Identity Cards

[davywavy]

The Government is seeking to introduce ID cards, which they somewhat nonsensically claim will protect us from International Terrorism. Given that these cards will contain retinal and fingerprint biometric data, can anyone explain to me exactly how that will protect me from blind, handless cleric Abu Hamza?

Comments

Re: More on this

[(Anonymous)]

I'm talking about Sweden because a few years ago I was suffiently interested in the country to look into it closely and was unpleasantly surprised to find such a dark heart to a country which so many hold up to be an exemplar. You raised the Scandinavian countries as being exemplars and so I raised the subject of Sweden, it being a subject I know something about. I don't know much about Denmark, Finland or Norway so I'm not qualified to comment upon them. If Sweden is not a representative sample of the Scandinavian countries (and I've always been led to believe it is, due to it being in Scandianavia and the 'Swedish Model' often being held up as being one), please feel free to offer pertinent counterexamples rather than launching attacks upon my direction and information; doing so doesn't serve to convince me of your point. If you want to avoid my observations and talk about something else, please feel free. I shan't mind.
As it is, all that you've currently demonstrated to me (based upon your Scandinavian contention of QOL and my own researches into Sweden) is that it is possible to build a perfectly lovely Quality of Life for the majority of a population by actively persecuting the top and bottom few percentages of the population. I already knew this, and whilst I must admit a grudging respect for the ruthless pragmatisim of the Swedes, I don't think that I'd consider their structure one to aspire to.

Re: More on this

[colin-boyle.livejournal.com]

This is getting silly. You claim that the Swedes are "actively persecuting the top and bottom few percentages of the population". I still haven't seen you present any evidence for that happening in Sweden today.
So two obvious responses - first the Swedes have not for a generation persecuted the "bottom few percentages" - if I were in the bottom 10% of the population, I know which country I'd rather be in!
Now for the rich. Given that the rich are still rich relative to the poor (who are also richer so a relative measure masks the size of absolute wealth) you can hardly call the top percentages persecuted. So that is again a totally misleading description of Sweden.
But even if we do use your analysis framework, then we can see that relative to Sweden the UK actively persecutes vast numbers of people at the bottom and middle of the population. The US would then persecute even more acutely persecute the bottom and middle of their population. So this stll makes Sweden head and shoulders better than the UK or the US in terms of fairness and quality of life (not to mention its liberalism). Hardly something to aspire to - or do you aspire to a grossly inequitable, low quality of life and illiberal society?

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/01/11/punitive-and-it-works/
"In Sweden...the richest 10% earn 6.2 times as much money as the poorest 10%."
United Nations Development Programme, 2004. Human Development Report: Cultural Liberty in Today’s Diverse World. UNDP, New York.

" In the United Kingdom...you are over three times as likely to stay in the economic class into which you were born than you are in Sweden."
L. Dearden, S. Machin and H. Reed, 1997. Intergenerational mobility in Britain. Economic Journal #107; and T. Osterberg, 2000. Intergenerational Income Mobility in Sweden. Review of Income and Wealth Series 46, No 4, both cited in Ben Jackson and Paul Segal, October 2004. Why Inequality Matters. The catalyst Forum, London.