Westminstenders: Penny dropping time

[RedToothBrush]

Johnson already seems to be hinting at protections for workers rights and the environment that he promised are to be dropped.

Along with enshrining Brexit in law to the end of Dec 2020 thus creating another Brexit no deal date. This time without any safety net in parliament.

"won't Johnson be more liberal than he suggested" they cry

About that...

Robert Peston @peston

In the last 24 hours I’ve received extraordinary messages of anger about @SeumasMilne and Karie Murphy from Labour MPs and officials who I always regarded as their friends and supporters. There is a climate of disbelief and frustration that they remain in their...

well-paid senior positions while more junior staff are being laid off before Christmas. One source close to the leadership told me “it’s unsustainable. Expect an announcement before the end of the week”.

Some of the pledges in the Queen's speech.
Let's guess which one will immediately bite the dust.

1.Scrapping the law that fixes the date of the next election

1. Guaranteeing in law spending pledges to boost the National Health Service
2. Laws aimed at supporting the U.K.’s financial sector after Brexit

4.Tougher penalties, including potential jail terms, for companies and bosses who misuse pension funds 5.A review into the relationships between government, Parliament and the courts 6.A full review into the U.K.’s foreign and national security for the post-Brexit era.

I expect 4. to go first. Followed by sleight of hand to neuter 2.

Peregrina with this handy chart you can keep a check on which manifesto promises the Tories actually fulfil.

mobile.twitter.com/olyduff/status/1207256606536282113

inews.co.uk/news/politics/conservative-manifesto-general-election-2019-boris-johnson-guide-brexit-health-infrastructure-1342950

I would be fine with a simple ID card.

I have recently gone through three months of stressful, utter hell as Power of Attorney for an elderly relative who now has no photographic ID and whose affairs are, to say the least, complex.

The rigmarole with producing utility bills and documents with wet signatures is beyond ridiculous in this day and age. And each institution has different requirements about what is acceptable.

A photo ID would sort that.

yy grinchly but it should to be free to all citizens. Otherwisie it's just another form of potential disenfranchisement.

So many pledges to do this that and the other, which will cost. Why is it when Labour proposes the same they are criticised?

Don't you think photo ID is being linked with voting but it may be a precursor for an identity card system?
Identity cards would fit with a hostile environment too wouldn't they?

One of the suggestions being mooted was that the Tories wanted voter ID to suppress the Labour vote. Now with the Labour vote collapsing in the north and midland, it has occurred to me that they could be disenfranchising the people they want to keep.

The rigmarole with producing utility bills and documents with wet signatures is beyond ridiculous in this day and age. And each institution has different requirements about what is acceptable.

Won't solve that problem as for a lot of purposes you also need proof of address, which an ID card will never provide.

I wouldn't object to a free ID card that only fulfils that one basic purpose and which is available from local council offices as long as carrying it is not obligatory (basically the French system). But it won't ever prove address.

2. Guaranteeing in law spending pledges to boost the National Health Service

Which is useless if all that extra money is soaked up by fat US megacorps charging the NHS 100x the going rate for providing services.

In fact, any law "guaranteeing" a level of spending on something is simply a blank cheque for Tory cronies.

What time is the vote today? It won't be the same watching without Bercow now though and with a majority I'm not hopeful of it not passing. But then let them get on with it and own it, much as this is not what I want. Boris is actually going to have to do something now and get negotiating.

lonelyplanetmum I think that photo id is another foothold of the hostile environment.

I see that the Dubs amendment that allowed for family reunification of child refugees has been removed from the withdrawal bill.

Would never have come to light without the brave reporting by Computer Weekly

Private Eye has been covering the Post Office scandal for years.

The problem lies in

• the I-D needed to get a 'simple photo card'
• the organisation and stability required to obtain a 'simple photo card'.

We'll see.
The devil is in the details.

Many people struggle to even register to vote. Canvassers for Labour start early, and help get people registered.

So many reasons people don't register: instability of housing; health issues; being extremely time poor (goes with low-income); lack of awareness that you have to register (yes, people can be that disconnected by social exclusion from society); lack of documentation.

