Digital ID needs to be resisted, surely?

It should not be a private provider company. It should be a section of the passport office.

Yeh the ‘Tesco Clubcard’ line is a bad one.

So don’t do it then. That’s the reason for selling this non-manifesto digital ID scheme in.

Yeah but anyone can just say they don’t have a smartphone. Like I say, it’s at proposal stage at the moment, we don’t know how it will work exactly.

There could be a return on investment when you no longer need to process a lot of manual data.

“Streamline access: you will need just one ID in one secure place on your phone. This will make it easier to access some services without tracking down your physical passport, birth certificate or driving licence – as well as various utilities bills and council tax letters.
Increase efficiency: it will prove who you are instantly, instead of waiting for manual checks and paperwork. That means you can get faster service across government departments.
Reduce wait times: it will cut lengthy time spent filling in forms and document scanning by verifying your identity in seconds, rather than days or weeks for processing.”

Im assuming you don't understand what is meant by illegal working. We're talking about the black economy, where people are 'employed' for £1 an hour and treated appallingly.

There's no evidence this is happening in the care system. That's not even what we're talking about here.

Illegal immigrants? Or workers who prop up the failing care system, hospitality sector, cleaning staff etc.. ?

I’d rather they let these workers stay and chuck out the cheap British born trash who don’t work and are a total drain on society.

(I’m not including people who don’t work due to genuine illness and disabilities but the ones we know who were born bone idle.)

The last arrive I read was that they will only be required for working age people, so older pensioners wouldn’t be affected anyway.

But not every pensioner is incapable of being tech savvy!`

The alternatives will be physical ID for people who don't have smartphones.

There is no suggestion it will be an opt-in programme. This would be totally useless.

I am also still not clear on the positives of introducing an ID system at this time. It will cost money (which apparently we don't have) and other than tackling illegal working (which it won't) the government don't appear to have clarified why we need it.

Other than that it's an idea Tony Blair has been desperate to get over the line since he was in power.

Nothing will ever stop illegal working. Just as much as it is on the illegal worker, it’s also on the opportunist that wants to hire them.

’Concerns of the nation..’ if only. Don’t bother with it and notice the dire polling would be better.

What’s the point? It won’t stop illegal working.

Well on the gov website it’s outlined that nothing is finalised and that a committee will be held to address the concerns of the nation. They outline the features and benefits. They also mention that there will be other non-digital alternatives for people who don’t have digital ID. So all in all, I think people have fallen in to a state of panic over incomplete information.

I think that part of the resistance we are seeing now may be a backlash against lockdown: petition against is well over 1.5 million, and counting. While lots of people have tried to forget the horror of lockdown, the anger is probably still stirring in many people's minds. If the idea of ID cards had been proposed in 2019, I might even have welcomed it, sceptical as I am about many things.

In 2020, the thing that frightened me the most was not the virus, or even lockdown itself: it was the complete lack of public resistance, and the very vague communication from the government, which I'm sure was deliberately ambiguous, and also because they had no clue themselves. At first, nobody dared to question lockdown at all, and the tiny handful of those who did simply could not be heard above the banging of pots and pans, and the screams of "you granny murderer!". Not only did the public (and our so-called opposition) completely fail to resist, but they begged for more. So now, I'm reassured that there is a very clear backlash against the idea of digital ID. Even if it does get through, it will at least have been tried by the court of public opinion, which did not happen with lockdown.

With lockdown, there was no exit plan, no parliamentary scrutiny, no debate, no discussion of the blatant harms. People were frightened into accepting their children's education being destroyed, their loved ones dying confused and alone, their businesses being snatched away overnight, self-employed people who started at the wrong time losing their income overnight, it becoming a "new normal" to be micromanaged by the government, down to what you could and could not buy in shops, etc, and it became a "new normal" to "check in" everywhere you went. The list is endless. People accepted all this, without question, believing it was in a good cause.

Then we found out that Saint Boris and his merry men were partying throughout, while we made these massive sacrifices, so they knew all along that things weren't as bad as they were telling us. We found out that the government defrauded the country to the tune of billions, making their rich mates even richer. (And the Post Office scandal is still very fresh in our memories, as an extremely clear example of government IT going very, very wrong.)

Because of all this, people feel conned, and some people feel stupid for believing everything the government said. Indeed, Mr Johnson hinted "nobody was meant to follow lockdown rules to the letter" when he retracted his apology for Partygate. Lots of people now feel it's "them and us" with the government, on many things. (I've felt like that since the day that con man Tony Blair was elected, but that's another matter. And if Euan Blair is indeed going to be at the helm of digital ID: like father, like son.) Some people think that ID cards are going to be mission creep: starts as a "voluntary" scheme, then the goalposts are moved by stealth to make it compulsory. I'm sensing a strategy of this being released to the press to test the public reaction, with "adjustments" made once they see how the public reacts. It happened all the time in 2020: "masks might become compulsory in shops, more government guidance to follow." Then, behind the scenes, "yep, the public are still terrified and docile, we can keep playing with their minds."

