ID cards to be introduced. What do you feel. ?

[Fishingboatbobbingnight]

I have worked in serious organised crime for two decades. This is one of the best bits of news I have read in a long while. I have also been involved in ‘small boat’ arrivals. The reason people will by pass several safe EU countries to get to the UK is ‘I can get lost if I don’t get asylum’ ‘UK has no ID cards’ . It’s a no brainer .. why why has it taken so long. ? If you want to have the services your country has to offer - through most of the world - from healthcare to the library- you need to show you are a bona-fida citizen. However , for some unfathomable reason , the flag waving right wingers are always the one to oppose ..is it because they are scared it will work and leave their thinly veiled racism floundering ?

Yes to ID cards = YANBU
No to ID cards = YABU

An opt out or a NI separate one WILL be an issue because the Unionists will kick off about being treated differently to the rest of the UK because they ARE British...

Exactly, I love the idea that all the crims, organised gangsters, traffickers and gig-economy cash in hand illegal workers are going to sign up for any kind of ID, or not just use fake ones. I bet they'll be easier to fake than the actual passports and paperwork that employers are supposed to check now.

Sorry to disappoint, but I was very anti mask, as were most people in France, which has compulsory ID cards.

Once again, NI is somewhere quite politically and constitutionally specific. If you're going to talk about what other countries do as though it should be persuasive here, in order for the example to be relevant you'll need to show that their constitutional and cultural setup is comparable to that of NI. It's important you understand that the test here isn't what you think, and to that end whether you consider any of this a tantrum is immaterial.

Are you referring to the UK? We have a driving licence in the UK. In America it's a driver's license.

And if you're going to claim that this scheme is actually incompatible with the Good Friday Agreement, you need to show your working and explain how.

Just complaining that some people won't like it isn't good enough.

As long as the Good Friday Agreement is respected, it's OK for people to not like stuff.

I don’t remember that but during the Brexit campaign there was a 50/50 split at the school gates, at work, in my friendship group. This morning at drop off not one voice supported digital IDs, all my SM is against it (people I follow, people I am friends with cross all political divides), and the only support I see for it are people in the labour government. MN is literally the only place I see widespread support, it’s very odd.

Nothing odd about it. I already have an ID card and it’s only ever been a positive.

As someone once said, the answer to "What do you have to hide?" is "Everything". Because you are a private citizen.

Are you in the U.K. and supportive?

Didn't, actually. You've mixed me up with another poster. I said we can't have a solution that's 'GFA issues excepted' in response to a poster who'd said that. Then, that any solution would have to comply with the GFA and this wasn't an assumption, in response to the same poster saying it was. Obviously neither of these things can be disputed.

I'll tell you what my specific view on the GFA here is once you've clearly answered the questions I asked first. That is, whether you think there's going to be an NI exemption, an exemption for Irish ID (passport?) holders throughout the UK or whether you think telling the NI population that they're just going to have to behave in a manner that doesn't cause any political problems for Westminster is going to finally start working.

Ahead of your answers, I remind you that 'other countries do it' is not an explanation for why it'd be fine in NI unless those other countries have comparable constitutional and political landscapes.

I STILL don't understand how the Britcard will stop me- a recent immigrant- from working illegally. Please explain to me like I am five, as they say.
I already have an evisa which does that.

What next? How long will it be until they introduce mandatory microchipping and DNA records of babies? I don’t want to have a compulsory ID card. Im a free citizen. ID cards won’t bring any benefit to me. It’s all about control and gathering information on every single one of my activities. What right do they have to take our privacy away from us? This is like something out of the novel 1984 by George Orwell.

It won’t.

We don't know enough about how the scheme is going to work yet to answer that question.

My reference to other countries was to illustrate why holding some sort of ID card issued by a particular country doesn't mean you are a citizen of or identify as being from that country. It's purely administrative.

I understand why the constitutional and political landscape of Northern Ireland means you can't have a hard border, and why that made a hard Brexit impossible. But we're not talking about a border. We're talking about ID. It will have zero impact on anybody's free movement between the UK and Ireland, or on the rights of Northern Irish people to identify as Irish or British or both.

You know that people living in countries with compulsory ID cards are also free citizens, right?

In fact, during Covid a French colleague observed to me that he couldn't believe how much British people just accepted the Covid restrictions. He made the point that British people constantly bang on about civil liberties and privacy and not wanting ID cards and all the rest of it, and yet seemed perfectly willing to accept restrictions on their personal freedoms that were unheard of anywhere else in Europe.

British citizens are already the most watched people in Europe, with almost six times as many CCTV cameras per person than in Germany, the next most highly surveilled country in Europe.

But sure, keep kidding yourself that Brits are freedom fighters, the last bastion in Europe still holding out against ID cards, the biggest threat to your privacy imaginable.

That's my impression too.
Maybe if I ever kidnap a swan and eat it, they can track me down.

They can face scan you and the swan ;

I no longer live in the UK. I’ve had an ID card since I was a child and am supportive for every country having them
Some of the comments on this thread are ridiculous. If they are compulsory you have one - end of story. I’m still a free citizen and my freedom hasn’t been violated.

I bet. Why do you need to be supportive for every country though, isn’t having it in yours enough? And yes we know the mandatory element already, it’s not a sell.

Wow, the petition has already exceeded 1 million signatures and I think it was only started yesterday! I don’t think this is going to help Labour’s approval ratings.

What’s your view on the UK Govt’s ability to keep it’s citizen’s data safe?
The UK generally outsources provision of such services to third parties (is this your experience too?).

Happy to link some of the UK’s previous data breaches for context.

In case you still think you are a person, my NHS GP no longer asks your name when you ring up. Instead, 'What's your date of birth?' No courtesy or recognition of you by name. I found the same thing when I went to a pharmacy which provides vaccinations and flu jabs - I mentioned it to them but I don't know if they took notice. Whether this is now a general policy and practice adopted across the whole NHS, I don't know. The first time it happened I was shocked and thought of that template.

There you see a clue to the mindset that lies behind it and similar digitised 'services'. We end up having to serve the process, rather than it serving us. The government decrees it shall be digital and a smart phone and we must comply, regardless if one wants to have a phone or not or if there is a better way of doing it that serves people better. (Leaving aside whether we should do it at all.) If Parliament votes for it because the governing party has a large majority, then it's legit innit, so shut up and do as required. And devil take the hindmost.

well, it won't. There seems to be some idea that making us have these - even if only for work purposes - will somehow stop illegal working, but any proper employer has to check you have the right to work now ( my employer of 20 years needed my passport all of a sudden for records) and the ones who are paying cheap, cash in hand and not checking docs don't care.