Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?.

Who Guards the Guardians? If not us then, indeed, who?

I wonder if anything written here may change his mind?

Today - well yesterday now - my esteemed blogging colleague PoliticalHack wondered whether, having laid into fundamentalist Christian movie reviewers, I also noticed the bunch of nutballs who now claim that there were dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden.

Oddly enough I had noticed and commented on it here not least noting the extreme lunacy of the guy who wrote a 298 page book purporting to show exactly how Noah managed to get dinosaurs on the ark…

… which is actually a fascinating argument in the sense that it shows just how desperate the ‘fundies’ are to try and justify their creationist position in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary that they go to the lengths of trying to work out how to get dinosaurs on the Noah’s Ark rather than play the much simpler line that they all died out in the flood which is why they’re all fossilised.

Of course that’s bullshit as well but at least its bullshit that consistant with the concept of parsimony, otherwise know as Occam’s Razor.

Hack also highlights the case of City Academies which, by bringing in money from the private sector have also, in some cases, allowed fundamentalist christians like Sir Peter Vardy to influence the curriculum, allowing creationism to be taught as a ‘faith alternative’ to Darwinian evolution. Where I stand on this should be pefectly obvious when I say that when the BBC Today programme were asking us to vote, a few years back, for the most important Briton of the last millennium, I was a staunch supporter of Darwin’s nomination.

When it comes to state education, my position on religion has always been very clear. Religion has its place, when taught in a secular context within disciplines such as history, sociology, philosophy and politics but state schools should not be in the business to providing religious instruction to children - the whole business of mandatory religious education and ‘broadly Christian’ assemblies should go. Hoever, recognising the cultural importance of religion to those who believe I have no objection whatsoever to the provision of state funding of religious instruction through Church/Mosque/Synagogue/Gurdwara, etc - based out of school clubs and activities. If parent choose to have their children educated in such a context on their own time then that is their choice and they are free to make it.

What I don’t accept, however, is that the state, through state-funded schools and the national curriculum, has any business in instructing children in the matter of religion. It’s time we dumped mandatory religious education in schools and replaced it with something far more useful to society as a whole; the study of civics, government, politics and philosophy, especially critical thinking.

During my school years, religious education served only to highlight and raise awareness of the hypocrisy which runs through this nation as a consequence of it having an established state religion.

It is almost axiomatic that RE teachers are, theselves, religious and but for the odd inner-city school in which Muslims or Sikhs are in the majority, that also means that they are going to be Christians who are, therefore, permitted by law to try to indoctrinate children into their own faith. By contrast, when at sixth form college - now more than 20 years ago - I recall that one particular sociology teacher who was known to be a Marxist, was not permitted to teach his ‘A’ or ‘O’ level sociology classes when the time came to study Marx and Marxism for fear that he would indoctrinate his students - the College actually put in another teacher for those lessons, so paranoid where they that they would be seen to be a recruiting station for the SWP if they allowed a Marxist to teach kids about Marx.

Religious instruction has no place in state schools, but then in this day and age there is also no rational reason for having an official state religion either.

As you’ll all have noticed the latest Government ‘buzzword’ doing the rounds is ‘Respect’ - not enough of it says Blair, especially amongst young people, hence the commitment to create a ‘culture of respect’ higlighted in the Queen’s Speech.

“Bringing a proper sense of respect and responsibility to others cannot be the job of Parliament alone.

It is time to reclaim the streets for the decent majority.”

Well, Tony, if its respect you want then, as Tom Wylie of the National Youth Agency rightly suggests you need to ensure that young people are treated with respect as well.

Yesterday was my son’s thirteenth birthday, so late yesterday afternoon I went into Birmingham City Centre to meet up with my partner, daughter and a couple of other family members to take him out for a meal - nothing elaborate just a family visit to Pizza Hut - and because he’d asked we also allowed him to invite his best friend along.

Now I’d consider my son to be, in most respects, a pretty typical [new] teenager. He’s a bright kid who’s doing pretty well at school - well on course already for racking up a good set of GCSE results in three years time - and while, like most kids his age, you get the usual sulks and a bit of backchat that comes with every teenager trying to make his way in world and establish his own, independent identity he’s a long way from being unmanagable and certainly no yob, for all that his favorite clothing is the ubiquitous ‘hoodie’.

In fact, Joshua’s getting to the age where his becoming pretty interesting as an individual in his own right. Developing his own taste, his own interests and his own sense of who he is. That’s not to say that like all boys he doesn’t get into the odd scape or two and push his luck when it comes to trying to bend the rules laid down by his us, his parents but when it down come time to law down the law its donw on the basis of sitting down and reasoning with him, backed up when necessary by the occasional loss of privileges.

He’s basically a decent kid who’s been taught to respect others by example, by being taught that respect is something you have to earn and by being shown respect when he’s earned it.

So you can imagine my mood on meeting up with the family only to find that while they were shopping in Bull Ring Shopping Centre in Birmingham earlier in the day he and his friend had been confronted by a security guard and ordered to ‘move on’ for no other reason than that they were two teenage boys.

The full story here is that Joshua had been given a fair bit of money for his birthday by other family members, so before meeting up he’d been taken shopping by my partner. At the same time she’d also noticed that my five year old daughter needed a new pair of shoes so, on passing a branch of Clark’s, she decided to pop in pick her up a new pair.

Now shopping for kids shoes is by no means the most interesting thing in the world when you’ve just turned thirteen, so Joshua and his friend decided that rather than go into the shop they’d wait outside and talk, so they arranged with my partner where they’d be waiting for her and off she went into the shop…

… and within less than five minutes they found themselves being ordered around by the Centre’s security despite doing nothing more threatening than stading around and having a conversation and were told ot move on even having tried to explain that they were waiting for a parent who was actually in a shop nearby.

Now perhaps someone would like to explain to me how, having done my bit as parent and made every effort to teach my son about the importance of respect, I square off the way he as treated yesterday with everything else I’ve ever tried to teach him.

Looks like its time to teach him a bit more about the meaning of prejudice, don’t you think.