Therefore, I think it is vital that there is some public resistance, even if it turns out to be in vain. It's reassuring to see that so far, the opponents of digital ID are not being castigated with "so, you want the immigrants to take over?", like those who have tried to remove the flags have been.

Yep if it was that fine. All the gov digital scheme posters could use it as they want.

No, I don’t think it is either but @TY78910is suggesting I will have some sort of choice in the matter.

I don’t think that’s what is being proposed. I agree though.

So are you saying the new system our government is proposing is voluntary and I can choose to opt in or out? If so, that’s fine, I don’t have a problem with that.

These are all choices we are allowed to make voluntarily. If this new system is mandatory, which it would need to be to work effectively, that choice is removed.

They will only work if they are for everyone, of every age, and there has to be serious consequences for anyone found not to have one, not just a slap on the wrist or present it at the police station within so many days. Plus it should be implanted into your body so that everyone can be tracked at all times, shops could have scanners for instance so that known shoplifters can be identified as soon as they enter the store, criminals can be tracked 24/7, firefighters will know exactly how many people are in a building and where they are etc.

Absolutely right of course, but there are problematic assumptions, nevertheless. The politician announced a jaw-dropping fantasy, that illegal immigrants and their illegal employers would suddenly stop business, for the lack of one document, when the whole point of the entry to UK and the whole point of the employment was based on the happy collusion of working without any documents at all.

The same politician instantly, and repeatedly, reassured the interviewer that the lack of this document would not in any way hinder mass immigration, legal or not, nor reduce international health tourism or benefits tourism and multiple benefits claim fraud, because it would never be requested for any taxpayer funded service. It would exclusively be used to prevent legitimate employers doing what legitimate employers already don't do. Legitimate employers already need,( with compulsion of serious penalties), to file copies of employees' passport, proof of right to work, tax and n.i.ns numbers etc.

By the way, an 83 year old may be running marathons, or businesses, or may be changing career or taking on extra work, so may not invariably be fully occupied being "retired". More to the point, the over-80's get a LOWER pension than the newly retired in their 60's. What's more, in a spiteful extra bit of Governmental Age Discrimination, the disparity is built in, and will increasingly impoverish the very oldest State Pensioners, due to a percentage linking. At 83, 93 and at 103, these will be the poorest of the poor.

UK has the worlds worst effective State Pension. The OLDEST are the least likely to have any private pension. Women have lower pensions than men, but the oldest women had the least likelihood of being in work attracting private pensions. A lot of very old ladies do not own their own homes. (Even if they do, they will typically be falling in around them, because they can't afford upkeep or repair)

If renting, they compete aganst mass population increase, against governments' ideological dislike of private landlords, resulting in many going out of business, and against council bribes/ incentives to private landlords, attempting to corner all available habitable space. Also, against an ever increasing mass of young people who refuse to learn degrees or anything else online, at home, while working, and instead insist on three year parties at council taxpayers expense, and insist on taking up habitable buildings while there is mass homelessness.

The old people, and the disabled people, who have to find somewhere to live, are not considered as being in any priority housing need, because they don't have a child under 16 with them, and they are not illegal immigrants. (Therefore they ought to live in a doorway or a ditch?).

In some areas there are twenty applicants for every letting, and computers select young double income earners with parents who put their own homes as bond. Charities are for addicts, or migrants, or alcoholics, or care leavers, or prison leavers, or ex service, etc. But never for ordinary old people or disabled people, if they have committed the crime of having any life-savings, INSTEAD OF having the private pensions they couldn't get.

Guess what the wartime and postwar people often did, knowing they would have no private pension? Some created little businesses and lived over the shop, selling up and leaving when too tired to carry on, and hoping the proceeds would last them out for their final days. Or, they lived entire lifetimes of scrimping and carefully saving every spare penny, saving to see their lives out. They have the below-minimum survival level of income from basic, old rate, state pension. Without private pension, the remaining money in their savings bank must buy them any home help or extra heating, or taxi fares to the doctor, and pay "for a decent funeral", and "not to be a burden" or a "beggar".

Having savings at all means they cannot get council housing nor pension credit nor any means tested reductions in paying full council tax etc. Having savings means they pay in full for any social care plus pay a surcharge, to subsidise neighbours who have been more spendthrift. It seems amazing it can be lawful that when two customers buy identical goods or services, one customer can be forced to pay towards what another customer gets, merely because one has saved and the other has squandered. (Or, has hidden. ) But being disabled and/or being old means being often demonised and almost never respected, nor sympathised with. Kittens and kiddies are 'cute', but few people, or politicians, care about old people.