Photo I-d is just another hurdle.

It's not as though people are issued with photo I-d at 16, for free.

And it's going to be bumpy as it rolls out.

And OhYouBadBadKitten is right.
Phot I-d is almost certainly going to be another brick in the wall of the hostile environment.

We're - what? - 6 days into this, and I'm already feeling so tired. ☹️

I think this is positive tbh
I don’t like change and I don’t like uncertainty either.
I voted Remain based upon the fact there is no clear idea of what Brexit means,

Got to say though that after three years I just want it done.

I do have big concerns about Ireland though.

Not sure why an ID card can't have your address on it. The driving licence does. My idea of an ID card would be the driving licence, minus the right to drive. That doesn't cost much to renew (the first application does as I recently did it for my son) so a similar card shouldn't cost any more.

As for reductions on the right to strike, if you lived in South Western Railways's area where they're on strike all month, you'd be in favour of some restrictions. I don't actually have a problem with the right to strike, my issues come with picketing and intimidating others not to work. You can strike if you want but leave others alone to do what they want.

It's not as though people are issued with photo I-d at 16, for free

It wouldn't be that hard to do, would it? They already send a letter with your NI number on it, just add a card. If you've already got a passport they've got your details anyway, if you don't, you go to your local post office to do it.

Not sure why an ID card can't have your address on it.

Because people change their address, so you need a system which is kept up to date in near real-time. Otherwise it's useless. It's what did for the poll tax, eventually.

My idea of an ID card would be the driving licence, minus the right to drive.

Far too simple. And would result in a turf war between the DVLA and Home Office.

All an ID card really needs to do is prove the person carrying it is the person it was issued for. Nothing else. If you want proof of where that person lives, you add the ID card to another piece of documentation. The ID card is like a hub, and additional data like spokes on a wheel.

As I said before: the more work you make an ID card do, the more likely it is to fuck up plus it becomes incrementally more attractive as something "the bad guys" would find value in.

The more work you make an ID card do, the harder life becomes if one is lost or stolen. You can't have it both ways.

It's not as if there aren't plenty of countries worldwide that do use ID cards we couldn't learn from, if we weren't so up our oh-so-English-arses all the time.

It won't happen that way, though, Blaue. This government is not going to pay for that. And it's already a government struggling with infrastructure and roll-out/implementation of previous pledges/policies. Plus it's a government pledged to some massive departmental changes in the Civil Service. That means more infrastrucure and implementation chaos.

And, even if we started now with free photo cards for 16 year olds (a relatively easy group to target, since most are in school and thus 'in the system') that leaves an awful lot of people without cards and hard to reach.

The address issue is a huge one in cities, where insecurity of tenure is a big problem. Insecurity of tenure can see the most vulnerable moving 3 times in 6 months. That's an awful lot of disruption for those least able to deal with it. Photo cards will be a victim of that disruption & one more layer of difficulty.

I really don't understand the reluctance wrt mandatory photo id.

I live in a country where everyone has to have one.
costs 10€ to apply.
without it you can't open a bank account or apply for benefits or go to the council gym.
you have to carry it with you at all times.
plus you don't have to separately apply to get on the electoral roll, that's covered by the id card issuing council.

I notice that slug Rees Mogg is back where he was. They really took the voters for fools, and got away with it.

Which is useless if all that extra money is soaked up by fat US megacorps charging the NHS 100x the going rate for providing services.

The first thing DH said.

Of course any ID card must not have addresses on them! There are so many people without a fixed address. What would they do??? (aside from the question as to how to get round giving them an ID card in the first place)

ID cards so easily could divide society even more firmly into two tiers - those with a home and those without, marginalising those without further.

stripey in the country you live in, how is the fact that there are many without fixed addresses dealt with in terms of ID?

stripey You live in a country that has had voter i-D already. Quite possibly having developed your system from a system existent since the 2WW and forms of I-D brought in then.

What is being proposed here is starting that system from scratch, in an environment where we know the government is not benignly disposed to full registration of the whole electorate and is facing a number of practical barriers to smooth implementation.

The vulnerable are going to be hit by this. They just are.